According to the Wikipedia, the famous red-brick-paved switchbacks of Lombard street total 412 feet and the San Francisco board of supervisors want to tag $10 for it. That comes to an equivalent toll of $128 per mile.
According to Ezfreightfactoring.com, the most expensive toll roads are:
The 11 Most Expensive Toll Roads in America by the Mile
Chesapeake Expressway (Virginia): $1.05
17-Mile Drive (California): 54.4 cents
Ford Bend Parkway (Houston, Texas): 53.3 cents
Chicago Skyway: 51.2 cents
Delaware Turnpike: 36 cents
E-470 (Denver, Colorado): 33 cents
SR-73 (Orange County, California): 25 cents
Texas State Highway 130: 14.6 cents
Triangle Expressway (Raleigh, North Carolina): 14.5 cents
Florida State Road 417: 14.3 cents
New Jersey Turnpike: 11.4 cents
You know? I thought Florida was bad milking tourists, but you have to give it it San Francisco for bold stupidity.
If you want less of something tax it. That’s why we tax cigarettes, booze and people who work for a living (income tax).
If the goal is to keep people off that little street, it will work. If the goal is to collect money from stupid tourists, they’ll get a little of that, but I bet they’ll get much less than they think.
I’ve been sent to San Fransicko for work a couple of times, the last time was 20 years ago. I drove the little road because I was there and I could. If I was out there now, I’d avoid it. Since the places I got sent to were closer to San Jose (Silicon Valley), I’d avoid San Fran like the plague. Which will probably be the next big disease outbreak they have.
Seems a decent compromise between just closing the street to all vehicle traffic and leaving it open and spending big bucks on maintenance. (I’m no civil engineer, but I can’t imagine red brick is the most durable of road surfaces).
This might be the first logical decision by the San Francisco civic government since reign of Emperor Norton.
I am sure that the maintenance of the road is what pushed them to impose the fee..NOT
A Lombard Street condo is worth north of a couple of million bucks, but are going DOWN in value because of the tourists. Nobody wants 10,000 cars per day going by their front door (not an exaggeration during tourist season). This is an act to bump the property values of the wealthy, well connected people who own condos on the street.
I grew up in Holland, where most city streets are paved in brick. They are extremely durable. That is a very hard and dense kind of brick, nothing at all like the fairly soft and porous stuff used to build walls. And repairs are very easy: if a brick breaks, you can pretty much ignore it, or just swap out that one brick. If you need to dig things up, just remove the bricks and lay them back in when done. No ugly patches the way you get in asphalt roads that have to be dug up.
FWIW, Vermont is just about as crooked and far less crowded: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vermont+St,+San+Francisco,+CA/@37.7584411,-122.404234,19z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x808f7e350f4d604b:0x10bf8371dddf3be8!8m2!3d37.759572!4d-122.4040259
…but for really crooked you have to head to city hall.
Ba-dum-tiss…
O2