An electronic system has replaced human toll collectors on San Francisco’s famous Golden Gate Bridge.
The BBC reported that the new $3.4 million system is expected to speed up traffic and save around $17 million over the next eight years.
There have been people working in the gate’s toll booths for 75 years and those leaving their jobs for the last time did not welcome the change.
Jacquie Dean said in the BBC report: “Our DNA is embedded in this bridge… we are part of it.
“Some customers still want to pay cash. They don’t want to be tracked and photographed.”
The move was not celebrated by local news website the Marin Independent Journal either. It said: “Golden Gate’s toll-takers deal with people of all walks of life, new drivers and older motorists, wealthy and broke, friendly and cranky, and rushed and leisurely.
“For years, they’ve been the everyday ambassadors for the bridge, fitting in a smile and a greeting into the required precision of their jobs, collecting tolls from 110,000 passing motorists daily.”
In the new system, drivers can have a tag fitted to the windscreen, which is read electronically, set up licence plate accounts or have their bill sent in the post.
I witnessed a distressed and annoyed elderly person in a hospital waiting room this week trying to log in her arrival for an appointment on an electronic machine. She was struggling to work out what to do and was grumbling: “You could go all day without speaking to anyone these days.”
She has got a point. If we lose the human interaction of toll-takers, receptionists, till workers at the supermarket and so on, we could go about our daily business without any human contact. That can’t be a good thing, can it?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21950015