The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) is considering implementation Congestion prices downtown to solve some of the city’s traffic problems. The main objectives of the project are “to get traffic moving and achieve road safety, clean air and equity goals”.

Congestion pricing is a broad term for a system that charges people based on the use of a lane. The specific type under consideration for San Francisco is “cordon pricing,” which charges people a flat rate every time they enter or leave a certain area of ​​the city.

Noisy San Francisco Chronicle, the SFCTA is currently considering two possible zones for cordon pricing: a small one around the Financial District, Chinatown, Tenderloin, and South of Market, and a larger one to the south that would include North Beach, Russian Hill, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Mission Bay.

According to the current proposal, the authorities would only calculate congestion prices during morning and evening rush hours. The plan would also include a full exemption for the lowest-income drivers and possible exemptions for people with disabilities and those living in the zone.

Anyone making $ 100,000 a year or more would pay $ 6.50 to enter or exit the city center.

SFCTA claims that most of the people subject to the new fees are higher-income drivers (at $ 100,000 a year or more) commuting to office buildings across the city.

Even so, not everyone is excited about the idea of ​​making it more expensive for people to work or patronize businesses in the heart of downtown San Francisco, especially during a pandemic. It would just add one more fee on top of a lot of taxes California residents already pay to live and work in the state.

“Overload prices in SF?” San Francisco-based political commentator Richie Greenberg said on Twitter: “Insane, ridiculous, anti-business, anti-tourist, anti-resident. What traffic jams? People in the wallet aren’t rational at all. “

Baruch Feigenbaum of the Reason Foundation said it was “complicated” whether San Francisco congestion prices would actually reduce traffic.

“There is a concept in transportation called ‘induced demand’. This means that if you take a vehicle off the road, another vehicle will use it, as driving is preferred to transit for most people, ”he says. If San Francisco already has some catching up to do in driving, even if some people stop driving because of the traffic jam prices, others will take their place when they see the traffic decrease.

Congestion Pricing is supported by some libertarians as an alternative, market-based solution to traffic problems caused by traffic jams. It is a way of preventing driving that is relatively non-invasive and still allows the individual driver to make their own decisions. And there is some evidence that it has worked quite well internationally.

“Congestion pricing for entire highway networks has been used successfully to relieve congestion in several cities around the world,” writes Randal O’Toole in a Cato Institute policy paper. “In 2004, Santiago de Chile introduced variable tolls on major highways in the city, and this proved to be significantly faster travel times and improved highway safety. Norway introduced congestion pricing on major highways in Bergen, Oslo and Trondheim, both of which helped have to finance these roads and relieved congestion. Several highways in France use congestion prices for all lanes, which has significantly reduced traffic delays. “

“Economists agree that pricing should be the way to solve traffic jams. But apart from this primary finding, there is a lot of disagreement,” noted Canadian economics professor Robin Lindsey in an overview of 100 years of business literature on the subject.

Feigenbaum emphasizes that the desirability of congestion prices “depends on the use of the income”.

He points to the cordon pricing system proposed by New York City, which uses a large part of the money on public transportation, which drivers avoid. Feigenbaum wrote about the plan with intern Joe Hillman for the Reason Foundation. They see this as a downside, as it means that a large portion of the benefits paid by NYC congestion prices go to wealthier people near major public transportation hubs, rather than the people who pay the congestion charges.

“In the long run,” they say, “the revenue from congestion prices is likely to benefit commuters, especially those who live near a subway station in the city or a train station on Long Island, Staten Island or Connecticut.”

The SFCTA study on the implementation of the program is currently underway is in progress. The agency says an overloaded pricing program would take at least five years to prepare. What happens by then could determine whether this is a good solution for traffic or another way for California to cause further inconvenience to its citizens and to waste their money.

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San Francisco politicians are considering another policy that would harm tenants in the event of property violation: a ban on smoking in private homes.

On Thursday, a committee of the city’s board of directors voted to propose a bill banning smoking in private homes in homes with three or more units. The San Francisco Examiner reports that the restrictions would apply not only to tobacco products, but also to smoking marijuana and even vaping.

According to billing sponsor supervisor Norman Yee, the goal is to protect non-smoking apartment residents from the fumes of their ruthless neighbors.

“I take pride in helping residents avoid exposure to secondhand smoke in their own homes,” Yee tweeted as he introduced the bill last week. “Smoke moves easily between units and buildings. Now that more of us are working from home, it is more important than ever because there is no way to contain it.”

San Francisco currently prohibits smoking in the enclosed public areas of multi-unit buildings. Yee’s proposal extends to the interiors of these buildings’ private homes, as well as balconies and terraces.

The bill would allow the city’s Department of Health to punish offenders with a fine of up to $ 1,000, though the investigator reports they would receive warnings first. According to the legal text, a violation of this prohibition would not be a reason for eviction.

During the first year of the ban, the Ministry of Health would also need to “conduct a multilingual and culturally engaging public information campaign to raise awareness of the smoking ban and smoking cessation resources”.

63 California cities have similar bans. Yee’s proposal is endorsed by the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network, the American Heart Association, and the San Francisco Tobacco-Free Coalition, all of which have issued letters of support.

Common claims about the dangers of secondhand smoke are made in these letters, including the notion that “there is not a safe amount of secondhand smoke exposure” and that secondhand smoke kills 41,000 people annually. However, recent medical studies have not found a clear link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer. Unlikely claims that smoking bans in public spaces are causing massive, immediate decreases in heart attacks and heart disease have also been largely debunked. A 2016 report by the Royal College of Physicians in the UK stated that “there is no direct evidence of such passive exposure to date [to e-cigarette vapor] is likely to cause significant damage. “

Yee has spoken out in favor of his ban as people are expected to seek refuge in their homes during the pandemic. One could use the same argument against the proposed ban: it is better to let people smoke in their homes than to light up on crowded public streets.

This is especially true for marijuana smokers, who would have few places to pamper themselves if Yee’s ban were passed. In San Francisco, smoking marijuana is illegal in public and in almost all businesses except the city’s cannabis lounges, which are closed during the pandemic.

In his credit, I think Yee proposed a change that would allow people with medical marijuana cards to continue smoking weed in their homes, the examiner said. At least one manager, Rafael Mandelman, has said he wants a blanket exemption for cannabis.

Given the weak public health case to crack down on second-hand smoking, it is difficult to view this proposal as anything other than an advanced form of invasive nanny statism. It effectively treats people’s homes as public places just because they happen to live in an apartment building.

That’s pretty bad for privacy and pretty bad for freedom. It’s also quite discriminatory to apartment dwellers. People who are rich enough to be able to afford a house or at least a maisonette in the extremely expensive city are not affected by the ban.

None of this is meant to ignore the preferences of non-smokers who don’t want to smell cigarette smoke in their own four walls. However, this preference can be satisfied by living in a building where smoking is prohibited as a condition of the lease. Likewise, smokers who want to live in their own four walls should be able to choose a building that allows them.

Obviously, people’s ability to find a building that suits their indoor smoking preferences is made significantly more difficult by the prohibition of apartments in much of the city in San Francisco. This lack of housing forces these two groups of people to live cheek to ashtrays in whatever houses they can find, creating conflict.

A better solution would certainly be to legalize new buildings so that consumers can choose from more types of housing in more locations. Smokers and non-smokers would then be better able to choose environments that better suit their needs.

The entire board of directors will be considering Yee’s smoking ban for the next month.

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