An anonymous group has emerged on Facebook with a proposed solution to Coronado’s traffic woes. They want to bring back the bridge toll to, in their words, “reduce traffic while improving Coronado’s economy. The people who bring a homemade sandwich and go straight to the beach and don’t spend a cent on the island will be deterred,” the group contends. “The less people who are clogging the island and not spending money brings more people to the island who are willing to spend money.”
Whether or not this economic argument has merit, history indicates that the idea a toll will significantly reduce traffic is groundless. The group appears to be under the sway of Coronado’s most intractable urban legend: Lifting the toll increased traffic congestion in Coronado. In reality, lifting the toll had no discernible effect on traffic here.
“Bridge traffic patterns are pretty linear,” said City Engineer Ed Walton. He pointed out that Caltrans’ annual traffic reports from 2002 to 2003, when the tolls ended show a marginal increase that spiked slightly in 2003. After that traffic remained at that level until 2011 when it began to decline slightly
An 2009 Tolling/Project Delivery Study by Parsons Brinckerhoff came to the same conclusion: “Reinstituting the toll or increasing the toll did not have a great affect on the amount of traffic…because it has no direct alternative route.” The study was conducted around the tunnel proposal to see if a toll was a viable way to finance a tunnel. Once voters rejected the tunnel, the idea of bringing back tolls died with it. And with the recent decline in bridge traffic, there is little chance for the a bridge toll to be resurrected.
“Why [traffic] went down is anyone’s guess. It may have been the number of workers at North Island, the rise in gas prices caused more car pooling, the state of the economy in any given year,” said former City Councilman Phil Monroe. And while there is no single culprit, Monroe points out the biggest spike in bridge traffic occurred when three carriers, with crews of 5000 each were berthed at North Island in the summer of 2001, a year before the toll was lifted. In this case the cause was obviously a temporary population increase. For Monroe, though, the why is not the point.
“What is important for the residents of Coronado to understand is that the number of cars crossing the bridge did not go up when the tolls came off. In fact, today daily volume is approximately 10- to 12-thousand less cars that we experienced in 2001.”
The irony of this discussion is that one of the main arguements in favor of building the bridge was to reduce traffic.
Those old enough to remember pre-bridge Coronado, know that from 3pm to 6pm, Monday through Friday, Orange Avenue turned into a parking lot with cars inching there way to the ferry. Simply being able to drive across the bridge and not have to wait for a ferry seemed to be a logical and simple solution. Had the population remained stable it would have.
But the population didn’t remain stable. The 1960s era solution was undermined by the population increase brought on by building the Cays and the Shores in the 1970s and the Landing and the Point in the 1980s, according to Monroe, himself a Cays resident. “We did this too ourselves.”
Even if a credible case could be made that charging a toll to cross the bridge would reduce traffic, proponents would have to convince San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), as it is that group, rather than the City of Coronado, that governs the bridge. SANDAG members are representatives from city governments in San Diego County, with a mayor or a city councilman serving as the representative. It was SANDAG that removed the toll more than a decade ago, despite strong opposition from the City of Coronado. The vote was 6 to 9, with the then-San Diego Mayor Richard Murphy abstaining. “He left the room,” Monroe remembers.
Richard Ledford, a former aide to San Diego Mayor Susan Golding, and Monroe spent months lobbying SANDAG representatives. “Going in we thought we had to votes to keep the toll,” Monroe said. During the discussion, three people changed their minds and voted to lift it.
The toll was never meant to be permanent; it was only to be collected until the bridge’s construction costs were paid off. That happened in 1986, but the tolls continued for another 16 years. In fact, the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge was the last bridge in southern California with a toll.
There was strong support to lift the tolls from the North Island Association, a now defunct trade union that represented North Island civil servants, and La Mesa Mayor Art Madrid, Monroe said. Many Coronado residents were opposed because of concerns that the change would result in increased traffic, a perception that, despite evidence to the contrary, remains to this day.
What do you think about the idea of bringing back the bridge tolls? Let us know in the comments below.
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Gloria Tierney
Staff Writer
eCoronado.com
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