Submitted by HereTheyBePandas t3_ylxsx4 in newjersey
I swear I remember as a little kid in the 1990s driving with my dad that the GSPW had gates that would go up when he threw the change in the basket. But I can't tell if this is a false memory bc I can't seem to find much on it. Am I crazy or did they try this at some point?
I think they used to at the exits but not at the on road plazas.
I don’t recall any gates ever. I always remember them having the baskets and if you didn’t pay the toll you had to take an envelope. To mail in your payment. Also I remember coming off of the Irvington exit there was bars on the baskets because people with stuff something in the basket and then come over and take the change because it wouldn’t go through the basket
My uncle said he would get a snow cone from Wawa, eat it on the drive, drop the cone in the basket, and on the way home pick up all the money. He eventually went to prison on unrelated charges lol but it was a story he loved to tell
I think you're right.
That’s freaking awesome! It’s so weird that we lived in a time where there weren’t cameras everywhere
I remember this. The precursor to ez pass lol.
Lol my grandma was talking to me one day and she said "I feel so bad for your generation. Your dad and uncles got away with so much shit. Now there's cameras everywhere, you can't do anything fun" raising 6 boys in the 60s-70s they all thought she was clueless about get innocent boys. It's only now that they're older they found out she had an idea what they were up to but as long as it wasn't too bad she didn't really care lol
This makes much more sense and I think you might be correct there.
Some of the tolls had gates. They all had baskets
There were gates at certain exits. The biggest waste was at 280 in Orange. Every day back ups, and broken gates.
I remember the gates. Sometimes, if you didn't have money, you could tailgate the car in front of you and slip under the gate before it dropped. That's until the car in front of you had a manual transmission and "bucked" going from 1st to 2nd. It took saving a lot of quarters to pay for a new grill
They had gates when originally manned.
An acquaintance I knew used a tennis ball to stuff up the basket then come later and scoop the contents. We used to slow down at the basket and scan the ground for quarters that missed. If there were any we would beep the horn and drive on as if our quarter missed the basket.
If I remember correctly there were even a few EZ passes early on that still had a gate, you had to pay attention or you might get your car clotheslined
That is genius
Yeah I needed a receipt for work so I went to the cash lane and they had none. That's what made me begin to think about it all
in the 80's 90's they were a quarter each and there were 7 between the New York state line (171/172) and Seaside (82a) Bergen to Ocean county used to cost a buck fifty
prayersforrain t1_iv0olcw wrote
I don’t ever remember gates and I started driving in 1998. Especially since it was basically see how fast you can drive and still get your change into the basket as you toss it out the window at speed