Service areas on toll roads - how do the workers get there and back?

[mgk920]

Side access roads on the Tri-State

Waukegon Toll Plaza. Access on NB side.
Lake Forest Oasis. Access on both sides.
Touhy Avenue Toll Plaza. NB only plaza has access on NB side.
O'Hare Oasis. Access on both sides.
Hinsdale Oasis. Access along frontage roads north of oasis.
82nd Street Toll Plaza. Access on both sides to local streets.

You get the idea

I have a friend who worked at an office building that is located just south of the Lake Forest Oasis (late 1980s) and sometimes walked over to it for lunch.

Mike

[jeffandnicole]

Ultimately, this issue can be looked at two ways:  The tolls incurred are just like any other job: The employer isn't responsible for reimbursing you for tolls, and you're well aware that your commute between work and home will incur tolls.  Or, there's a 'quiet' way for the employer to reimburse for tolls.  While EZ Pass records may be fairly public, reimbursement via paycheck or travel reimbursement is generally not.  Even if the payroll records are public, they would be public in gross pay/overtime pay/other pay in total, but won't reveal every line item of your paycheck or reimbursement.

For the vast majority of jobs, you're free to pick your route there, and if you can't afford to pay the tolls, you can often take a longer route to bypass the tolls. But you don't have that freedom if your job is on the turnpike (and there's no back way in).

It's in the turnpike authority's best interest to provide some way around that to the service station employees. Otherwise, you risk making the service plaza jobs extremely unattractive. It's going to be hard finding someone who would take a $7.25/hour job working fast food that requires payment of $3 toll each way. Almost the whole first hour of your shift would be just paying the toll authority for your ride to work that day.

For what it's worth, minimum wage in NJ is currently $10 an hour. A quick look at available jobs at toll & service plazas shows the lowest wage is $11/hour.  Note that the service plaza jobs are thru HMSHost and not the NJ Turnpike.

The other issue is working a plaza close to home. For new employees, they are most often placed at busy plazas on undesirable shifts. For me, that was Interchange 1, about 25 miles from home. Eventually they can ask to transfer to other plazas and/or other shifts as they become available.

And that's if they even survive the first few weeks. Many new employees don't last two weeks. Collecting tolls in a 3'x6' booth ain't the world's most desirable job!

[thenetwork]

The Ohio Turnpike also has local access roads to the backside of its service plazas. The ones in Amherst (near where I grew up) are shown on Google Maps.

In addition, they have smaller signs at the start of the service road that notates the service plaza, the fact that the public can use this road to access the service plaza, (sans the gas stations) and that there is no access to the actual roadway.

Until the 90's, most of the plazas had a simple chain-link fence gate that separated the mainline parking area from the local access parking lot, and it was more.times than not that the gate was unlocked and wide open for vehicles to travel between the two lots.  Nowadays, they use keypad/keycard access with an automatic gate for a more secure checkpoint.

Also prevents college kids from in-flight shunpiking, or at least what my dormmates down the hall told me decades ago.

[hbelkins]

On toll roads with median U-turns, would service plaza workers be considered authorized users of these turnarounds to keep from having to go all the way to the next exit and turning around to get back where they're going?

[Mccojm]

If assume that their employer sets up an expense tracking site or account where employee is either PRovided a toll tag or they are charged their personal toll tag and then submit receipt On an expense tracking site for reimbursement. Working for NYSDOT, it's not a major issue on Long Island due to lack of tolls but state vehicles have ezpass issued under NYS Thruway authority and if if you use personal vehicle for work to track the tolls on expense anywhere account and submit for reimbursement along with mileage. It works the same for ferry access, I was able to pickup a ferry pass to shelter island from maintenance yard but construction unit usually has to pay personally Out of pocket and submit receipts and get reimbursement at end of the month.

[kphoger]

On toll roads with median U-turns, would service plaza workers be considered authorized users of these turnarounds to keep from having to go all the way to the next exit and turning around to get back where they're going?

Even if that were true, it wouldn't solve the potential problem of being charged the turnpike's maximum amount for having driven an impossible route.

[roadman65]

In Florida even Toll Collectors have to drive to the next exit to turn about.  In Kissimmee when I worked the Exit 249 ramp, I could not even park up at the end of the ramp and walk to the plaza.  I had to originally enter through Orlando South (Exit 254) before SR 417 opened to the Turnpike and drive the toll road to get into the parking lot only from the ramp.

When we used the company vehicle to reach the NB entrance ramp to collect, at the end of the shift we had to drive north to SR 417 and make a u turn at Landstar Blvd. on 417 to return to it SB to the Turnpike exit, travel south and exit at 249.

Only Leesburg on the mainline had a parking lot accessible from a local off freeway road and US 192 plaza at Exit 244 was easy in from US 192 so driving the toll road was not necessary there either.

