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Ga. 400 tolls: The rain of
falling quarters comes to an end
AROUND TOWN
JOE EARLE
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The State Road and Tollway Authority stopped collecting Ga. 400 tolls
on Nov. 22, after 20 years of dimes, nickles and quarters dropping
into baskets. Above, the deposited coins traveled via metal tubes into
locked boxes in a 600-foot-long tunnel beneath the toll plaza. Below,
Michael Bent worked at the plaza for 17 years and is sad to see it go.
PHOTOS BY JOE EARLE
The constant rain of quarters ended
Nov. 22.
The falling coins really did sound a
bit like rain down in the tunnel beneath
the Ga. 400 Toll Plaza. Coins drivers
dropped into the toll-collection baskets
on the road above rolled down met
al tubes and then thumped into locked
metal boxes placed at various spots along
the 600-foot-long, concrete-walled tun
nel.
“During rush hour, it gets quite in
tense,” said Bert Brantley, deputy execu
tive director of the State Road and Toll
way Authority, who wore a reflective
orange vest reading “Tolls end Nov. 22”
as he led a media tour of the facility on
Nov. 19.
The rain of quarters, dimes and nick
els yielded tens of millions of dollars over
the 20 years the tolls were collected on
Ga. 400. In recent years, the toll booths
have collected about $60,000 a day, half
of that in coins, Brantley said.
Landmarks come and go in Atlanta.
We re a burn-it-down-and-build-it-again
kind of place. We save little. Take Turner
Field, the ballpark the Olympics gave to
Atlanta baseball. Now there’s a very pub
lic plan to move the Atlanta Braves to a
new suburban home and tear down The
Ted in a couple of years.
There will be an outcry, no doubt, and
discussions about how to save a brick-
and-steel ball field and keep the Braves
downtown. But if the Braves do move,
we metro Atlantans will get used to that.
We always do.
Were not the kind of people who
need our ballplayers to work the same
hallowed ground where sports giants of
past made their marks. We leave that to
Boston or Chicago or New York. Here,
once Turner Field opened, I couldn’t wait
until the old Atlanta-Fulton County Sta
dium was blown up. It blocked the view
of downtown skyscrapers from seats in
Turner Field.
As a landmark, the Ga. 400 Toll Pla
za isn’t on the same level as Turner Field,
of course. Still, it’s a place we’ve all got
ten used to and have grown to know. For
20 years, north metro drivers have tossed quarters into those
collection baskets as they fought traffic to and from Buckhead.
Now we expect to stop and smile at the cashier as we fumble
for change. It’s part of our routine.
Soon, it won’t even be a wide spot in the road.
A few will even miss it. Michael Bent will. He’s worked at
the plaza for 17 years. “It’s very sad,” he said, a memory of his
native Jamaica accenting his words. “It’s been here all these
years. It’s like home here.”
He started as a cashier. And don’t call them “toll collec
tors,” SRTA folks are quick to say. Toll roads in other towns
may have toll collectors, but metro Atlanta doesn’t. They don’t
collect tolls. Instead, they make change. You give them a dol
lar, and they give you back 50 cents and throw the other 50
cents into the basket. After a stint as a cashier, Bent moved up
to the building overlooking the plaza, where workers monitor
the computer screens that show a count of every single coin
going into the collection baskets.
Soon, metro toll roads won’t have any cashiers at all. The
system will be fully automated. Then, there will be few, if any,
people left to tell the stories of the tollways. It’s the stories that
make places come alive and keep them alive long after they’re
gone. It’s the tales that matter.
The Ga. 400 Tollway Plaza leaves behind its share of tales.
The cashiers tell them. The people who sat for hours in the
booths, making change, remember the drivers, the ones who
8 | NOV. 29 —DEC. 12, 2013 | www.ReporterNewspapers.net
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