Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
When will they and all the other us systems link up with ez-pass?
Further, what these idiots fail to realize is that all those cars idling at and then accelerating away from the tollbooths add up to a huge emissions source - something which California says they're always concerned about.
In the last decade they added "Open-road tolling" on the tollways around Chicago - the air quality was measurably improved in the areas near the toll-collection sites.
The bridges in the bay area are also major commuter routes - eliminating the requirement for every car to stop at a toll booth can only improve traffic flow.
For everyone who loves the toll collectors, I bet there are hundreds who hate them. I remember a story in one of the Chicago papers about all the bad things people would do to the toll collectors - like heating up coins using the car's cigarette lighter before giving them to the collector. The exhaust gasses those folks have to breathe all day can't be good for them either.
Putting moderation advice in your
There is really no reason to have all the additional expense of toll roads.
Tolls waste a lot of time and money in an attempt to spread the cost of the road to the people that 'use' it, but this doesn't work. Everyone benefits from the road system. Even if you don't own a car, the goods and services you use rely on them. Adding tolls just increases the cost of those goods and services, so the entire toll industry is a waste of time. Just tax people evenly for the roads we all rely on and skip the wasteful toll booths and electronics.
Take a look at Locans and Tourists #3: San Francisco, a map of geotagged photos of San Francisco based on a 'tourist' vs 'resident' heuristic (tourists take photos all at once; residents take them over a period of months). San Francisco is a divided city.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Why? What have they done. Or is it because they are the minions of the people who put the rules in place? In that case, is it OK to hate the military people for doing the same?
Because then I am confused, because I admire what they do but hat why they do it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I wish I had mod points to mod you up.
They also pay special attention to tailgating. I have heard stories about automatic tracking of car-car distance on bridges in Germany.
Tailgating and lame-ass changing lanes is the main reason for accidents, not the absence of the speed limit.
Instead of putting emphasis on driver education (stricter driving tests, for example) they toll the economy with their stupid speed limits, increasing amount of time people spend in traffic unproportionally to the speed limit reduction. /rant
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.