The New York State Thruway has gone cashless, and cashless tolling has rolled out with a lot of success. However, the one remaining reminder of cashed tollbooths has been destroyed, as the state completed demolition of the final, remaining interchange was completed this week.
Governor Kathy Hochul announced the milestone, which was the final step of the $355 million Cashless Tolling Design-Build Project.
Altogether 52 toll plazas, which included 230 individual booths were removed.
“Cashless tolling not only helps improve safety and traffic flow on our state’s highways, but it’s a critical component in helping strengthen New York’s economy, both regionally and statewide,” Governor Hochul said. “As someone who has spent countless hours traveling every inch of the Thruway, I can attest how transformative this milestone is for the hundreds of thousands of motorists who utilize this roadway each day and I thank the hundreds of people who continue to work around the clock to improve New York’s transportation system every day.”
Exit realignment and road reconstruction continues at interchanges across the Thruway system and is on schedule to be completed by the end of October, weather permitting.
“The implementation of cashless tolling is one of the largest and most comprehensive projects in the nearly 70-year history of the New York State Thruway Authority. Over the last two-plus years, hundreds of women and men have dedicated thousands of hours into this transformative project that has significantly enhanced the future of transportation decades to come,” Thruway Authority Executive Director Matthew J. Driscoll said.
In 2019, construction started on the Thruway’s 400-mile ticketed system with the installation of gantries at 52 tolling locations, including gantries over the main highway and on entrance/exit ramps. Gantries installed over the mainline highway range from 58 feet to 150 feet in length by 23 feet in height, weighing between 25,000 and 104,000 pounds. Gantries installed over the entrance/exit ramps range from 48 feet to 94 feet in length by 23 feet in height, weighing between 33,000 and 74,000 pounds. Gantries were fabricated utilizing approximately 3.5 million pounds of 100 percent American-made steel in accordance with the “New York Buy American” Act, and with hundreds of New York workers at LMC Industrial Contractors Inc. in Livingston County.
Cashless tolling went live on the ticketed system on November 14, 2020. Since that time, millions of transactions have been successfully recorded on the state-of-the-art system featuring more than 2,000 state-of-the-art cameras affixed to the gantries statewide. In 2019, 282 million vehicle trips were documented on the Thruway’s 570-mile superhighway, accounting for more than 8.4 billion total miles traveled.
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