McGoldrick’s “Congestion Pricing Plan” Really Means “TAX!”

San Francisco Board of Stupidvisor Jake McGoldrick is at it again.

In a guest column in the May 15th issue of the San Francisco Examiner, he asks people to keep an “open mind” about congestion pricing. Congestion what? Let me explain.

Congestion pricing is basically a user fee (read: tax) on drivers to drive on a city’s most congested streets. They use transponders to collect fees in much the same way that FastTrak works at the bridge toll plazas around the San Francisco Bay Area. The money raised theoretically is used to make improvements to the local transportation systems and other necessary public works projects.

This was a topic that came up last year in 2005 that I didn’t blog about because I was too busy. At the time, McGoldrick proposed having toll roads in downtown San Francisco as a way to raise revenue for the city. Also at that time, I don’t recall him really saying anything about making improvements to our city’s streets, just that he wanted to charge a toll so that it would reduce downtown traffic.

When I first heard about it, my first thought was, “Is he nuts? Why would you want to charge people to drive on our city streets?”

I believed that it was a bad idea then and I still believe that it is bad even now. What this would most likely do is drive more people away from San Francisco because this is yet another tax/penalty/money grab from the city’s politicians who are such the typical Democrap. Tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend. They never met a tax that they didn’t like, as long as it didn’t apply to them. This tax would hit everybody in their pocketbook at a time when they are already finding it difficult to make ends meet. Gas is already expensive, bridge tolls are going up, parking meters and parking fines are through the roof. Do you see the trend here? I’m sure the stupidvisors would want to have an exemption for themselves because they feel that it shouldn’t apply to them. After all, they’re more special than either you or I.

McGoldrick goes on to cite how this “strategy” has been successful in Singapore, London and Stockholm. Although it works, theoretically, on a sliding scale – higher during more congested commute hours, less or free at other times – it still means that people are being taxed on something that is a daily necessity and when there are already high taxes being levied on property and business owners alike.

In his column, he states that local efforts to improve the city’s transportation system isn’t keeping pace with increasing car ownership rates. “As a result, workers, visitors and goods vehicles waste valuable time and energy waiting in traffic, to the harm of our economy, environment and stress levels.” Is he trying to sound progressive now? If anything, he’s using doublespeak. I believe that the harm to our economy is from the fines and tariffs that the city is seeking to enact on motorists.

By charging people to drive through downtown San Francisco, it sends the message that San Francisco only wants their money and then for them to get the hell out. It is very anti-business and anti-social. Businesses will get tired of having to pay more to conduct business here in the city and regular citizens will not want to have anything to do with San Francisco because they already have to commute long distances only to be charged just to drive through the city. Does this sound progressive?

Part of the reason why there are so many extra cars on the city’s streets is because so many people have moved out of San Francisco to find affordable housing. They want to buy a home so that they can raise their families but also realize that they cannot do that in San Francisco. I have heard of people moving one and-a-half to two hours away from the San Francisco Bay Area and then having to make that god-awful commute just to go to work. People are forced to drive to their jobs, jobs that they can ill-afford to give up now. And now they may be faced with having to pay yet another “fee” just to go to work? Isn’t that a load of crap?

Again, gas isn’t cheap, the bridge tolls will be going up to four or five dollars for cars soon (never mind the multi-axle trucks), and then McGoldrick wants to charge people another fee when they get off of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge? Hogwash! This is the reason why I don’t vote for Democraps: They want to tax you for everything, they don’t want to reduce expenditures where it makes sense to, and they don’t do things to HELP people and business. Rather, they hurt people and business alike. When will they ever learn?

This is a direct quote from his guest column:

“As with anything that is overused — and underfunded — we must consider the possibility that the price of road use is too low. A congestion charge may sound costly and inequitable at first. However, a road user fee can actually re-balance the equation to make the current system less costly in terms of motorist delays, lost sales, efficient goods movement and environmental damage, and more equitable in terms of faster buses and safer streets for walking, cycling, and driving than the current system.

Experience around the world suggests that road user fees can be an effective way to improve a city’s accessibility, environmental quality and economic vitality. Traffic congestion is down 18 percent in London and 25 percent in Stockholm. Transit use is up, and the programs are generating significant revenues for transportation infrastructure development. London continues to thrive, and business sales in the Stockholm pricing zone are actually up 5 percent because drivers have to pay in both directions across the pricing cordon — making that trip to the suburbs less attractive than shopping locally near home.”

Again, he is forgetting the fact that people have moved out of San Francisco for the very reason that it is unattractive and unaffordable to be here at all in any capacity.

How about this for a thought? Why not lose some of the top-heavy managers in some departments so that we can save money there? This city has far too many managers for its own good. Also, what about those union positions? That’s what drives up the cost of running this city: Having to pay those expensive union pay scale jobs is draining the city of money that it could better spend on other areas such as repaving the roads, maintaining public safety and upgrading the infrastructure.

Also, for the places that he cites as having successful results from charging user fees to drive on the most congested roads, one must remember they are densely populated areas with a geography unlike here in the United States. Sweden is very mountainous, and so their population centers are different from what you find here. They tend to congregate on the shores and waterways. Also, with Singapore, for all its vaunted modernism and progressiveness, its development isn’t kept in check such that it keeps the infrastructure in balance with its growth.

Even by his own admission, we are very different:

“But in order to move ahead in this direction, we need to be sure that the San Francisco solution fits our congestion problem. Although several conditions suggest a pricing system may work well here, San Francisco’s congestion profile, transit system and role in the regional economy are quite different from other places where pricing has been implemented. We must be careful to take these considerations into account when designing and evaluating potential pricing alternatives.”

So what does he want to do? Spend money on a study to find out if this will actually work here or not. Gee, spend more money needlessly? Sounds like a plan so typical of liberals!

Why not use common sense and scrap the idea and find better ways to be EFFICIENT instead of WASTEFUL? I guess that would make too much sense for our city’s liberal leaders.