Pass RM-2 to Make Life Better for Me and You

Toll Measure Puts Regional Quality of Life on the Ballot

Bay Area voters who go to the polls on March 2 will be able to take direct action to expand the ferry system, promote vibrant waterfront communities, and embrace the region’s greatest natural resource. Regional Measure 2, the Regional Traffic Relief Plan, puts the very quality of Bay Area life on the ballot, laying out a detailed strategy for improving mobility, slowing the trend toward sprawl, and loosening the congestion stranglehold that is already impeding the Bay Area’s pursuit of happiness—and will only get worse unless corrective action is taken.

Combining new ferry, rail, and bus services with select highway improvements and bicycle/pedestrian projects, the plan would be financed through a $1 toll increase on the region’s seven state-owned toll bridges, bringing tolls to $3 per car on the Bay Bridge and the Antioch, Benicia-Martinez, Carquinez, Dumbarton, Richmond-San Rafael, and San Mateo-Hayward bridges. The plan—which would raise about $125 million a year—would not affect the current $5 per car toll on the Golden Gate Bridge, which is owned and operated by the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District.

Ezra Rapport, an aide to East Bay state Senator Don Perata, explains that the plan’s broad scope reflects the region-wide impact of traffic congestion. "The plan accomplishes three separate goals: adding new transit options in the transbay corridors, ensuring seamless transit connections around the Bay Area, and delivering congestion relief at chokepoints like the Caldecott Tunnel, the Cordelia Junction, and the 101/Sir Francis Drake interchange."

The Bay Area can’t wage a serious fight against traffic congestion until people have legitimate transit options. This plan delivers the options. It puts rail all around the Bay, connects the transit services to one another, and ties it all together with TransLink®.

Robust growth projections for the Bay Area over the next couple of decades helped spawn the Regional Traffic Relief Plan. According to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s population is expected to swell from about 7 million today to some 8.5 million by 2025, fueling a 30 percent increase in travel throughout the region, and a 50 percent increase in the critical transbay bottlenecks. Add it all up and the projections point to a whopping increase in traffic congestion region wide. Not exactly a winning recipe for improving the quality of our lives, the economy or the environment.

While few motorists are eager to shell out an extra buck each time they reach the tollbooth, many are philosophical. "$3 is a bargain when you look at the Golden Gate Bridge or look around the country," said Mike Skowronek, a former Brooklyn, New York resident who now lives in Berkeley. "Drivers are paying $6 or even $8 tolls for bridges and tunnels in New York."

But what exactly would the extra dollar pay for? Quite a lot as it turns out.

Expanded ferry service is a key part of the plan, which essentially would implement the vision outlined by the San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority (WTA) when it was established by the state Legislature in 1999. The Regional Traffic Relief Plan calls for buying new environmentally friendly vessels and providing operating funds for new routes linking San Francisco with Berkeley/Albany and South Francisco, as well as more frequent service on the existing Alameda/Oakland and Vallejo routes. The plan also includes up to $48 million for spare vessels and improvements to San Francisco’s Ferry Building, $28 million for a new intermodal bus/ferry hub in Vallejo, $3 million a year for the Water Transit Authority’s system needs, up to $5 million for a study on the potential use of San Quentin as an intermodal ferry/bus/train terminal, and up to $1 million to study ways to boost ferry ridership at the Richmond terminal.

"The ferry investments alone pay triple dividends," says Steve Castleberry, the WTA’s new chief executive officer. "They make it easier for commuters to get out of their cars and onto a boat. They promote regional clean air efforts. And they provide a catalyst for reinvigorating waterfront neighborhoods."

