$3 toll hike for Bay Area bridges nearly set for June ballot

After months of polling and behind-the-scenes debate, Bay Area transit officials are ready to move on a proposal to raise tolls on the Bay Area’s seven state-run bridges by $3 in the coming years.

If approved by voters in June, the first dollar hike would kick in come January 2019, followed by subsequent $1 hikes down the line. Each dollar increase is expected to generate $125 million a year. The money would be used to fund a host of Bay Area road and transit projects.

Carpoolers would continue to get half off on their tolls, and drivers whose commute takes them across two bridges a day — say, from Solano County to San Francisco — would get a 50-cent discount on their return trip home.

“That appears to be the consensus,” said Randy Rentschler, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

One question yet to be resolved is how to phase in the toll increases.

Some members of the Bay Area Toll Authority, which will meet on Wednesday, want the hike to be spread over eight years to lessen the bite on drivers. Others want a six-year phase-in to start the money flowing faster.

“That is going to be a point of healthy debate,” said Orinda City Councilwoman Amy Worth, who favors the longer phase-in.

Rentschler says officials are optimistic the measure will win the required majority approval in the nine Bay Area counties. When voters were told what the hikes would pay for, support in one recent poll hit 60 percent, he said.

The toughest haul, however, will be in places lie Contra Costa and Solano counties, where plenty of drivers pay tolls. Three key East Bay lawmakers — Democratic Rep. Mark DeSaulnier of Concord, state Assemblyman Jim Frazier, D-Brentwood, and GOP Assemblywoman Catharine Baker of San Ramon — have already come out against the hike.

“It’s an unfair burden on working families and small businesses, plus I don’t see any real oversight on how the money will be spent,” Baker said.

Support for the increase, however, will likely be strong in parts of the Bay Area that stand to gain from the new money.

“The Trump administration isn’t going to help us out, so we need to raise our own money to reduce gridlock,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco.

Plus, with Bay Area business groups like the Bay Area Council and Silicon Valley Leadership Group backing the measure, the “yes” campaign is likely to be well-organized and well-funded.

Whatever the final outcome, the MTC hopes to have the measure ready by the end of the month.

Street wars: Lawyers for the South Bay couple who snatched up San Francisco’s prestigious Presidio Terrace street in a 2015 tax auction — only to have the Board of Supervisors reverse the sale — have filed a lawsuit to get it back.

Attorneys for Silicon Valley engineer Tina Lam and her husband, real estate investor Michael Cheng, claim the board exceeded its authority in setting aside the $90,100 property sale in November, giving the private street back to homeowners who had failed to pay $994 in back property taxes.

The homeowners argued that they had been denied due process because the tax bills were sent to the address of a bookkeeper who retired in the 1980s.

“We are asking the court to stay everything and maintain the status quo,” said Timothy Yoo, the couple’s Los Angeles attorney.

Scott Emblidge, the Presidio Terrace Homeowners Association’s lawyer, declined to comment.

As for the couple’s chances of prevailing in the San Francisco Superior Court suit?

“We believe we have a meritorious case,” Yoo said, “or we wouldn’t have filed it.”