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I wondered when they would automate such a menial job.
For Pennsylvania Turnpike toll collectors, the bell may toll
We spend a day on the Pennsylvania Turnpike with a worker whose job may become automated
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Bob Donaldson/Post-Gazette
Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission toll collector Tom Kelsesky explains to a driver she has to pay a full rate of $27.40 at his Allegheny Valley toll booth because she's lost her entry ticket. The driver was expecting to pay the a $1 toll from the Butler Valley interchange. Mr. Kelsesky has been a toll collector for 21 years.
Tom Kelsesky is a clean-cut, barely middle-aged father of three, with an easygoing personality and a pleasant Tom Hanks-ish profile.
Or, from another angle, Mr. Kelsesky looks like a dinosaur -- a relic from a bygone time.
A proposal to make Pennsylvania Turnpike toll collection all-electronic might mean the end of an era for toll collectors like Mr. Kelsesky.
Last week, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission finished reviewing bids for a yearlong study of switching the 545-mile turnpike system to all-electronic. The study will likely begin early next year; in the meantime, the turnpike is already converting some interchanges to all-electronic toll collection.
"We'll be there someday," commission CEO Joe Brimmeier said last month. "There's no doubt in my mind."
So in the age of automated scales, E-ZPass transponders and cameras to photograph license plates, whither the toll taker?
Mr. Kelsesky, 44, has spent a good portion of the past 21 years inside a small rectangular toll booth, fueled by sports radio, a patient disposition and banter from regulars.
A recent daylight shift -- from about 6:45 a.m. to 3 p.m. -- passes with a sort of busy monotony in "Lane 8" at the Allegheny Valley interchange in Harmar.
It's rare that Mr. Kelsesky has more than a minute or two without a vehicle passing through his lane, which is equipped to accept both E-ZPass and tickets.
The tollbooth is small but uncluttered, equipped with just the essentials: hand sanitizer and homemade "stinkbug spray," a radio that Mr. Kelsesky usually keeps tuned to 93.7 The Fan, a stool for use only when there are no customers.
Because the booth is situated on a bluff overlooking a cornucopia of fast food restaurants and budget hotels, the wind whips through it, even on an unseasonably warm, late-October day.
As drivers hand him their tickets, Mr. Kelsesky knows each fare just by looking at the exit number (most are either $2 from the Cranberry interchange or $1 from Monroeville, though one trucker did rack up a notable $72.10).
The touch screen in front of him eventually registers the fare as well, but does not tell him how much change to dispense. After two decades doing this, he's a human calculator, making change effortlessly in his head.
After years on the job, you learn things. "Nine out of 10 people on a cell phone want a receipt," said Mr. Kelsesky, theorizing that many are business travelers. When somebody on a cell phone doesn't request one, he asks "Receipt?"
You see things too: A driver so drunk that Mr. Kelsesky called a state trooper. A man who pulled over after paying a toll and had a heart attack. Drivers taking off without paying, with Mr. Kelsesky once hopping into a state trooper's car in hot pursuit.
And that's just in sleepy Allegheny Valley. Even though Mr. Kelsesky lives in Plum, he prefers not to work at the busier Monroeville interchange. "It's wild," he said.
Earning $22.69 an hour, with full benefits and a pension, Mr. Kelsesky knows he's well compensated for his work. With years of criticism of toll taker salaries by media outlets -- especially from the late KDKA-AM talk show host Fred Honsberger -- much of the public knows it too.
The state's 615 full-time toll takers start out making $19.76 per hour and get annual raises under the current contract, topping out at $22.69 after three years on the job. The 133 part-time "supplemental" toll takers earn $19.56 per hour.
Grumbling intensified this summer, when the turnpike announced a fare hike that will go into effect in January of 3 percent for E-ZPass customers and 10 percent for cash customers, Mr. Kelsesky said.
Occasionally, customers driving through the booth will say, "I guess you guys are getting another raise," or "I can't wait until they go all electronic."
If the turnpike were to go to an all-electronic system, drivers without E-ZPass would have their license plates photographed (as they are now when someone without a transponder goes through an E-ZPass-only lane) and a bill would be sent to their home. States such as New Jersey and Florida already have significant stretches of all-electronic toll roads.
It's not just random turnpike drivers who razz Mr. Kelsesky about his job; he's heard it from another dad at his son's hockey games and even from his own family.
"Even my wife will say, 'all you do is stand there and take money,' " he said.
But the job, said Mr. Kelsesky, is harder than it looks. "It's more than just making change," he said. "That's just what everyone thinks it is. I know it's not as stressful as a doctor or lawyer or policeman or teacher, but you're responsible for that money."
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