If you’ve ever wanted to use your card at the bridge instead of digging for change, you probably won’t get the chance.
The provincial regulator approved a Halifax Harbour Bridges application to increase toll rates earlier this week.
Steve Snider, CEO of HHB, said that’s for improvements and maintenance to the bridges over the next ten years.
However, Snider said they don’t have any plans to add more payment options at the toll booth, in fact, he’d rather get away from them altogether.
“The normal practice today, if somebody was building a toll facility, a new toll facility, is that you wouldn’t put steel boxes in the middle of the roadway, and put people in them, and consider that to be a reasonable way to operate.”
He said collecting any kind of cash at the bridge, paper, coin, debit, or credit, is a bad idea.
Snider said it’s expensive to hire people to work the tolls, and they logged more than 30,000 hours of staff time in the booths and helping people stuck behind gates.
He said it also creates dangerous traffic congestion, and he’d like to see the booths replaced with an automated system.
“That’s safer, and I believe that it’s more efficient in terms of traffic flow,” he said. “If it’s efficient in terms of traffic flow, it also has a positive impact on our environmental footprint.”
Snider said he wants to see HHB take further steps to eliminate cash and get everyone on the MacPass.
