San Francisco, CA — Mayor London N. Breed and Supervisor Aaron Peskin today announced the City’s plan for using the revenue generated by the recently approved Traffic Congestion Mitigation Tax, known as Proposition D. Collection of the tax will begin January 1, 2020, with revenue expected to be received by the City in summer 2020. Beginning immediately and over the next year, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) will fund system-wide investments and projects to improve transit service and reliability for Muni riders and achieve the City’s Vision Zero goals.

Prop D received 67.7% of the vote, clearing the two-thirds requirement for passage. The proposition was crafted by Mayor Breed and Supervisor Peskin in cooperation with Uber and Lyft, and was supported unanimously by the Board of Supervisors.

“I want to thank the voters of San Francisco for approving this important measure to help relieve congestion and invest in critical transportation and safety projects throughout our city,” said Mayor Breed. “In order to encourage more people to take transit, bike, and walk, we need to continue re-designing our streets, improve Muni, and advance towards our Vision Zero goals. This is a big victory for San Francisco, and we look forward to creating a safer, greener, and less congested city for all our residents.”

“Once again San Francisco leads the State in its Transit First and Vision Zero advances by becoming the first California city to adopt this type of TNC mitigation surcharge,” said Supervisor and Transportation Authority Board Chair Peskin. “We heard overwhelmingly from voters that one of their top priorities was hiring more Muni drivers to keep our city moving, so I’m thrilled to see SFMTA ready to act on this mandate. I’m also proud that we dedicated the funding to making the streets safer for our most vulnerable. In the end, by uniting everyone from the Board of Supervisors to the Mayor to transit advocates and Labor, we were able to cross the two-thirds vote threshold to make history, with our San Francisco values intact.”

The measure is estimated to raise up to $35 million annually for transit and Vision Zero safety projects by imposing a 3.25% surcharge on all individual rides and a 1.5% surcharge on shared rides that originate in San Francisco. Rides in electric vehicles (EVs) would have a surcharge of 1.5%, regardless of whether they are individual or shared, in order to encourage the use of EVs.

With the passage of Proposition D, the SFMTA will make several investments to improve transit system reliability and reduce service gaps for riders. First, the SFMTA will use the funds to invest in expanded training resources to recruit and train larger classes of transit operators. The operator shortage is the largest contributing factor to unplanned service gaps today. The SFMTA will also invest in improvements to line and system management to improve day-to-day system performance.

In addition to transit service and reliability, the SFMTA will make several investments to improve street safety and advance the City’s Vision Zero goal to eliminate traffic-related fatalities. The SFMTA will work with the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) to secure ongoing and stable funding for the SFMTA’s Vision Zero Quick-Build Program estimated at $1.3 million per year. A “quick-build” project is one that does not require major street construction and can be implemented quickly with low-cost solutions such as paint or posts. In the past six months, the Quick-Build program has already delivered safety improvements such as protected bike lanes and shorter pedestrian crossing distances, months faster than originally scheduled. One project that will be added to the near-term list of “quick-build” improvements is the critical north-south Embarcadero corridor, which is slated for a complete safety overhaul by 2022.

Finally, the SFMTA and SFCTA will advance the installation of Accessible Pedestrian Signals (APS) throughout the city. APS emit sounds when it is safe to cross the street and help low-vision and blind pedestrians cross the street safely. By summer 2020, the SFMTA will install 40 new APS signals using the “quick-build” process, and will plan to install another 100 in the coming years using this new funding.

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