Existing_Bat1939 t1_j0sa086 wrote on December 19, 2022 at 12:58 AM

Reply to comment by PGids in Toll Fees by Areeves50

Your point B is just wrong. The new booth in York is only the third; the first was the small one in Kittery, and around 1970 that was replaced in conjunction with the opening of the high level bridge by the one that was just removed.

PGids t1_j0sdtjz wrote on December 19, 2022 at 1:28 AM

After talking to my old man I was less accurate than I thought, B is definitely hyperbole but I’d like to share what he told me

My dad did 25 years with Pike Industries, he’s been on both total rebuilds/redesigns of that York toll. This one they just finished was a fucking fiasco on the paving side and drove him to a new job

The only three paving seasons Pike never had a crew there in his 25 years were the big 295 north and south bound projects they did back to back summers and the big Route 3 bridge project in Augusta

I dunno if they use it as a money sink or if it’s someone’s pet project but they spend a very disproportionate amount of money on it for whatever reason. Base up highway paving in Maine 10 years ago was roughly a million a mile (that’s a number straight from Randy Pike’s mouth), and that was well before everything from wages to the price of diesel fuel skyrocketed

Existing_Bat1939 t1_j0zyk3w wrote on December 20, 2022 at 5:46 PM

Salute to your old man! One thing I can think of at the old toll was that the surrounding ground was constantly sinking, so they had to smooth off the approaches to the booth; that was that awful little hill that used to be there. I have no idea what happened with the building of the new booth but I'm sorry it drove your dad out of his career.