$9 to cross SF bay area bridges

[Malloric]

$15-20 would probably be better, get more people out of single-occupancy vehicles. As it is you sit around waiting for 45 minutes to get on the Bay Bridge, which is why I avoid driving across it as much as I possibly can. Jack the price up and use it to fund the Southern Crossing and second tunnel for BART. Then build some parking garages so people can actually use BART after 7:00 a.m. Between the higher BART capacity and Southern Crossing you could actually get across the bay in a reasonable amount of time.

Originally Posted by rhbj03

I just have a couple of questions:

1. Is it fair to ask non-bridge users to take part in the vote on rate increase, so the new revenue can be used to do road projects elsewhere for non-bridge users?

2. Is it lawful to still collect bridge or highway toll, when all construction bonds have been paid for?

1) Of course.
2) Of course. For the bay bridge, the tolls have been set by various regional measures and the state legislature.

I cross the bridge on occasion (usually I take BART) and really have no problem with the toll going up. Hopefully it'll mean more carpooling/mass transit and less single occupant vehicles creating miles-long traffic jams. I'm with Malloric on this though, higher would be better. Bumping it to $9 probably isn't enough of a jump from the current $6 peak time toll to really have much effect.

[ALackOfCreativity]

Originally Posted by cebuan

The US-40 bridge at Havre de Grace, Maryland, is $8 per crossing. But for $10, you can get an annual pass allowing you to spend the whole year just driving back and forth across then bridge free.

Designed to soak interstate travelers while sparing locals. The feds should come down on this as interference with interstate commerce, which it is.

Originally Posted by JerseyGirl415

lol Yup. All NYC bridges and tunnels, including ones connecting to NJ, cost more than $9. I’d take $9 any day over what we pay. They are some opportunities for discounts, like for EZpass users who cross the bridges and tunnels a certain number of times each month, but still.

NYC bridge tolls are effectively taxes to pay for south Jersey road construction, NYC buses, and borderline corruption at the Port Authority. Really should be paid for out of general income taxes, not arbitrarily and disproportionately soaking commuters (except the PA good old boys, who should simply be cleared out).

[Hulsker 1856]

Originally Posted by rhbj03

I just have a couple of questions:

1. Is it fair to ask non-bridge users to take part in the vote on rate increase, so the new revenue can be used to do road projects elsewhere for non-bridge users?

2. Is it lawful to still collect bridge or highway toll, when all construction bonds have been paid for?

It's not possible to separate non-users from users as far as voting goes, so what is the point of this question?

Are you against those without school-age children voting on bonds for schools? How about non-mass transit users voting on light rail? Do non-fans get to vote on whether or not to spend $500 million on a place for a billionaire's team to play?

Newsflash:
Infrastructure is expensive. Bridges (and tunnels) are really expensive. It is reasonable to use general funds in part to pay for those things because they benefit everyone (we all use products transported through them, for example). It's also reasonable to use tolls so that those who use them pay more proportionately.

PS - We could probably pay for those things outright, but the politicians who voted for such things would promptly be tossed out of office by the NO TAXES! pitchfork nation, who want stuff but want it to magically appear without costing them anything.

[lae60]

OP,

YOU ARE IN CA!!!

The voters approved a tax on gas to fund medical insurance for those that do not qualify for OBAMA care.


You are lucky of the bridge toll money goes to road projects at all!

Historically gas tax, goes to unfunded things. The money is borrowed year after year to pay the politician's salaries and any other budget shortfall. So, if they use the bridge toll funds to fix the roads, at least the roads may be drivable.

If you try fighting it and leaving it to the voters, likely you will still be paying a bridge toll, jut then you will be funding looking for yellow toed caterpillars, paying for free utilities for the poor, services for the undocumented, etc.

[cebuan]

Originally Posted by charlygal

I don't understand #1. Don't all citizens get a vote in all public matters on a ballot? It's sheer lunacy to think that issues will be separated to voter segments.

How many people would have opposed the Golden Gate Bridge in 1933?

By the way, isnt the toll collected south-bound only?

[cebuan]

Originally Posted by ALackOfCreativity

Designed to soak interstate travelers while sparing locals. The feds should come down on this as interference with interstate commerce, which it is.
.

The toill is not on the interstate. The Hatem Bridge is an alternate route parallel to the interstate.

As for interstate commerce, there should have been, right from the start, a prohibition on any tolls on any highway signposted as interstate. Some interstate highways are actually privately owned, like I-80 across northern Indiana.

The interstates were originally intended to be for defense purposes, and should be as publicly funded as the Pentagon.

[rodentraiser]

Originally Posted by cebuan

How many people would have opposed the Golden Gate Bridge in 1933?

By the way, isnt the toll collected south-bound only?

