,MEDIA MONDAY / GOLDEN GATE GOUGING: A $10 TOLL TOO FAR

California already charges motorists the nation’s highest gasoline levies. Must crossing a public bridge cost double digits, too? 

OPINION. By the Editors of PillartoPost.org daily online magazine--California motorists are accustomed to being treated as rolling revenue sources. Every visit to a gasoline pump comes with a reminder that this state imposes the highest gasoline taxes and fees in the nation. 

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, California’s state gasoline taxes and fees stood at 70.9 cents per gallon at the beginning of 2026—more than twice the national state average of 33.5 cents. 

As of July 1, the state excise tax alone rose to 63.4 cents per gallon. 

Then there is the Golden Gate Bridge, where the privilege of driving across the span that connects San Francisco County to Marin County, now costs an ordinary motorist $10.25 with FasTrak, $10.50 with a license-plate account and $11.25 if the bill arrives by mail. 

The bridge has always been magnificent. The toll is highway robbery with a postcard view. 

 For a commuter making the southbound crossing five days a week for 50 working weeks, the FasTrak toll comes to $2,562.50 a year. Use the customary 260-workday calculation and the annual bite is $2,665. That is not loose change. It is a household bill—money unavailable for groceries, rent, medicine, school expenses or, fittingly enough, gasoline. 

 The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District collected $161.0 million in toll revenue during fiscal 2025 from nearly 16.9 million southbound crossings. Its defense for this seemingly highway robbery is that the money does more than paint and maintain the bridge: the district says roughly two-thirds of annual toll revenue operates and maintains the span, while about one-third supports Golden Gate bus and ferry service. 

Public transit deserves support. 

The question is why one captive class of motorists must carry so much of that burden every time it crosses a bridge that opened in 1937? The obvious reply is that an 89-year-old suspension bridge hanging over salt water costs a fortune to maintain. 

Fair enough. 

How much of a fortune? 

The district’s fiscal 2025 financial report lists $28.7 million specifically for Bridge Division maintenance. It separately reports $20.7 million for operations, $31.0 million for general and administrative expense and $15.9 million for depreciation. 

Total Bridge Division operating expense: $96.3 million. That is real money and real work—but it is still about $64.7 million less than the toll revenue collected that year. 

 And hold on to that $15.9 million depreciation figure. Depreciation is not a cash maintenance payment. It is an accounting entry that allocates the recorded cost of the bridge’s capital assets and subsequent improvements across their estimated useful lives. 

No one writes a $15.9 million depreciation check, and it does not mean the Golden Gate loses $15.9 million in market value every year. 

The charge has been explained over and over again as a legitimate financial accounting, but it should not be presented to motorists as $15.9 million spent that year painting steel, replacing equipment or tightening bolts. 

 For perspective, the entire original bridge came in at $35 million when it opened in 1937. Using the federal Consumer Price Index, that is roughly $790 million to $800 million in today’s purchasing power. 

The district’s own historical accounting says the last construction bonds were retired in 1971 after tollpayers covered $35 million in principal and nearly $39 million in interest. 

In other words, motorists paid off the bridge that built the bridge more than half a century ago. Today’s toll is financing present operations, capital work, reserves and transit—not retiring original builder Joseph Strauss’s construction debt. 

 The district’s books also show why the motorist’s bill keeps climbing: the bridge operation produced $65.3 million in operating income before non-operating items, while the bus and ferry divisions lost money. 

Calling the entire toll a bridge-maintenance charge therefore blurs the truth. 

A substantial share is a transit assessment collected at a bridge gantry. Why not put bridge care out to competitive bid? Parts of it already are. The district advertises invitations for bids and requests for proposals for construction, engineering, underwater inspection, equipment, paint and other work; even its International Orange paint is competitively purchased. Some permanent in-house capability is sensible for emergencies, continuous inspection, security and specialized work on a one-of-a-kind structure. The public should not want the cheapest unqualified contractor dangling over the Pacific with a paintbrush. 

 But that does not end the argument—it begins it. 

Every separable maintenance package should be competitively bid or benchmarked against a qualified outside price. The district should publish the fully loaded in-house cost, the outside bids, the safety qualifications and the reason for its selection. If district employees can do the job better and cheaper, prove it. If a qualified contractor can save millions without compromising safety, hire it. 

What motorists should no longer accept is a double-digit toll backed by a general assurance that maintaining the bridge is expensive. 

 Now look south, Sacramento—about 500 miles south—to the San Diego–Coronado Bridge. It opened in 1969, stretches roughly 2.1 miles across San Diego Bay and carries State Route 75. Its construction bonds were paid off in 1986. Tolls continued for another 16 years, but on June 27, 2002, the collection booths finally closed. 

Today the price in either direction is nada as in Zip. Free. 

The Coronado Bridge did not collapse when the toll disappeared. It did not become an orphan. Caltrans still maintains it, traffic still crosses it and San Diego Bay remains beneath it. The bridge is supported through the same broad public-financing machinery used for other state highways and public infrastructure. 

Free at the point of crossing does not mean free to maintain; it means the cost is not imposed as a daily penalty on the people who must use that particular link. 

 The comparison is not perfectly symmetrical. The Golden Gate district is a special district, not Caltrans, and it operates a regional bridge-and-transit network. That distinction explains the accounting. It does not excuse an ever-rising toll or relieve Sacramento of responsibility. 

State lawmakers as the voice of the citizens they represent in the Legislature can demand transparency, impose conditions on state assistance, revise governing authority and give motorists a meaningful voice in how an indispensable public crossing is financed. 

