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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.'"
I'd much rather cruise through tolls without having to stop, and I really have no desire to see these human toll booth operators.
No you don't.
You need to eliminate the 5-minute backup at the toll booth, and thereby save yourself ~2000 hours over a lifetime. You don't need the human face, just as you don't need an operator asking, "Number please?" on the telephone.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Personally I love the tollway system here in Dallas (not that I use it much, public highways are FREE so to speak). Drive on, drive off, you get a bill at the end of the month with a summary of the charges. For someone who doesn't regularly use cash, it makes my life just a little bit easier. The other alternative is keeping a transponder in your car... not really my cup of tea.
But yeah, long story short we've had the system in effect on portions of Hwy 121 now for about 6 years and it's just recently gone live on the main "Dallas Tollway" with zero issues.
moox. for a new generation.
So, $19.2 million, divided by 8 years, divided by 34 people equals...
The toll-collectors get paid $70K per year?
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
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.
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.
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!
It's already easy to go from Wales. There are only tolls entering Wales, to keep the riff-raff out.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And how about all the people who don't update their registration when they move? Rental cars?
And what do you do if the bill isn't paid? Suspend the registration? Cali can't do that to out of state plates or plates from Canada/Mexico.
I wonder if the added bureaucracy and paperwork for collections is going to nullify the gains they make by not collecting at the bridge.
I have to return some videotapes...
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.
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.
I don't drive (or live in the USA), but I would assume its less what they've done and more the simple fact that they are the person who is there preventing them from getting to work/home/other faster because they have to stop and wait. It is the toll collector who is slowing down their journey (or it may be perceived that way). I wont try to think of an example of a soldier's action that you would dislike them for doing for risk of hyperbole.
TL;DR: I doubt its personal, its just they're the one who is there doing it (like how people get annoyed at someone in a call centre).
We have boothless tolling now, and here are the directions to get anywhere: First, find the shortest route to the tollway, then go wherever you want. It is amazing, cut my commute from 1.5 hours to 24 minutes. Speaking as an entitled middle class asshole, I 3 tollways.
Tracking your every move, inside our coast-to-coast prison.
Your papers, please!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
No what would happen if your suggestion was honestly considered by politicians is this. They would eliminate toll roads, and add a new tax on all of the citizen incomes to cover the roads than they are now. However, with even more money available than before, the roads would be maintained even less than they are now for some odd reason. And, over time the money would get mismanaged and re-appropriated to their own private projects, completely unrelated to the road system, and funnel that money to their best buddies for favors, positions, perks, etc. Then, they would decry that the roads have no funding and would reinstate toll roads to solve it but in the process fail to remove the road tax itself. As a result, you now get double taxed for more poorly maintained roads, and the politicians in the meantime have three or four homes in several vacation states and ownership in various golf courses, oil companies and sports teams. Congratulations on solving the problem buddy.
What's wrong with hatting the military?
Nothing really. A bit redundant in all, they already have hats. But if you insist....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
First, when since does anyone need a rational reason to hate someone else? I am not saying that's right - but it is sadly the way this reality of human existence works. That aside, (and to the irrational), there are people who take out their frustration on those they idiotically think are responsible for such. So, waiting on line for minutes to pay a toll, and the toll collector becomes the target of the person's ire - kinda like shooting the messenger. It does not make sense, but it does happen.
One should never judge how someone else is going to act by attaching rationality to the incident. Not in such an irrational world filled with so many irrational people. Heck, look at the people who loved Microsoft BoB and Windows ME... ;-)
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
In a lot of places it is also a highly unionized job. They can't be fired and often can't be bothered to do their job. It makes a slow process of driving through a toll booth even more painful when you have to wait for someone to get off their phone call to bother with your fare.
I am pretty sure it's unionized here too (at least in the NYC Metro Area where I live). But, ironically, some of the nicest and friendliest people I have met have been toll collectors. Whether it's because I needed quick directions, or they simply took the time to smile, say hi and wish me a good morning, that has generally been my experience. Combine that with the fact that we are talking the NYC area, where being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every New Yorker's God given right, and their (friendly) attitudes are actually pretty impressive.
waiting on the whooshes directed at some of the responses I am sure I am going to get... ;-)
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
they'll bring up the Homeland Security angle of having human eyes at toll booths to catch bad actors.
"Booth 23 to headquarters... Booth 23 to headquarters... The operator of the black Lincoln Navigator at this booth has been positively identified as Keanu Reeves. Awaiting further instructions."
Not everyone grows up to be an astronaut.
Not everyone wants to.
There is nothing soul crushing about doing the job to which are best suited.
We are currently overcompensating some segments of our society because the wealthy have (temporarily) built a ring around certain jobs and then are passing them on to their children. It won't hold. There just is no value to paying a CEO 100 million dollars when the similar CEO in china or india is doing just as good a job for 1 million dollars a year.
Overcompensating them makes people envy them even tho they would be unhappy in those jobs.
There are lots of people of low to average IQ who are happy with a relatively mindless job surrounded by pleasant work buddies.
But you are right- those jobs can be automated. (and are being automated). The end result will not be that those people suddenly become smarter, talented, and capable of doing jobs that require high intelligence or talent.
So what happens to them when their jobs are automated away and there are no other jobs to go to?
They can vote or swing a club or shoot a gun perfectly well. They'll get unhappy when they have nothing to do- no money to spend- and folks act like it's their fault.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
or a rental car?
The rental car companies will deal with this the same way that they deal with parking tickets and red light tickets. Forward the bill/ticket to the person who had rented the vehicle on that particular day.
After adding a massive handling charge.
'This is a world-famous bridge, and you need a human face,' says Philip Hynes.
My personal experience was:
No signs warning it was a toll. When we got right up to it, we saw there was a toll and it was cash only. We didn't have any cash so looked for somewhere to turn around. There wasn't anywhere. We pulled up to the booth and explained the situation, the knuckledragger didn't actually say a word to us. He just noted our license plate and waved us on.
OK, we figured. That's not too unpleasant a system. They'll send us a bill for the couple of dollars in the mail, maybe a website we can go to pay it on.
No. We got a $30 fine for running the toll. The toll we stopped at, explained we didn't have cash but were happy to pay any other way or would turn around if that wasn't OK.
Not only that but the fine notice allows you to not pay for a first offense IF you sign up for their automatic payment system... a system that deducts the first month to cover that alleged infraction and insists on pre-billing you, keeping more than the cost of the fine for future payments.
So, after we talked to the knuckledragger, thought we were just being offered an alternate way to pay, got waved on by him, then FINED for toll evasion? I, for one, will be dancing to the thought of his lost job. I'm sure he's well qualified for a role with the TSA so he won't be unemployed for long.
Yes, without a human there, there'll be no way to explain situations like that to an unfeeling machine. But when the humans were worthless examples of the species to begin with, monosylabic and leading you in to fines when you thought you'd simply asked for help? Precisely nothing will be lost.
Bitter? Me? ;)