Toll Takers Taking Their Toll

Paying cash on the Eastern Toll Road is about to get a little less personal.

Starting Saturday, cash customers passing through toll booths at Irvine Ranch and Orange Grove during weekend and nonrush hours will need to toss $1 in change into automated baskets instead of handing money to real live toll takers.

The cost-cutting move--which includes the installation of change machines that can handle $1 and $5 bills--should save $1.6 million in labor costs each year, toll road officials said.

The move comes while the operators of the county’s 51 miles of toll road search for additional ways to reduce expenses and increase revenues. Officials say they have not ruled out converting all toll plazas to automated systems, although there are no immediate plans to do so.

“It’s not off the table,” said Lisa Telles, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies. “As we evaluate the process, we’ll make decisions that make the most business sense but don’t degrade service.”

Telles said change machines and automated toll baskets have already been in place at the El Toro Road exit since early February and have worked well. For motorists caught without exact change, paying a toll on weekends and during weekday nonrush hours will require two steps: making change at a machine adjacent to the toll basket and then tossing the coins in the basket.

Toll road officials said that although a company in France manufactures a machine that can do both in one step, it costs nearly twice as much as the $50,000 system they chose. Since the exits now require a simple $1 toll, officials said they thought the more sophisticated devices were unnecessary at this time.

Fees on the county’s toll roads are either collected in cash or deducted from prearranged accounts via the automated FasTrak system. (The toll lanes on the Riverside Freeway require all users to have a FasTrak account.)

Tolls are collected about 146,000 times each weekday on the Foothill/Eastern Toll Road, with about 83,000 weekday transactions on the San Joaquin Hills Toll Road. Toll road officials said users are equally divided between cash customers and FasTrak users.

The switch to automated equipment Saturday will not affect three main toll plazas on the Eastern and San Joaquin Hills toll roads--Windy Ridge, Tomato Springs and Catalina View. Attendants will still be available there 24 hours a day.

But at less-traveled booths, toll takers will be available for northbound travelers between 5:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. and for southbound travelers between 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., the peak periods of traffic.

At all other times, cash customers will need exact change to pay the $1 toll. Each exit will have one change machine, Telles said. Attendants will be at the exits during the first week to help customers, make changes for bills larger than $5 and answer any questions.

How well the new system works will be monitored for 30 days, and adjustments may be made at the end of the trial period.

Toll road officials say they believe the automated system will easily handle the volume of traffic--less than 300 cars an hour at off-peak times--and eliminate the need to have three employees--a toll attendant, a security guard and a supervisor--at each manned booth.

Telles said the current toll booth employees are under contract with Lockheed Martin--the company that has supplied technology on the roads. Lockheed officials have ruled out layoffs, she said.

“They are hoping to deal with less hours through attrition. Most of the staff is part-time,” Telles said.