Further steps to charge toll for driving in core of downtown area

From today's Chronicle,

Congestion charging -- imposing a toll on drivers in a city's downtown core -- is about take on a bureaucratic life of its own in San Francisco.

In a sign that the musing of one Board of Supervisors member is on course to become reality for Bay Area motorists, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority soon will receive $1.04 million from the Federal Highway Administration -- and add $260,000 in local funding -- to study how to implement a program similar to London's 3-year-old system of charging a flat fee to drive downtown during business hours.

That's $1.3 million to figure out how to collect millions from drivers willing to pay the freight to give a financial boost to public transit systems and perhaps curb traffic congestion.

And that's how, not if.

London operates its congestion charge from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Traffic signs alert drivers when they are about to enter a zone, where a system of 203 cameras tracks vehicles. Motorists must pay the $14 congestion charge before or on the day of travel and can pay by telephone, on the Web, at designated stores, by mail and even by text message.

The London program has generated more than half the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's proposed 2006-2007 budget in its first three years of operation, O'Hara said. But it was also expensive to implement, using about £200 million in government funding.

A system in San Francisco could use a camera network like London's or a tag-and-beacon system, much like FasTrak, that would automatically pay the charge...

Charge to drive in downtown S.F. seems more viable [SFHomeBlog]