Bay Area Bridges to be All Cashless
The plan is to have no toll booths at all, just cameras taking pictures. So don’t forget your FasTrak, and don’t hold your breath over bridges either, the project won’t start for at least two years.
The first work to convert the tolls could happen as early as the end of summer 2022, officials said, the commission has contracted with global tolling technology firm WSP USA, Inc., to oversee the project. Vehicles without Fasttrack will simply have their license plates photographed and a toll invoice will be sent to their home address.
The system is already in place at the far left lane of the Benicia-Martinez Bridge. The plan is to ultimately remove toll booths at Benicia and the Bay’s other state-run spans – the Antioch, Carquinez and Dumbarton bridges, along with the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge – for an ‘overhead’ system.
When the Bay’s seven state-run spans are rid of cash payments it will drastically loosen up the bottlenecks on bridges, and speed traffic over Bay Area connectors. For more info on this topic check out this article.