Do you ever come across something that you weren’t expecting, and you say to yourself “Jesus, finally a great idea” or “boy, I didn’t really expect that great idea coming”? This happened to me the other day.
I live on Long Island, and love it or not, the only way off of it on roads is to go West, toward NYC, at which point you have your choice of 3 basic ways to leave:
- Through Manhattan
- Through Brooklyn to Staten Island and into New Jersey
- Through the Bronx, North to points North of NYC or New England
Since the very day these roads were built, most roads leading in and out of NY have tolls on them, these days usually in only one direction. With the advantages of computers, the 1990s found the “EZ-Pass” System established in NY, and as the years have gone on, it extends throughout the Northeast Corridor. Instead of actually stopping at the toll both at the Verrazano Bridge to pay the $9 toll leaving Brooklyn, you can go through the toll as long as you have the RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tag, called “EZ-Pass”. A sensor at the toll lane will “talk to” your car’s EZ-Pass tag, and bill your account for the $9. You don’t even have to stop, just slow down to the posted 5-15mph limit, and you’re on your way.
Beautiful.
Now, I went to the University of Delaware for college, from 1993 to 1999 (no wiseass, I lived there for a part of the time, didn’t take me 6 years to finish school thnakyouverymuch ;). During my time there, I made many round trips from Newark, DE to Long Island, NY. Thankfully, the NJ Turnpike Authority finally deciced (in 1996 or so) to utilize the EZ-Pass system on the TPKE. Great! So, here I go, traveling southbound toward Delware, only to wait a full hour (most of the time) at the exit 1 (furthest exit southbound on the TPKE entering Delaware) to use my EZ-Pass to pay the damn toll. Now, I bet you’ll ask why. 🙂
NJ did use the EZ-Pass system on the Turnpike, and implimented it without any major problems, but they didn’t do anything to the tollbooths to accomidate the amount of cars that still had to travel through them. The sheer volume of cars caused a slow-down, and EZ-Pass or not, you were still waiting to pay your toll. This caused me major headaches, a few latenesses to work and class, and probably drove me to drink a little more than I should have sometimes. 🙂
And here is the part of the story where it relates to the title of this post. 🙂 This past weekend, my girlfriend and I took a trip down to visit my old college stomping ground, the U of Delaware. We took the Long Island Extressway to the Belt Parkway, through Brooklyn, and over the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island. From there, we took Route 440 to the Outerbridge Crossing, into I-287 into New Jersey, and then finally onto The New Jersey Turnpike south. A about an hour and twenty minutes later, I’m approaching exit 1 of the New Jersey Turnpike where I have to pay my toll, and I began to explain to my girlfriend about the long delays I used to encounter here and what a tremendous bitch at every level it was. I was so pleasantly suprised when I noticed a completely redesigned toll booth system, consisting of several “express EZ-Pass” lanes. Huge, wide lanes that would accept EZ-Pass and you could go through at the posted speed limit of 65mph. No more wait, no more hassle, and that put me in such a great mood. 🙂 Evolution is a wonderful thing, when done right. 🙂
While great, I think it’s a decade late. Testing was done with the EZ-Pass system, and the system correctly handled an EZ-Pass tag on a test car doing 130+mph.
Here’s some interesting facts about the tolls around NYC:
- When it opened in 1964, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was the world’s longest suspension span. Today, its length is surpassed only by the Humber Bridge in England.Its monumental 693 foot high towers are 1 5/8 inches farther apart at their tops than at their bases because the 4,260 foot distance between them made it necessary to compensate for the earth’s curvature. Each tower weighs 27,000 tons and is held together with three million rivets and one million bolts. Seasonal contractions and expansions of the steel cables cause the double-decked roadway to be 12 feet lower in the summer than in the winter.
Located at the mouth of upper New York Bay, the bridge not only connects Brooklyn with Staten Island but is also a major link in the interstate highway system, providing the shortest route between the middle Atlantic states and Long Island.
In Brooklyn, the bridge connects to the Belt Parkway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and to the largely residential community of Bay Ridge. On Staten Island, which saw rapid development after the bridge opened in 1964, it joins the Staten Island Expressway, providing access to the many communities in this most rural of the city’s five boroughs.
- Current toll for Verrazano-Narrows bridge = $9.
- Amount of cars per day that cross it = 150,000 (thats $1.35 million/day)
- Total road tolls I paid on my round-trip: ~$26.