#Bay area traffic report drivers

He’s a proponent of expanding the Bay Area’s transportation network and recently joined Sen. There’s a threshold for how much people are willing to pay, said Congressman Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord. And then there are the special assessments for BART and AC Transit in the East Bay, along with a new proposed 1/8th-cent sales tax for Caltrain in San Francisco and the South Bay.

#Bay area traffic report drivers

1, drivers started paying 12 cents more at the pump and will soon be paying more to register their cars. Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties all have existing half-cent sales taxes for transportation improvements. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)īay Area residents have been asked repeatedly in recent years to fund maintenance and expansion projects. Heller has been working for a year with local and state agencies on a conceptual Bay Region transportation plan. Architect Jeffrey Heller is photographed in his office on Monday, May 22, 2017, in San Francisco, Calif. And the proposed $3 toll hike is expected to generate between $4 billion and $5 billion over the same time period. To put that in perspective, the state’s gas tax is estimated to generate $130 billion over 25 years. There’s no price tag, at least not yet, but early estimates indicate it could be in the ballpark of $100 billion. “It’s really important to connect to the North Bay,” Metcalf said, “whether that means expanded ferry service or connecting to the SMART train. There could be dramatically expanded ferry service, and better access to the North Bay, he said. In turn, those buses, which will one day likely be autonomous, would cruise along at much faster speeds because they would be separated from single-occupancy cars, Metcalf said. There could be a vast network of toll lanes ringing the bay and radiating to the north, east and south, he said. They would run parallel to or even share lanes with buses. That tube could include Caltrain, or there could also be a new bay crossing, likely a bridge, to carry Caltrain, high-speed rail, or both, along with cars, Metcalf said. First on the list is a second tube, or bridge, for BART, which would allow 24-hour service, minimize the impact from a massive earthquake wiping out the existing Transbay Tube, and provide relief for trains bottle-necking in West Oakland. The plan would almost certainly include a major expansion of train service for BART and Caltrain, said Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council. However, early conversations have shed some light on the direction it might take. It’s too early to specify what transformative projects Bay Area residents can expect as part of this mega measure, said Carl Guardino, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

She commutes to Redwood City and said it’s becoming impossible to get around. But it’s a small one paving the way for a much bigger ask: A “mega measure” to fix traffic in the Bay Area for good - or at least for the foreseeable future.įor Oakland resident Lynn Hall, relief can’t come soon enough. Securing passage of Regional Measure 3, the proposed $3 toll increase on most bay bridges, is the first step, Metcalf said.

“Conversations started all over the Bay Area asking the question, can we do something at a bigger scale than we have done before? Big enough to actually solve the problem? Big enough to actually get us a different regional transportation system than we have today?” “People are wasting hours of their life in traffic,” said Gabriel Metcalf, the president and CEO of SPUR. The average commuter now spends more than 29 hours a year slogging through highways at speeds of 35 mph or slower. The dream may be closer to reality than you think.Ī coalition of Bay Area business leaders represented by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and the Bay Area Council, along with the urban planning think tank SPUR, say that dream is the answer to traffic congestion on Bay Area roads, which grew 84 percent between 20. If that sounds like a fantasy, just wait. With ferries that stop at more than a handful of terminals and autonomous buses cruising in their own lanes, blasting past cars on the freeway. With trains that ring the bay, some running 24 hours a day. Please select the website link to see each state’s road conditions.Imagine a Bay Area with highways that flow instead of grind to a halt. For the latest road conditions, here is a list of phone numbers and websites for each state.