Editor's note: Last year Parisian voters decided that owners of giant SUVs should pay a fee for the extra space they take up and the additional damage they do to city pavement. Joanna Gubman wrote the following op-ed arguing that given S.F.'s budgetary woes, it's time to think about a big-car fee over here too.
With San Francisco facing a “ballooning deficit of $1 billion” and SFMTA alone looking at a shortfall of over $300 million, it’s time to be bold in getting our financial house in order. And that means taking on one of the biggest costs to our city: cars.
A look at the Department of Public Works (DPW) budget – and proposal for next year – shows that the city is spending $100 million in General Funds, which according to the DPW website is entirely dedicated to street cleaning (in departmental jargon, a part of “street environmental services”). Then there’s about $60 million in capital funds, most of which appears to be earmarked for street maintenance work like repaving and pothole repair. And that’s not counting the money spent by other city departments like SFMTA, which pays DPW for repaving work around Muni tracks or otherwise tied to transit needs. Or the stormwater management costs for SFPUC to handle dirty runoff from wide, car-oriented streets covered in exhaust and tire grime.
In other words, we are spending at least $160 million every year just on repaving and street cleaning, and never really talking about it. That’s about 40% of the DPW budget, or half of the entire SFMTA budget shortfall – and our streets aren’t even well-paved! While it’s true that certain funds must go to street maintenance, they can also support simultaneous & integrated complete streets work – like implementing our newly-approved Biking and Rolling Plan. And that $100 million in General Funds? It could support any other city priority, like tackling homelessness, revitalizing downtown, avoiding other DPW cuts like to the Pit Stop program & sidewalk litter cleanup, or of course… FUNDING MUNI.
We can’t just let our streets decay, nor should we send dirty stormwater out to the bay. But we can ask Amazon delivery trucks, commuter buses, Waymo & Zoox fleets, and owners of heavier cars or SUVs like Cybertrucks to pony up. These vehicles wear down our roads, cause potholes, and necessitate more street & stormwater cleaning than would be required in a car-light city with more green infrastructure & human-scale transportation.
Policymakers should be guided by this fun fact: road damage like potholes is caused by vehicle weight (per axle) to the fourth power. This means that a Tesla Cybertruck causes roughly 2^4, or 16x, the damage of a Honda Accord, which weighs about half as much. Depending on the model, an Amazon delivery van causes even more damage. And a commuter shuttle? THOUSANDS of times more road wear than an Accord. Meanwhile, every car and truck contributes to our street cleaning and stormwater management costs: streets with wide paved roads designed for lots of cars simply need to be swept clean, and they have much more stormwater runoff than human-scale, permeable surfaces. How about we ask these folks to pay for it?
Car-oriented roads are hugely expensive to the city, and there’s no reason we can’t require cars and vans to mitigate the costs they themselves cause. It’s the polluter-pays principle, and it’s allowed even under California’s stringent Proposition 26. Proposition 218, which limits fees to property owners, also does not apply – owning a car is not inherent to owning property in San Francisco, and indeed 30% of SF households don’t have a car.
Commuter shuttles are trickier, because they are regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Nevertheless, the city should be permitted to charge for costs incurred – including repaving and street cleaning.
With so much at stake in San Francisco’s budget, it’s time for City Attorney David Chiu to clarify that charging SF vehicle owners & fleet operators an annual road maintenance & stormwater management fee is a perfectly legitimate option available to our city leaders. After that, our policymakers can step in. The easiest approach is to begin charging annual road maintenance fees to commuter shuttles and large delivery van fleets like Amazon’s. These fleets are small in number, and they are the heaviest vehicles.
Next, the city should consider mitigation fees for private and autonomous vehicles (AVs). These are more complex, and allowances will need to be made for equity. For example, small businesses and contractors often require a car for their work, and sometimes a large van or truck. We all want to support SF’s small businesses, so commercial vehicles (besides delivery fleets) should be exempted or heavily discounted. Low-income residents should also receive an exemption or discount.
Smaller electric cars also weigh more than their gas counterparts (not necessarily the case for larger SUVs and trucks, however!) – so they too should receive a discount, as we don’t want to discourage San Franciscans from going electric. Meanwhile, AVs must receive the same treatment as private cars, due to a CPUC prohibition on AV-only fees.
For the sake of equity and simplicity, the city could also consider exempting the first $X of any road maintenance charge, or all vehicles under two tons – this would focus the charge on the vehicles causing the most damage to our roads, the most air & water pollution, and the most danger to people on foot and bike.
Then there’s the question of implementation. How will the city know what kinds of cars, trucks, and vans are out there, and whom to bill? Thankfully, the DMV has this data for privately owned cars – and they already share it with the city anytime you get a ticket in the mail. Vehicle registrations include name, address, and VIN – which can be searched to find out vehicle model and weight. City leaders should consult with City Attorney David Chiu to confirm whether the city can request this data annually, as a mitigation fee is a slightly different set of circumstances than a ticket.
Ultimately, a phased approach may be necessary to roll out mitigation fees over the long term, beginning with the legally & logistically simplest vehicle types to regulate. Yet while road maintenance charges might not be easy, cars and trucks – especially the heaviest ones – are an enormous burden on our society. They drain our city budget, cause climate change, harm public health, limit our ability to build walkable communities, and injure and kill people in crashes.
It’s important that San Francisco send the right signals and internalize at least some of these externalities. At the very least, tens of millions in revenue could be raised from cars to fund their own infrastructure, rather than siphoning off desperately needed funds from the General Fund and indefinitely delaying complete streets.
For now, I’ve created a spreadsheet to let you explore the potential for yourself. I invite you to download a copy, play with it, consider what policies you think are fair, and write to city leaders to demand they take action. Our budget – and the health of our streets – can’t wait.
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Joanna Gubman is an advocate and policy strategist with a deep commitment to walkable, sustainable communities. Among other roles, she serves on the Sierra Club San Francisco Group Executive Committee and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Education Fund Board. Previously, she was the Executive Director of Urban Environmentalists and an Administrative Law Judge at the California Public Utilities Commission. She lives in the Castro with her partner and their young daughter.
