SEAVILLE — Coin tossers who pay their $1.50 toll on Garden State Parkway the old-fashioned way will soon be forced to hand over their cash to a human toll collector.
According to a release, that’s because all automatic coin machines will be removed permanently from the 11 mainline barrier toll plazas on the Garden State Parkway. They will remain in use on entrance and exit ramps, as in Rio Grande.
The release continued, the coin machines are nearing the end of their useful lives and have become expensive and difficult to maintain.
Original manufacturer’s parts are no longer available, and parts from third-party vendors are becoming scarce.
The New Jersey Turnpike Authority will use parts from the machines removed from the barrier plazas to extend the useful lives of coins machines on the entrance and exit ramps.
The work of removing the coin machines and converting the lanes to Full Service or E-ZPass Only is scheduled to begin on Sept. 24 at the Cape May County toll plaza and in Pascack Valley in Bergen County.
The work will be done by two different crews, one starting at the north and working south, the other starting at the south and working north.
Pascack Valley and Cape May are the first mainline barrier plazas where the coin machines will be removed.
The remainder will be removed at a rate of two plazas per week. The toll plaza at Great Egg, just north of Cape May County in Somers Point will done the following week, according to the authority.
The tentative schedule calls for the machines to be removed at Bergen and Great Egg in the second week, Essex and New Gretna the week after that, then Union and Barnegat, then Raritan and Toms River.
The machines will be removed from the Asbury Park toll plaza during the final week of the project.
The schedule and sequence are subject to change based on weather and other considerations.
There are a total of 37 coin lanes at the 11 barrier plazas.
The coin machines accounted for fewer than 5 percent of all toll transactions at the mainline barrier plazas in 2017.
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