Unnecessary toll increases will hamper middle-income drivers in Antioch and beyond.

Mark Ioffe

As if a $1 toll increase effective January 1, 2025 isn’t enough, Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) Commissioners are planning to approve a series of five-fifty-cent increases starting in 2026. By 2030, tolls in seven Bay Area states will increase. Owned bridges will cost $10.50 for FasTrak users and $11.50 for on-bill drivers. The increase includes the following four pier bridges in Contra Costa County:

• Antioch Bridge (Senator John A. Nejedly)
• Benicia-Martinez Bridge (George Miller)
• Carquinez Bridge
• Richmond-San Rafael Bridge

In addition to toll increases, motorists are facing rising gas prices caused by the California Air Resources Board’s recent introduction of a low-carbon fuel standard. According to the University of Pennsylvania Research Center, LCFS can cost drivers up to 85 cents extra per gallon. This is on top of the very high fuel prices in California caused by the taxes that are being increased every year under SB1 (2018).

Despite rising maintenance costs, bridges in the Bay Area are highly profitable. BATA expects total revenue this year to be $1.058 billion. Costs to operate the bridges, operate FasTrak and pay debt service are projected to be just $757 million, leaving $300 million in reserve.

As BATA admits in its own FAQ on the toll increase, $3 of the current $7 is already spent on purposes other than bridge operations, maintenance and seismic safety (this amount will increase to $4 of $8 as of January 1). For example, nearly $6 million annually is diverted to the Transbay Joint Authority to operate a vacant bus terminal and pursue a hopeless plan to bring high-speed rail trains to the Salesforce Transit Center. Bridge toll money is also used to subsidize Bay Area Ferries, SF Muni, AC Transit, Golden Gate Transit and the NAPA Vine bus service.

Particularly egregious is the increase in tolls on the Antioch Bridge. BATA charges the same toll on all of its bridges, despite their vastly different lengths. The Bay Bridge is 8.4 miles long, while the Antioch Bridge is only 1.8 miles long. Additionally, unlike all other bridges in the Bay Area, the Antioch Bridge only has one lane in each direction.

And here the question of income arises. While many Bay Area drivers are wealthy enough to easily afford the toll increase, that’s less true for people living near the Antioch Bridge. According to the Census Reporter, Antioch’s per capita income is only 56 percent of the average for the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metro area. Rio Vista, the first major settlement on the north side of the bridge, generates just 67 percent of the metropolitan area’s income per person.

At a minimum, BATA should exempt the Antioch Bridge from the planned toll increase. But what’s even better is that the government should shelve its entire fare hike plan, stop siphoning off toll money for other purposes, and live within its means.

Mark Joffe is president of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association..

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Bay Area, Finance, Government, Infrastructure, Opinion, Taxes, Transport. You can follow responses to this entry via the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a reply or trackback from your website.