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Home Resource Center In the News Home Greenbelt Alliance in the News |
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Greenbelt Alliance In the News
February 22, 2004 ELECTION 2004:Transportation
Measure 2
Bridge toll boost would fund mass transit Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff WriterBay Area voters will decide next month whether to make the biggest investment in regional transportation in more than 15 years - a huge plan that helps pay for the seismic strengthening of BART's transbay tube, a new landmark Transbay Terminal and downtown Caltrain extension in San Francisco, new ferry service for the East Bay and Peninsula, and a fourth bore for the clogged Caldecott Tunnel.To finance the plan's 39 projects, motorists would have to cough up an extra dollar - a $3 total - every time they crossed one of the Bay Area's seven state-owned toll bridges. "This is probably the most important measure we'll get to vote on this decade,'' said Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition, a collection of environmental and social justice organizations. "Because it is the only plan that is regional in nature.'' If Regional Measure 2 passes by a simple majority of the combined votes in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Solano counties, the new tolls would be collected beginning July 1 and pump $125 million a year into the Bay Area's transportation treasury. The Golden Gate Bridge, owned and operated by an independent district, would not be affected by the vote. Passage of the measure would continue a Bay Area tradition of voting to invest in major transportation projects - including construction of the BART system in the 1960s and, more recently, the Regional Measure 1 program, approved by voters in 1988. That measure standardized tolls on the state bridges at $1 - they varied from 35 cents to $1 at the time - to build new Carquinez and Benicia-Martinez bridges, widen the San Mateo Bridge and help pay for BART to stretch south to San Francisco International Airport. With those big-ticket projects and others funded by Regional Measure 1 completed or under construction, and state and federal transportation funding increasingly hard to come by, transportation officials and politicians are going back to the electorate again. "Regional Measure 2 is the next step,'' said Randy Rentschler, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area's regional transportation planning and financing agency. Unlike its predecessor, Regional Measure 2 devotes most of its money to transit projects, not highway or bridge improvements.The measure's backers say that's entirely appropriate and in keeping with the changing nature of the Bay Area. A better, more coordinated transit system, they say, will get more drivers out of their cars and relieve congestion on the freeways - or at least delay its spread. Misguided appropriation? Critics call the measure an unfair cash grab that takes money from motorists to fund costly improvements to a public transit system that is used by a relative few and has failed to deliver promised traffic relief."All the billions of dollars we've spent on transit has not reduced congestion in the Bay Area at all,'' said Ken Hambrick, chairman of the Alliance of Contra Costa Taxpayers, a leading opponent of the measure. "And transit ridership in the Bay Area is really very minimal.'' About 12 percent of Bay Area residents use transit to commute to work or school, compared to 81 percent who drive - either alone or in a carpool, according to a 2003 study by Rides for Bay Area Commuters, a group that encourages carpooling. The Bay Area needs transit, Hambrick said, but Regional Measure 2 devotes too much money to public transportation and not enough to maintaining and improving roads and highways."People are not going to get out of their cars no matter how much you spend on transit,'' he said. Transportation officials, transit advocates and environmentalists disagree. Spending more money to improve transit, they say, will lure more drivers out of their cars, helping to ease the grip of gridlock on the region's bridges and highways."If we don't pass Regional Measure 2, and we don't really improve regional transit, the backups at the bridges that are now 15 to 20 minutes will become 45 to 50 minutes,'' said Cohen. "If we want to avoid that, people who drive across the bridges will have to invest a little more.'' Transit smorgasbord Regional Measure 2 would raise money to help pay for a veritable smorgasbord of transportation projects - divided between the seven counties and each of the bridge "corridors," the highways and transit systems leading to or following the spans. The measure would also fund annual operating subsidies for 14 transit services, including the ferries and express buses.Three big-ticket items head the spending list: -- $143 million to help seismically strengthen BART's transbay tube to better withstand a major earthquake. -- $150 million toward construction of a new Transbay Terminal in downtown San Francisco, and the long-planned downtown extension of Caltrain, the Peninsula commuter railroad. -- $135 million to help pay for track and station improvements that would permit commuter rail service between the East Bay and the Peninsula over the