It will cost another quarter to cross the Golden Gate Bridge starting Friday, making the toll the highest of any span in the Bay Area.
Tolls will increase to $6.50 for FasTrak users and $7.50 for pay-by-plate drivers.
Golden Gate Transit bus and ferry riders will also see a 4 percent increase in fares at the same time.
With all-electronic tolls now on the bridge — toll takers were eliminated in March 2013 — the cost to cross can be raised by less than whole-dollar increments without fear of a traffic backup, because no change has to be made.
Golden Gate Bridge drivers began paying another $1 to cross the span in April 2014, bringing the FasTrak toll then to $6 and the pay-by-plate fee to $7. The toll then increased 25 cents on July 1, 2015, and will increase by the same amount Friday. The toll will rise another 25 cents in July 2017 and 2018. That will put the FasTrak toll at $7 and the pay-by-plate toll at $8 by July 2018.
Carpools — vehicles with three or more people between 5 and 9 a.m. and 4 to 6 p.m. — now pay $4.25 and will pay $4.50 as of Friday.
The five-year toll plan raises $138 million over the period. The district still has a projected five-year, $33 million deficit.
“As the cost of goods and services increase every year, we need to bump up our tolls and fares in order to maintain excellent service,” said Priya Clemens, bridge spokeswoman.
To cross the span daily for the coming year — minus two weeks for vacation — the average commuter will pay about $1,625 in tolls.
All other bridges charge $5, except the Bay Bridge which goes as high as $6 during peak commute periods. The Golden Gate Bridge is managed by a special district with its own board, while the rest of the region’s toll spans are operated by Caltrans.
Marin residents bear the brunt of paying tolls. County drivers make up almost 40 percent of those who cross the span, according to the most recent license plate data from the bridge district. San Francisco residents make up 23 percent of crossings, Sonoma residents about 11 percent.
Susan Deluxe of Tiburon, a longtime critic of the bridge district, said residents are partly to blame for the toll increases.
“What price public apathy?” she said. “Maybe when the bridge board comes back in 2018 and asks for a $10 toll it will grab people’s attention. We still need this is to be an elected board, not an appointed one.”
Bridge officials have noted that Marin enjoys the majority of transit subsidized by the tolls, which cut traffic on Highway 101 by as much as 25 percent, they say.
“We looked carefully at any opportunity to reduce our annual increase and were able to bring our fare increase down a bit to 4 percent, rather than the 5 percent it has been in recent years,” Clemens said.
