San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Removal of tollbooths at area bridges on hold
Caltrans and its human toll collectors abandoned the tollbooths on the Bay Bridge and the other six state-owned Bay Area toll bridges at the start of the coronavirus pandemic — but the tollbooths remain.
The Bay Area Toll Authority, which oversees operation of the bridges, had planned to start removing the empty booths last August and finish the last ones — on the Bay Bridge — by the fall of 2026.
Those plans, however, have been delayed and will cost more, the Chronicle has learned.
The removal of the tollbooths — and the accompanying restriping and installation of overhead toll collection equipment — won’t begin until early 2026, according to John Goodwin, a spokesperson for the toll authority, and won’t be completed until March 2027.
The reason for the delay was a decision by Caltrans to upgrade the automated toll collection system at the same time it moves from tollbooths to gantries, Goodwin said.
“What will come is a whole new toll collection system — hardware and software,” he said. “While drivers will surely notice the hardware, they’re not likely to see any of the software changes. What drivers will notice is the elimination of tollbooths and the installation of gantries. The rest of it will be invisible.”
The project is expected to cost $150 million, compared with the original estimate of $77 million. And it could grow further as the toll authority develops a formal budget for the move to open-road tolling over the next four months, Goodwin said.
With open-road tolling, electronic gadgetry mounted to an overhead steel span or gantry will collect tolls from transponders mounted on windshields or dashboards, or by snapping photographs of license plates and mailing invoices.
Authority officials are working on required project approvals and environmental studies, which they hope to complete by June, with final designs for each reconfigured toll plaza completed by the end of the year.
The Golden Gate Bridge, owned and operated by an independent district, has plans to add a new overhead toll collection gantry but won’t get rid of its Art Deco tollbooths, which share the famed look and color of the landmark span and were installed in the 1980s.
As for the state-owned bridges, here’s the latest schedule for when each will shed its tollbooths and start so-called open-road tolling:
Richmond-San Rafael Bridge: February 2026
Antioch Bridge: May 2026
Carquinez
June 2026
Benicia-Martinez Bridge: July 2026
Dumbarton
July 2026
San Mateo August 2026
Bay Bridge: 2027
Elimination of toll collectors at the Caltrans bridges had been discussed for nearly 20 years but was hastened by the arrival of COVID-19 in
March 2020. Since then, tolls have been collected electronically using cameras and readers mounted in and around the tollbooths.
Open-road tolling is becoming increasingly common on bridges, tunnels and highways where tolls are collected. Moving from tollbooths to open-road tolling at the Bay Area bridges will narrow the plazas where cars and trucks currently wait, stuck in traffic, to pay their tolls.
One Bay Area bridge — the Benicia-Martinez Bridge on Interstate 680 — already has some openroad tolling, which began as a test when the northbound span opened in 2007. Three lanes are unencumbered by tollbooths on the left side of the plaza, while nine lanes on the right side have the collection booths.
At the time, the toll authority called the test the “wave of the future.” While that future will take a little longer to arrive for the rest of the Bay Area toll bridges, at least one part of the past will live on — the Bay Bridge metering lights.
“The whole approach to the Bay Bridge will change,” Goodwin said, “but the metering lights will remain.”