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Golden Gate Bridge To Eliminate Tollbooths
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that tollbooths and toll collectors, a fixture at the Golden Gate Bridge since it opened in 1937, will be eliminated starting in 2012 as the bridge moves to an all-electronic system, cutting 34 jobs and saving $19.2 million over the first eight years. The bridge will move to a toll collection strategy that combines the existing FasTrak system with one that photographs the license plates of cars going through the toll plaza and mails a bill to the registered owners. Other structures and bridges have successfully gone to all-electronic tolls, including the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia and the Leeville Bridge in Louisiana, but not everyone is happy with the change. 'This is a world-famous bridge, and you need a human face,' says Philip Hynes. 'You need people in those toll booths to greet people.'"
Oh, it's tremendous fun to go through an automated toll with a rental car. First the toll authority sends a bill for $1 to the rental company. Then the rental company charges your card (that's still in their system) for $15 based on the fine print in the rental agreement. A run through a lengthy toll road with five or six toll monitors results in individual bills for each one and can get you a bill from the rental company for a hundred or more.
Salaries aren't the only cost. Don't forget health insurance and pension plan. Plus the cost of maintaining the actual booths. Plus the armored trucks that have to carry a few tons of quarters every day.
You buy a sticker to put on the inside of your windshield. It costs ~32€ and is good for a year. With that, you can drive anywhere, without any further tolls. Switzerland has butt-loads of tunnels and bridges that they have to maintain, and their autobahns are some of the best I have ever driven on. They are probably cleaner than most surgical operating room in the world.
In Italy, they have some kind of electronic subscription sticker system that lets you get through the toll booths fast. Or you can just shove in your EC bank card or credit card at unmanned booths. They do have folks at a few toll booths. On my last trip there, I saw that a lot of tourists would hold up maps, and ask the toll collector for advice. So maybe tossing the human element out is not such a great idea.
In Germany there are no tolls, and on a lot of the autobahns, no speed limit. Their autobahn motto is: "Drive fast, die young, leave a beautiful, mangled corpse."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The cost of an employee is usually around double that employee's salary (benefits, substitute cover when they are off, equipment, and so on). They're also going to be saving a lot if they're not handling cash anymore.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If you get paid $50k a year your employer is paying close to $70k to keep you as an employee.
or do you think that health insurance, workers comp, 401k, etc are all magically free?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
You misunderstand the reason for toll booths on the golden gate bridge. It's about reducing demand.
By having a toll on the bridge, a certain percentage of the population is going to decide that it's not worth it to cross the bridge, and will plan their trip using an alternate route. This reduces the number of cars crossing and reduces congestion. By implementing a toll, you help insure that there is at least one non-congested (or relatively quick) path by car into the city, so that those who need to get there in a hurry can. If you need to get into the city 15 to 20 minutes faster, the toll is worth it.
With the toll, the bridge is useful to some people (or all people some of the time). Without the toll, the bridge becomes just as congested as any other road, because people choosing between the bridge and the alternative will favor the bridge until congestion makes them indifferent between the two.
You misunderstand the reason for toll booths on the Golden Gate Bridge. It's about revenue.
There ARE no alternate toll-free paths into San Francisco unless you want to add nearly three hours to your drive. They also strategically planned the toll booths so that most people cannot avoid paying a toll by picking and choosing different paths to take and running the toll-free side of a bridge in the morning and the toll-free side of another bridge on their way home. You must not be from the Bay Area, so I'll forgive you, but there simply is no feasible way to bypass the Golden Gate Bridge to get into the city.