People have told me up to 90% of toll money goes straight to paying the salaries of toll collectors. Is this an urban legend? (I live in NJ)
Doesn’t seem possible, at least on something like the NJ Turnpike. I don’t know what the typical volume is but let’s say you handle two cars a minute at an average of $3 a car. I guarantee you that those folks aren’t pulling down $360 an hour.
Let’s take the Dulles Toll Road in the DC area, a commuter road where the toll is $0.35, and at least half of the people are using EZ-Pass. So on some days at off-peak hours, you might get 50 hits an hour. That’s $17.50, which probably still exceeds what these folks make, I don’t know. It’s not very highly skilled labor, probably easier than being a fast-food cashier.
I lived the vast majority of my life in NJ. I’ve driven on the turnpike many, many times. Multiply your numbers by 10 or 20 and you’ll be closer to the mark.
When they paid off the Coronado bridge via the tolls and removed the toll booths. The local paper said that 50% of the tolls went to the cost of collecting the tolls most of which was labor costs.
QED I cannot a toll booth can handle a car every 2 seconds. I don’t think that a typical lane a freely moving road handles a car every 2 seconds.
NJ Turnpike Authority, which covers the Garden State Parkway too, publishes an annual report.
http://www.state.nj.us/turnpike/2006-NJTA-Annual-Report.pdf
It says:
Toll revenue $ 737,278,985
vs.
Toll collection $79,032,675
- some of the $71 million in employee benefits.
I’m sure their costs were higher before E-ZPass though.