The practice of “casual carpooling” across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge sprang up during a BART strike, perhaps in the 1970s. No government bureaucrat was involved.
Motorists, dreading a bridge clogged beyond gridlock by thousands of BART commuters forced to drive to work, began trolling AC Transit bus stops in Berkeley and Oakland, looking for riders bound for San Francisco.
With passengers, they could drive to work on the bridge’s HOV lane. By and large, riders were happy to take a free ride with a stranger: AC was struggling to accommodate the surge of demand caused by the strike, and there were no guarantees you could even get onto one of the miserably crowded buses.
After the strike was settled, the casual carpool continued, because it was so convenient.
For drivers, picking up a couple of riders transformed a commute that might be a grim 90 minutes of stop-and-go driving into a 30 minute trip, door to door.
For riders, the casual car pool offered complete flexibility: a free ride to work in a nice car that left exactly when you wanted.
In the beginning, the transit agencies hassled the casual car pools, occasionally ticketing motorists for blocking bus zones or moving the pickup sites without warning.
But that stopped years ago. Today there are more than 40 pickup points around the East Bay, and thousands of commuters rely on the system.
Business deals, friendships and romances have begun in the carpools. During my years as a newspaper reporter in San Francisco, I was tipped to five page-one stories by people I met in the carpool.
Then came the huge Bay Bridge reconstruction project, and the massive cost overruns, and the recession. To transportation planners, the environmental advantages of getting all those people out of their cars fell away in the face of financial concerns.
Last month, as it was jacking up the trans-Bay bridge toll for single motorists to $6 (it was $1 before the construction got underway) the cash-strapped Bay Area Toll Bridge Authority also voted to impose a $2.50 toll on the more than 10,000 car pool vehicles that head into San Francisco during each morning’s commute.
There’s real concern that the tolls will kill the casual car pool as it now exists. It almost certainly will reduce the incentive for motorists to stop for riders.
In the meantime, carpoolers who assume the institution will survive are locked in debate: Who’s supposed to pay the toll? There’s no obvious answer, and $2.50 is an oddball amount, as Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates pointed out in his vain attempt to talk the toll authority out of imposing it.
Much of the debate has been conducted on a message board for casual carpoolers. They're divided on whether riders should pay the driver $1, or 83 1/3 cents – anybody got change of a penny? – or nothing.
The Chronicle, in its report on the issue, consulted the great-great-grandson of Emily Post, arbitrer of etiquette for generations of Americans.
He suggested “candid and honest” discussion.
Comments
via Twitter