As a matter of fact, isn't the toll collected one way on the Golden Gate and collected in the opposite direction on the other bridges on 80 and 680? Seems to me I once mistakenly went through Martinez going up to Santa Rosa and then came back via the Golden Gate and never did have to pay a toll. Of course, that was a long time ago.

That's OK, once they decided to put in a new Tacoma Narrows bridge, they've done nothing but raise the tolls every year. They tell us the tolls will only be until the bridge is paid off - who are they trying to kid? If they think we believe that, we have a bridge to sell them (I wish!).

Meantime they went toll crazy all around Seattle. Now there are tolls on the 520 bridge and I think they're either talking about or have already put a toll on parts of 405. Thing is, on my side of the water, they have us boxed in. I can drive 150 miles round trip and pay the bridge toll (it's only $6.50 now) or I can pay close to $40 for a round trip on the ferry with my car.

I loved my doctor appointments. Medicaid paid for them but I had to pay $38 to get to them and back, and $25 to park once I arrived.

The ferry rates weren't supposed to be this high, either. When I came up here in 2001, they were only $3.80 for a walk on passenger (one direction is free). Then they raised them "the most the rates have ever been raised in the history of the ferry" because then they were only supposed to go up 5% a year for the next 5 years. Of course, after the next 5 years, instead of not raising them anymore, they raised them even higher! Now it's close to or at $9 to make a trip on the ferry as a walk on passenger. I don't understand why they don't just raise the rates to $100 for a car and $25 for a person and just get it over with. Quit nickel and diming us to death.

[jonesg]

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

I guess if Alaska turned blue when we weren't looking you could suggest a correlation

Oh there's no shortage of troglodytes up there.

[factcheckcd]

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

nope, and I'm surprised that you wouldn't have 'fact checked' that claim before posting it. Blue states subsidize red states and have been doing so for a very long time.

"A report released on Oct. 3 by the New York State Comptroller said that New York generated 9.4 percent of the federal government's income-tax receipts, even though it represented 6.1 percent of the U.S. population. It received 5.9 percent of federal spending allocated to the states. According to the report, New York contributed $12,914 per capita in tax revenue to the federal budget - but received $10,844 in per capita federal spending. The problem has only gotten worse in the three years since the report was last produced, state officials said.

New York gets 56 cents back for every dollar and California gets 64 cents. But states such as North Dakota, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana get more than two dollars back in federal spending for every dollar in taxes. (There are some outliers: New Mexico, which votes for Democrats, gets nearly $2.50 back for every dollar, while Nebraska and Ohio, both Republican, get back only about a half-dollar.)"
Are red low-tax states subsidizing blue high-tax states through the tax code? - SFGate

I'm familiar with that worn out defense and reject it.

That dynamic doesn't make it an intelligent policy.

I'm surprised nobody cites Florida because they happen to have alot of retirees living there, or states with military bases - both which would receive larger federal dollars - but how does that justify New Jersey's local property taxes? Pathetic they don't even fall into the category of "big takers"...that's how bad things have gotten. And how the heck did Oregon get to be one of the worst takers? I don't even get that.

And the disproportionate amount of federal aid that some states receive allows them to keep their own taxes artificially low. Which began with Southern Democrats with senior leadership positions in DC wielding federal powers and sending money back to their states vis a vis all types of nonsense.

It makes no sense for wealthier NY'ers to send money to less affluent Mississippians but yet they seem to have no problem with it since they keep voting for large tax and spend politicians.

And I'm consistent because I have no problem cutting big government central-planning federal bureaucratic spending to ALL states and correcting the imbalance of convoluted Federalism. And the reward structure it creates.

It's funny to me that Liberals want to justify their high local property taxes, for example, with the whataboutism of another state's high local [whatever] spending that are mutually exclusive.

In both cases it encourages both of them to have bigger, higher-taxing governments than they otherwise would. State dependency on a central federal government leads to just another lap around the vicious cycle that was NOT how this country was founded and is not Constitutional. Hamsters on the hamster wheel - especially in Blue territory.

It's called "time for a correction" and it's going to start with the obvious culprits, I guess. Since it's impossible to force [the "new"] Americans to understand the basics of what the Federal Government is limited to doing.

See? I'm actually trying to protect your $$$

And yes, I'm familiar with the follow up counter-argument. "Civil society, safety net, yada yada".

The TRUE answer to the original poster is: Voter ignorance and apathy. And I place three tiers of blame for that - Individuals, educational systems, media.

Sad that the citizens can't seem to be intellectually honest enough to distinguish the justification of federal funding for a necessary bridge - for example the OP's bridge - versus federal funding to pay for some other bridge to nowhere or some other state's personal desire to have some extravagant local education system that only benefits the immediate community and has nothing to do with FEDERALISM. And I haven't even mentioned that other disaster - federal funds and grants to colleges and universities to create academic quasi Blue-State-like empires with country club mentalities and now, worse, expanding their admissions to court foreign money.