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ILLINOIS TOLLWAY DROPPING COIN BUCKETS
Subway tokens, parking tokens and coin-operated parking meters and toll booths have been going the way of the dodo bird. Now in Illinois,
there will soon be no more coin buckets to toss your coins into. -Editor
Most of the agency's automatic coin machines, which collect $14 million annually, are 20 years or older. The manufacturer went out of business, and spare parts are becoming difficult to find as breakdowns or failures increase. "They're well past their useful life. It's very old technology," Business Systems Chief Shana Whitehead said at a Thursday meeting. The agency is likely to switch to automatic toll payment machines that resemble bank machines but with openings for coins. The replacements would take paper bills, accept credit cards, issue receipts and offer a touch screen to display rates. A connection to customer service would be provided, and interactions would be videotaped. The move comes at a cost -- the machines could cost $100,000 each, according to estimates. Not every tollway exit or entrance uses the coin machines. The system has 507 collection points overall with 102 buckets.
So coins will still have a use here, just no more buckets to toss them into (which takes all the fun out of it). I'm surprised the
state didn't make a complete leap to wireless; in my area, there are many toll lanes that accept only EZ-Pass. -Editor
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Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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