 At minimum, the Legislature and the district should freeze further toll increases, commission a truly independent audit, publish a plain-language accounting of every toll dollar and establish a heavily discounted commuter rate with an annual cap. 

Transit subsidies should be debated and funded openly across the region—not quietly loaded onto one bridge crossing because the motorists using it have no practical alternative. 

 Better yet, California should begin reducing the toll toward the San Diego model. 

If complete removal cannot happen immediately, set a public schedule for bringing the charge back to single digits, then lower it further as operating efficiencies and broader transportation funding permit. 

A toll should cover a demonstrated need, not become a permanent cash cow simply because generations of drivers have learned to surrender. 

 The Golden Gate Bridge was built to connect Californians. At $10.25 and rising, it increasingly feels as though government is charging admission to their own state. 

 San Diego proved that a great California bridge can serve the public without shaking down every passing motorist. Get it, Sacramento? 

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 SOURCE NOTES:  

--Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, “Tolls & Payment,” rates effective July 1, 2026. 

 Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, “Annual Vehicle Crossings and Toll Revenues,” FY 2025. 

-- Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, Five-Year Toll Program materials. 

-- Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, FY 2024/2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, Supplemental Schedule of Revenues and Expenses by Division.

--Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, “Bridge Construction” and “Bonds Paid Off” historical records. 

--Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, “How To Do Business” and Contract & Vendor Opportunities materials. U.S. Energy Information Administration, state gasoline taxes and fees as of January 1, 2026. 

--U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Historical Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), 1937 and 2025 annual averages. 

--California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, fuel tax rates for July 2026–June 2027. 

--California CEQAnet, San Diego–Coronado Bridge Toll Removal Project; ABC 10News historical report, June 27, 2025. 

AMERICANA / THE MARK HOPKINS TURNS 100

The magnificent Mark Hopkins mansion commands the summit of Nob Hill in this late-19th-century view of San Francisco. Designed by architects Wright & Sanders and completed in 1878, the turreted Victorian showplace was built for Central Pacific Railroad magnate Mark Hopkins and his wife, Mary. Hopkins died before its completion and never lived beneath its elaborate roof. The mansion survived the great earthquake of April 18, 1906, but was consumed by the fires that followed. Two decades later, the Mark Hopkins Hotel rose on the same commanding site at California and Mason streets. Opened December 4, 1926, the landmark hotel celebrates its centennial in 2026—one hundred years above San Francisco and nearly 150 years after the Hopkins name first crowned Nob Hill.

If you are among the ranks of hotel aficionados, who hobby by staying at remarkable inns of note, mark your calendar for December 4 when San Francisco's Mark Hopkins hotel turns 100.

On December 4, 1926, the Hotel Mark Hopkins opened atop Nob Hill and immediately joined the ranks of San Francisco’s grand hotels. One century later, it remains in business at the same prestigious address, overlooking a city that has repeatedly rebuilt, expanded and reinvented itself. 

The 19-story hotel was designed by Weeks & Day, the prominent San Francisco architectural firm responsible for the Huntington Hotel and several major theaters. Its design combined the stately silhouette of a French château with Spanish ornamentation. 

Contemporary admirers proclaimed the finished hotel “architecturally perfect.” The location already possessed a colorful history. Mark Hopkins, one of the Central Pacific Railroad’s “Big Four,” selected the site for an elaborate mansion but died in 1878 before moving into it. 

The property later became the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art. The mansion survived the 1906 earthquake but was destroyed during the fires that followed. Mining engineer and hotel investor George D. Smith acquired the site in 1925, cleared the remaining art-school building and constructed the hotel that still bears Hopkins’ name. 

Nine large murals painted by California artists Maynard Dixon and Frank Van Sloun for the Room of the Dons were completed in time for the opening. The panels, including an image of the mythical Queen Calafia, remain among the hotel’s significant artistic features. 

The hotel’s most famous attraction arrived in 1939, when Smith converted its 19th-floor penthouse into the glass-walled Top of the Mark. Customers reportedly lined up down Nob Hill to enter the new cocktail lounge and admire its panoramic views. 

After the United States entered World War II, the lounge became an unofficial farewell station for servicemen departing for the Pacific. Soldiers, sailors and Marines shared final drinks there with wives and sweethearts. The “squadron bottle” tradition began when a serviceman left a bottle behind for members of his unit to enjoy when they returned. Veterans are still remembered through that tradition. 

 In 1945, the hotel entertained international delegates attending the San Francisco Conference that produced the United Nations Charter. Presidents, royalty, entertainers and business leaders also became part of its guest history. InterContinental assumed management in 1973. Extensive renovations during the following decades modernized the property while retaining its historic character. 

A $50 million project completed around 2000 reduced the room count by combining smaller accommodations into larger rooms and suites. Today, the InterContinental Mark Hopkins has approximately 380 guest rooms, including 39 suites, and continues operating as a luxury hotel. 

A 1929 advertisement offered rooms from $4 per night—the closest readily verifiable rate from the hotel’s opening era. Four dollars then represented approximately $75 in 2026 purchasing power. By 1940, advertisements listed rooms from $5 per day. 

Modern rates vary according to season, conventions and room category. Current booking information places the average at about $210 per night before taxes and fees, with some dates below $175 and high-demand nights exceeding $400. The prices and corporate names have changed, but the essential attraction has not. 

The Mark Hopkins still occupies one of San Francisco’s most valuable pieces of real estate: the crest of Nob Hill, where a cable car stops outside and a century of commerce, hospitality and history comes with the view.