Praise Don Perata and Pass the Ammunition

Now Let’s Raise Golden Gate Bridge Tolls to $8

Last month, Bay Area voters did the right thing, passing RM-2 by a comfortable margin and thereby raising bridge tolls by $1 to fund a myriad of desperately-needed and long-overdue public transit enhancements.

It’s big news for ferry riders. Over 20% of the new money is to be set aside for ferries, some $18.5 million a year, in addition to $84 million for new ferryboats and terminal improvements.

It didn’t come easy. Over the course of a five-year Bataan Death March of political brawls and enervating public meetings, one man has stood firm in support of comprehensive regional ferry service and let us now sing his praises: Senator Don Perata.

Lord knows, to single out Senator Perata is not to diminish or overlook the vital role played by those on an honor roll that includes, but is hardly limited to, original visionary Ron Cowan, selfless Chairperson of the Water Transit Authority (WTA) Charlene Haught Johnson, indomitable waterfront union chief Marina Secchitano, the erstwhile Ezra Rapport, whose thankless task it was to arbitrate the bleating demands of transit agencies often working at cross-purposes, the oft-maligned and even more often misunderstood Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and, of course, the overworked and unappreciated WTA staff who wrote the water transit plan.

But let it be clearly understood that we owe it all to the unflagging patronage of Don Perata. Plainly put, without him, it had a lambs’ chance at a wolf dance.

Senator Perata never wavered in his support for ferries, not when it would have served his political interests to do so; not when the attacks became personal; not once; not ever.

This page gleefully concedes its self-interest and utter lack of objectivity, yet juts its chin out to confidently assert that Senator Perata’s championship of this issue will be long-remembered by a grateful Northern California.

No other public leader this page knows in the nation has seen fit to offer the public a plan for life beyond oil gluttony. Indeed, our President is even now running television commercials mocking the very suggestion of gasoline conservation, even as he sends our relatives and friends to shed blood to keep American control over oil.

Senator Perata’s leadership has put us on a path to a sustainable, and vastly improved, Bay Area quality of life, one in which getting around the Bay will be as pleasant as it is convenient.
But the job is far from done. President Bushs’ craven advertisements notwithstanding, the most direct and efficient way to inhibit automobile use – and simultaneously fund public transit alternatives — is a hefty gas tax.

The anti-tax Taliban are sure to demagogue that proposal to death, so it is urgent that work begin right away to increase bridge tolls yet again, to $8 on the Golden Gate Bridge and at least $5 on state bridges.

Some say the Golden Gate Bridge not so recently jumped to $5 and it’s not propitious to talk of raising state bridge tolls immediately in the wake of a $1 hike.

We say that Golden Gate Bridge drivers can damn well afford $8, like New York, and if they don’t like the idea of a higher bridge toll they can vote in a transit sales tax which Marin, alone amongst the nine Bay Area counties, has seen fit to do without.