People who take a ferry to get to work or for a weekend outing soon will have a new friend to help them along the way — a machine.
By the end of the year, an automated drive-through toll booth is expected to be in place on one side of four of the state’s largest ferry runs, including Mukilteo-Clinton and Edmonds-Kingston, said Susan Harris-Huether, a spokeswoman for Washington State Ferries.
The new booths, one at each location, will allow drivers who buy a ticket in advance to scan their ticket, and skate through without having to talk to anyone. They will simply wave their ticket at an electronic reader to get the gate to open and let their car through. People who don’t buy tickets in advance or anyone with a vehicle 20 feet or longer will have to wait in line with everyone else.
However, the service only works on islands and the Kitsap Peninsula sides of the ferry runs, Harris-Huether said. An automated system doesn’t work on the urban east side, including at Mukilteo and Edmonds, because there’s no way to account for the extra fee charged for passengers. On the return from the west side, including at Clinton and Kingston, there is no charge for passengers.
“People are always in a hurry,” she said. “When they see (the new booths), they’ll be excited about it.”
The automated drive-through toll booths are part of Wave2Go, a $12.8 million electronic ticketing system that debuted in January.
There has been some controversy over the service, however. Many people expected it to start sooner and for there to be fewer problems.
State Rep. Sherry Appleton, D-Poulsbo, expected the overall Wave2Go system to be installed sooner, including the automated ticket booths.
“When people work over in Seattle or Everett, they want to get home to their families,” she said. “Every minute they lose because something isn’t working right is just another frustration to their everyday lives.”
Harris-Huether said there have been several glitches in the paperless system, including double charging a customer’s electronic ticket, not being able to print a receipt that shows how many tickets are left on a pass and handheld ticket scanners that don’t read all tickets.
Ferry users can buy tickets for the automated system by buying batches of tickets at a time, buying and printing them out at home, or paying for a round-trip ticket when they line up in Mukilteo or Edmonds.
The system is being tested on the weekends on Bainbridge Island on the Seattle-to-Bainbridge Island route, Harris-Huether said. Once the kinks are worked out, the automated booths will be installed in Clinton, Kingston and Bremerton on the Seattle-to-Bremerton run.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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