Editorial: Keep pedestrian tolls and meddling state lawmakers off the Golden Gate Bridge

Slapping a toll on pedestrians who want to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge is a manifestly bad idea. Publicly owned sidewalks, whether they run along streets or across bridges, ought to be free and open to the public. It is, frankly, ludicrous that the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District’s board of directors is even considering charging a fee to walkers as a way of offsetting operating deficits and unfunded maintenance costs.

Among other things, government ought not undermine efforts to promote walking over driving. It’s healthier for individuals and cleaner for the environment. But that’s secondary to the bigger principle that some things ought to be free — and walking across a public bridge is one of them.

Nevertheless, AB 40, by Marc Levine (D-San Rafael) and Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), is not the solution. That bill, passed by both houses of the Legislature and now on the governor’s desk, would usurp the bridge district’s authority by prohibiting it from imposing tolls on walkers or bikers for five years. The governor should veto this bill as an overreach by the state and unnecessary.

It may sound like a technicality, but it is the bridge district — made up of 19 board members representing six Bay Area counties — that has the job of running this icon. If the board takes a step that makes the public unhappy, citizens can protest and seek to unseat the board members or the people who appointed them. That’s how government bodies work, and how it seemed to be working in this case too.

A toll was one of dozens of options tossed around for consideration last year as a way to deal with a five-year budget deficit of $33 million and millions of additional dollars needed for capital improvements. The backlash was swift and severe. Thousands of people opposed a toll, and the board district backed off slightly, saying it would simply study the proposal along with other options.

In the face of that opposition, it seems likely that the toll proposal would have simply faded away even without AB 40. Instead, the bill was introduced — and then made worse. To appease the bridge district, which originally opposed the bill, the authors amended it to apply to state-owned bridges as well, even though none are currently considering a pedestrian toll.

We agree that a toll for walkers and bikers on the Golden Gate Bridge is a bad idea. We also applaud efforts by Levine to provide some big-picture leadership on the Bay Area’s traffic congestion (the second worst in the nation behind L.A.’s) while countering parochial policy by regional boards that runs counter to the state’s goal of reducing motor vehicle emissions. But this big-foot approach stinks.

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