Congestion pricing won’t work unless they provide free public transit downtown and increase reliability.

Nice piece! The article did a nice job of showing the breakdown of leadership on the panel.

Despite the panel’s slow disintegration, I believe there is fundamental good news here: Muni operating cost increases (led in large part by labor, energy and capital improvements) dictate faster parking and congestion fee increases which have great external benefits.

Even though leadership isn’t so strong to increase fees, SFMTA has to do something to cover Muni’s rising costs. Thanks to the genius of the SFMTA combination of Muni/DPT, they can squeeze more revenue from DPT to pay for Muni.

So in a perverse way, increased energy costs are indirectly forcing the City to implement parking fee and congestion fees much more quickly than if left to their own impotent Blue Ribbon panels.

This is great news! Let’s hope energy prices continue to rise so the City has no choice but raise parking fees to market rates and implement congestion pricing immediately.

Of course, let’s pray that these proper fee adjustments coincide with proper Muni evolution such as fast and smoothly running Geary and Van Ness BRT lines so our City has a usable transit system. Don’t mess this up, Mr. Ford.