6$ Dollar Toll for BAY BRIDGE

Perhaps this is not such a bad thing if it encourages people to take BART instead of piling into their cars and polluting the air.

That's a killer but who can afford to drive into the city anyway with parking costing an arm and a leg.

It is probably a good thing if it helps to make the bridges safer for Earthquakes like they plan.

Yeah, the price is a little nuts...

I understand that the objective is to alleviate traffic and perhaps be more environmentally sustainable. However, if commuters are parking their cars and sitting on the bridge, waiting for peak hours to end so that they can drive back over, and stalling on the side of the freeway, does that REALLY help traffic all that much?

Perhaps the incentive for taking public transport needs to be greater. Maybe they can lower BART prices in conjunction with raising toll prices. This could allow them to achieve their objectives in a way that is sustainable, not detrimental and socially irresponsible.

I don't have the answer, just opinions on human behavior. I'd be curious to know what the proverbial "Tipping Point" is for this kind of social problem.

I bet you once people get used to it they will stop the shenanaguns as Moma Flower would say. You always hear these kind of stories when something is new, but then once people get used to it ist no big deal.

Of course, if you live in Frisco like I do, you don't have to worry about the Bay Bridge toll.

I understand that they didn't really do this for climate change, but if we are ever going get on top of this problem we will need to take measures like this, making it inconvenient to keep up these old bad habits. We need to make it harder for people to stay in their old patterns and we need to make the price reflect the environmental cost.

I agree that more measures like this need to be taken, but they need to increase incentives for taking the Bay Bridge if they do this, rather than causing people to sit in their cars and idle. Dropping Bart prices simultaneously would be the smart thing to do, and would make people much happier overall.

Has the idling improved at all since the first day of the toll increase?

I haven't been on the Bay Bridge since the increase but if the goal is to make improvements to the environment, then I think your idea is really good, Steph. The more we can get poeple out of the their cars and onto public transportation the better. (Although with kids its not really feasible for me.)

I think though that they are actually trying to raise revenue to fund bridge renovations, so they aren't trying to just change life style practices but also to just get more money from us. Kind of a phantom tax. Yet another sign of how screwed up things have gotten at the state Capital. I don't envy whoever wins the governorship, the problems are really unfixable. Good luck to Brown or Whitman.

The other day I was driving across the bridge in the other direction and I saw all of these people pulled off to the side of the road and I didn't understand it, but then I realized what time it was and realized that they were waiting for it to be 10am so that they could save $2!!

Are they still doing that? I guess I would do the same thing. 2$ is nothing to sneeze at in this economy.

Is it really $2? All of the tolls are up to $5 now, so wouldn't they just be saving a dollar? If they are "saving" a dollar, then they probably lose it or its equivalent in gas and wear-and-tear on the car for the sake of sitting there idling. Not to mention the opportunity cost of sitting idly rather than doing something productive.

On the plus side, or rather, the put-things-into-perspective side, many of the other cities I have been to charge a toll in each direction, or have multiple tollbooths every 20-30 miles (try driving on the Jersey Turnpike), so $5 a day doesn't seem to hurt quite as badly when you look at it that way. If nothing else, at least the views are good!

@StephSF It's a $1 each way. So, that's $10 per week. I don't think they are idled, probably parked. I'm sure that they are all on their Blackberry or iPhones.

I thought it was $6 dollars during rush hour and $4 dollars during non-rushhour times, but I might be mistaken. I haven't been into the city since they changed the tolls. I forget if they give you a break for carpools or not.

@StephSF: Turnpikes. I vaguely remember having to throw money into a basket. That could be fun. They should try it here. I could practice my hook shot while eating a sandwich, setting my GPS, talking on the phone, yelling at my kids and playing with the radio dial.

Yeah, except that turnpikes sneak up on you every 20 minutes, at times, which breaks up the drive. Not fun.

As I mentioned earlier, they need to create a better incentive structure if their goal is to alleviate traffic on the Bay Bridge. I.e., lower BART prices in conjunction with the toll hike. The message will be clearer and people will likely be less angry. Grr.

I experienced this one coming back from Tahoe the other night. It was a Wednesday night close to 11 PM and I still sat in traffic for about 15 minutes. The biggest problem is that the lanes that correspond to the cash lines do not correspond, visually, with what people may expect - which results in a skewed visual and many lane changes that happen very quickly. At least the toll was only four bucks at that time. What a mess.