$10 Vehicle Registration Fee Proposed For Bay Area

The bill, AB 2444, could raise up to $30.5 million a year, and would be spent on local roads and transit systems and for local and regional water and air quality projects.

It would allow a county's congestion management agency to add $5 to the vehicle registration fees collected in that county. The money would be spent on roadway operations and improvements that benefit the owners of motor vehicles who would pay the fee, but also allow funding of transit operations and capital improvements and bicycle and pedestrian projects and programs.

In addition to funding local transportation needs, the proposed legislation would also allow the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to impose a $5 vehicle registration fee in all nine counties "for the mitigation of the impacts of motor vehicles on the environment."

Half of the money collected by the district would go to the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board for projects such as treating storm water runoff. Like the county congestion management agencies, the air district would be required to fund programs that have a relationship or benefit to the owners of the vehicles paying the fee, such as light and heavy duty vehicle emissions reduction programs, "including those that address emissions that contribute to climate change."