CALIFORNIA BRIDGE TOLLS MAY DOUBLE - TO $2 : QUAKE RETROFIT FUNDS SOUGHT BY LEGISLATURE.

Byline: Ray Delgado San Francisco Examiner

Tolls on the Bay Bridge and other state-owned spans in the Bay Area and Southland should be doubled to $2 starting in January to help pay for earthquake retrofitting, a state legislative committee has decided.

The increase would be in place at least until 2000, and there's a good chance it would be extended beyond that if Southern California lawmakers push through their demand that most of the retrofitting cost come from toll increases.

The extra dollar a car on the seven Bay Area bridges and two Southern California spans would raise about $100 million a year for four years, about 20 percent of the $2.1 billion cost of retrofitting the state's seismically weak bridges. For someone who commutes across a bridge five days a week, the increase would cost about $250 a year.

``It's a sharing of pain for the greater good,'' said state Sen. Quentin Kopp, I-South San Francisco, chairman of the Assembly-Senate conference committee that reached the agreement last week.

The panel was convened last month after the Legislature scuttled a plan to transfer $450 million in bridge toll revenue that had been set aside for projects to reduce congestion in the Bay Area into the bridge seismic retrofit account.

Kopp had led the opposition to that plan, arguing that Bay Area commuters had been promised when they approved a toll increase in 1988 that the money would be used to reduce congestion.

The bridges in need of retrofitting are the Bay Bridge, Benicia-Martinez, Carquinez, Richmond-San Rafael, San Mateo and two Southern California spans, the Vincent Thomas in San Pedro and the Coronado in San Diego. Tolls would be raised to $2 on all of them, under the agreement reached Wednesday.

Motorists also would pay $2 to cross the Antioch and Dumbarton bridges, even though those spans already meet earthquake safety codes.

The Golden Gate Bridge tolls will not increase because it isn't owned by the state and must raise money for its retrofit on its own.

Legislators have been scrambling to pay for the retrofitting since December, when Caltrans more than tripled the original cost estimate of $650 million to $2.1 billion.

A $2 billion bond approved by voters in March earmarked only the amount equal to Caltrans' original estimate for retrofitting, leaving the state more than $1.4 billion short.

Wednesday's deal will cover only part of that cost. Northern California lawmakers want 20 percent of the retrofit expense to be paid for by tolls - the amount to be raised by the four-year, $1 increase - with the rest coming from state highway funds supplied by gasoline taxes.

Southern California lawmakers want to spend the gas tax money on highway improvements instead, and are willing to devote only $400 million from that fund to pay for shoring up bridges.

South state legislators want to make up the rest with further toll increases. If they get their way, Kopp said, the $2 tolls would need to stay in place for 10 to 12 years.

Gov. Pete Wilson's office had no comment on the issue Wednesday, but Kopp said Wilson supported the Southern California position.

Another potential roadblock is demands from Northern California legislators that if the cost for retrofitting goes up more, it be paid for exclusively from gas tax revenue, Kopp said.

Some lawmakers had called for a temporary 5-cent increase in the gas tax, which would have raised the necessary $1.4 billion in two years, but the legislative committee rejected the idea.