Dumbarton rail bridge.A variety of other attention-getting projects would also receive a big financial assist from Regional Measure 2. Among them: -- An automated rail connection between Oakland International Airport and BART and the Capitol Corridor trains at the Oakland Coliseum station - $30 million. -- Bay Area ferry service expansion - $84 million. The measure would pay for two vessels each for new service from Berkeley or Albany to San Francisco and South San Francisco to San Francisco; expanded service from Oakland, Alameda and Bay Farm Island; and two backup vessels plus money for expanding berthing areas at the San Francisco Ferry Building. -- Regional express bus service on the Bay, San Mateo, Dumbarton, Richmond-San Rafael, Carquinez, Benicia-Martinez and Antioch bridge corridors, including the purchase of buses, improved access to bus lanes and expansion of park and ride lots - $42 million. -- A Caldecott Tunnel fourth bore - a new two-lane tunnel with shoulders north of the three existing bores - $50.5 million. -- Expansion of the San Francisco Municipal Railway's popular E line historic streetcars - $10 million. -- A rail extension between BART's Pittsburg/Bay Point station and Byron in eastern Contra Costa County - $96 million. -- Improvements to the Interstate 680/I-80/Highway 12 interchange in Solano County - $100 million. -- Extension of the eastbound Interstate 80 carpool lane from Highway 4 to the Carquinez Bridge - $50 million. -- Expansion of the TransLink universal transit ticket program - $22 million. -- A variety of regional transit enhancements, including a program to improve connections between transit services, development of a regional rail plan, and creation of a monthly zoned transit pass that could be used on multiple operators.Critics assail the spending plan as a collection of pork-barrel projects intended to win voter support rather than a carefully crafted congestion- relief plan. But Rentschler said the plan, given the legal restriction of confining projects to toll-bridge corridors, "is very consistent with (the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's) vision of a balanced transportation plan.'' Ferry system planted seed Regional Measure 2 grew out of a 1999 plan to create a regional ferry system. That led to the creation of the Water Transit Authority, which proposed an expanded Bay Area ferry network and suggested funding it by raising tolls by a dollar. But other transit agencies also had their eye on that dollar, and after a series of legislative hearings on the Bay Area's transportation system, state Sen. Don Perata , D-Oakland, decided to put together a congestion relief bill. A committee reviewed proposals and prepared a plan that it sent off to Sacramento. Legislators added three projects - the Caldecott fourth bore, the Greenbrae interchange and additional money for the BART Warm Springs extension - and passed Perata's Senate Bill 916, which allowed the Measure 2 vote. The addition of the Caldecott fourth bore brought some outrage from environmentalists, but many environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Greenbelt Alliance, Urban Ecology and Save the Bay have endorsed the measure. Measure 2 also counts organized labor unions, Bay Area transportation and transit agencies, and a host of elected officials as supporters. The Yes on 2 campaign, Bay Area Commuters for Transportation Solutions, has raised about $55,000, with the largest contributions coming from developers and organized labor. As of mid-January, the campaign had spent $110, 395, almost all of it on campaign consultants. The opposition to Measure 2 - primarily taxpayer organizations - has not mounted an organized campaign. A bit of a sleeper issue An informal survey of commuters Thursday found that many were not aware of the measure. Drivers, interviewed at a San Francisco gas station near the Bay Bridge, had mixed opinions. "I'm a firm believer that bridge tolls should just go to the bridge,'' said Peter Beninu, a sales manager who lives in San Carlos, works in San Francisco and crosses the toll bridges frequently. "And they could always lower the tolls.'' But Woo Park, a San Francisco consultant, wasn't ready to reject the idea of paying higher tolls. "I'm going to have to give it some thought and see what the extra money provides,'' he said. Two blocks away, at the decaying Transbay Terminal, the measure received a more enthusiastic endorsement from folks waiting for buses across the bay. "I'm all for it,'' said Richard Tropf, a truck driver who lives
on Treasure Island. "It's real crowded on the freeways, and we need
transit. If they can improve it in any way, I'm all for it.'' BART $400.5 million Rail $195 million Buses $144.8 million Light rail $41.5 million Ferries $120 million Bridges $50 million Bicycle/Pedestrian $22.5 million Roads $355.5 million Terminals $226 million E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com. Regional Measure 2 traffic relief projects If voters in seven Bay Area counties approve Regional Measure 2 on March
2,
(in millions of dollars) . Construction projects and Measure 2 funding (in millions of dollars)
not -- Improved bicycle and pedestrian access to transit stations $22.5 ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | ### |
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