New ferry services will not only add luster to established regional gems like San Francisco’s newly redeveloped Ferry Building and Oakland’s Jack London Square, but add new jewels to the Bay Area crown. "Bustling ferry terminals help create dynamic community hubs," explains Castleberry. "The comeback of Vallejo’s downtown waterfront has gone hand in hand with the success of the Vallejo Baylink ferry. Similar success on a Richmond line would magnify the great work Richmond has done with its waterfront. The ferry terminal in Alameda will enhance the rebirth of the Alameda Point district, and we’ll see some of the same kinds of spillover at Oyster Point in South San Francisco and at the Berkeley Marina—to say nothing of the spectacular opportunities if the San Quentin site is redeveloped."

But there’s more than ferries to the Regional Traffic Relief Plan. The plan includes a lot of land-based transit investments as well. Some of the biggest items on the list include new commuter rail service across a rehabilitated Dumbarton rail bridge, the first leg in the proposed BART extension to Silicon Valley, a BART connector to Oakland Airport, a Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District extension from San Rafael to the ferry terminal at Larkspur or San Quentin, and redevelopment of San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal, connecting a downtown Caltrain extension with AC Transit, BART, Muni, SamTrans, and Golden Gate Transit.

To connect all the transit improvements together, Measure 2 includes funds for the region-wide integration of the TransLink® smart card system, allowing transit passengers to use a single fare card on any Bay Area transit system. The Regional Traffic Relief Plan gives drivers a break as well, with funds used to upgrade the Interstate 80/680 interchange in Cordelia, improve access to the Larkspur Landing ferry terminal by reconfiguring the U.S. 101 interchange in Greenbrae, finance a fourth bore for the Caldecott Tunnel, add a new carpool lane on eastbound Interstate 80 from Highway 4 to the Carquinez Bridge, and modernize on- and off-ramps on Interstate 880 in Oakland.

The plan also includes $22 million to improve bicycle and pedestrian access to regional transit stations. This money would pay for bike paths, sidewalks, traffic signal improvements, better signage, and secure bicycle parking.

Noting that the measure required approval by the state Legislature—and signing by ousted Gov. Gray Davis—before qualifying for Bay Area ballots, only spoilsports offer a dimmer view of the Regional Traffic Relief Plan. They suggest, "The spending plan for the money from this toll increase was written by politicians, not transportation planners, and will just go to fund pork barrel projects for politicians who love nothing more than cutting ribbons with one hand while collecting campaign contributions with the other."

There’s no denying the political bloodlines in Measure 2’s pedigree. Measure 2’s roots go back to 2002, when the Perata-led Senate Select Committee on Bay Area Transportation began taking a close look at regional travel forecasts and concluded that a toll increase was the most appropriate way to pay for the projects needed to ward off total gridlock. But the pork charges don’t stand up to scrutiny. The solons actually deserve some credit for not only being able to see the brakelights through the fog but for the collaborative approach they took in devising the plan.

Step one was the formation of a public advisory committee—which included Bay Area transit agencies, Caltrans, and a raft of business, environmental, and social equity groups—to come up with the expenditure plan. Committee members graded project proposals on numerous factors including impact on congestion, cost-effectiveness, environmental impacts, land-use opportunities, and safety and social equity.

Another uncommon characteristic of Measure 2 is that it not only pays for new ferries, trains, buses, and rails extensions—it pays for the pilots, drivers, mechanics, and dispatchers needed to run them, too. The Regional Traffic Relief Plan provides up to 38 percent of annual revenues to transit agencies to operate the new services.

The politicians and the planners finally did it right. The combination of capital and operating funds makes this a real regional plan, not just a political porkfest.

Implementation of the Regional Traffic Relief Plan would be overseen by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which is the transportation planning, financing, and coordinating agency for the Bay Area, and also serves as the Bay Area Toll Authority. Recognizing that some projects may not work as well in real life as they do in planners’ models, Measure 2 requires MTC to adopt performance measures related to ridership and farebox recovery before allocating any funds for transit operations. The measure also allows MTC to change a project’s funding levels or even reassign funds to another project in the same corridor.

"None of these projects will turn into a fiscal sinkhole," explains MTC executive Randall Rentschler."The oversight provisions have real teeth, and that gives us a mechanism to change course if things don’t work out as planned."