The Overhead Wire Daily | April 25, 2024 | Zombie VMT

A local group of advocates in San Francisco has launched a campaign for a ballot measure that would tax ride hailing companies such as Uber, Lyft, and Waymo to pay for more Muni service as city revenues suffer from the pandemic re-sort. A ballot measure for regional funding is expected to be sussed out and voted on in 2026 while some gap funding has been provided by the state.

The measure if passed would in theory raise up to $30M on ride hail use in the city and ropes in Waymo along with the usual suspects. One thing it got me thinking of as ride hailing and especially AV defenders started howling on social media was why such a measure should target ride hailing. And the answer to me at least is traffic congestion that slows down Muni buses, which has increased with the proliferation of ride hailing in the city. But since we won’t be doing any congestion pricing any time soon because of the impact of work from home, this might be a good proxy in theory.

Shared rides would be taxed less that individual rides but it also would have been nice if zombie VMT was included somehow and taxed even more. That’s hard to do because there’s no fare value to tax from but perhaps it could be done with all the Waymo vehicles driving around completely empty without a driver or passenger. They are taking up valuable city real estate similar to empty parked cars which in many cases at least pay a meter or a parking pass to use curb space.

But ultimately all of this could be avoided if we just allocated more street space to transit and moving people than moving cars. If the bus lines I took had lanes I might not mind as much being stuffed on the 22 next to an empty Waymo and more people would probably ride.

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