The Sunshine Skyway Bridge has to have its workers use the Skyway Rest areas to make a u turn to go back which is located a few miles onto the causeway.  Yes, we have to drive far out to either arrive or leave work, so the plaza employees must as well.

[1995hoo]

^^^^^^

"Turning around" seems like less of an issue for Florida's Turnpike toll collectors because U-turns at the service areas are not prohibited in the same way they are in the Northeast.

[ethanhopkin14]

A related but different topic, I always wondered how toll workers got to the smaller toll booths located at exit ramps, and how do they go to the bathroom and what happens when they go to the bathroom.  I understood how they go to work at the big toll plazas because there would usually be overhead catwalks.  All that was answered for me 15 years ago when I was working on a survey for redesigning a few exit ramps on the Sam Houston Tollway on Houston.  Simply, the worker walked on to the exit ramp when no one was coming (scary) and got into their little toll both, which had a toilet in it.  When they needed to go to the bathroom, the pike went up and tolls were free for 30 seconds, so lucky you if you were exiting while the worker was going to the bathroom. 

Back to the topic the OP brought up, I think of it like many other jobs where there is something about physically getting to your place of employment requires extra steps.  Like it was discussed, if I take a tollway to get to my job, that's on me and my employer will not reimburse me, but if my job had a tollway going into the parking garage that was meant to charge visitors, then yes, they will reimburse me because it's not designed to charge the workers.  Same thing about people who work the restaurants at an airport.  You have to have a plane ticket to enter the area where most of the restaurants are.  So do the workers have to buy a $200 plane ticket every day?  No, they have special IDs to get them through the secure zone.  I think with so much electronic toll collection nowadays, and since it is run off car's license plates, maybe they have a way to exclude your plate if you are employed on the tollways on work days.  That may be more difficult then it seems, so maybe they just reimburse a flat fee, whether you use that much or not.  For ticket systems, surely the place of employment has a system where they can "validate" the ticket like a parking garage?

[jmacswimmer]

A related but different topic, I always wondered how toll workers got to the smaller toll booths located at exit ramps, and how do they go to the bathroom and what happens when they go to the bathroom.  I understood how they go to work at the big toll plazas because there would usually be overhead catwalks.  All that was answered for me 15 years ago when I was working on a survey for redesigning a few exit ramps on the Sam Houston Tollway on Houston.  Simply, the worker walked on to the exit ramp when no one was coming (scary) and got into their little toll both, which had a toilet in it.  When they needed to go to the bathroom, the pike went up and tolls were free for 30 seconds, so lucky you if you were exiting while the worker was going to the bathroom.
...

FWIW, some large toll plazas have an access tunnel instead of an overhead catwalk - for instance, at the (now-former) Chesapeake Bay Bridge toll plaza you can see stairs leading underground between each booth.

[GaryV]

I've seen toll-takers change at the Mackinac Bridge.  They simply wait for the gate to go down for the lane they are crossing.  If a toll gate is closed, the gate is already down.

[crispy93]

I used to wonder this as a kid until I was on Google Maps and noticed access roads. The Ardsley service area on the Thruway in Westchester has the only Popeye's in the area haha.

I also used to wonder how service areas on parkways got fuel deliveries. Then I noticed that the ones in the median (Palisades, the Hutch just south of 684) are sandwiched between exits so that a tanker could enter the parkway for a very short distance, make the delivery, enter the parkway again for a short distance, and take the next exit. Though I wonder if this is the same case for gas stations that are on not in the median, like the gas stations on the Hutch just north of the Whitestone Bridge.

[cpzilliacus]

^^^^^^

"Turning around" seems like less of an issue for Florida's Turnpike toll collectors because U-turns at the service areas are not prohibited in the same way they are in the Northeast.

Maryland and Delaware have allowed "U" turns at their median plazas since the ramp tolls were removed many years ago on the JFK Highway part of I-95.

When the ramp tolls were still there, making a "U" turn was a way to evade payment of the ramp tolls, and the points at which a "U" could be made were blocked by a barrier (not very strongly) that looked a lot like a railroad grade crossing gate.  A lot of times these were broken or just left in the up position.

[1995hoo]

Yeah, I just don't consider Maryland and Delaware to be part of the Northeast.

[wxfree]

The only one I've seen is on the H. E. Bailey Turnpike in Oklahoma.  The service area is just north of the toll plaza.  Anyone can drive out to the service area and turn around and go back to town without paying a toll. I'd assume most if not all of the workers are from Lawton and other places to the north, and that this is why the put the service area on the north side.

It seems to be a common design in Oklahoma to place service areas where there's no toll between there and town.  The one near Chickasha is just outside of town, where it might draw customers who don't end up being charged tolls.