But he does more than just count money and make change. He gives directions to lost drivers, offers hotel and restaurant tips and keeps watch for vehicles wanted by the state police. Regular commuters know him by name.
Soon he will lose his job, yet another casualty of advancing technology.
Flint will be replaced next year by a cashless tolling system that automatically charges vehicles equipped with an E-ZPass reader or snaps a license-plate photo to bill by mail.
The technology has meant the end of a way of life for more than 1,200 toll workers along the length of the New York State Thruway.
“As long as there have been toll roads, there have been toll collectors,” Flint, 60, said. “It’s a shame that the job is going away.”
Toll collectors were once the sentries of the country’s roads, but they are rapidly disappearing as New York and other states embrace technology that makes tollbooths obsolete. Nearly half of the nation’s 336 tolled highways, bridges and tunnels have only cashless tolling, according to the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, an industry group.
State officials and transportation experts say cashless tolling is more convenient for drivers, reduces traffic and pollution from idling vehicles, and improves safety because there is no need to slow or jockey across lanes to pay at a tollbooth.
It has also allowed highways to better manage traffic flow by using variable toll pricing that can change by the minute to charge higher rates for traveling at peak times.
New York City will rely on cashless tolling to help fine-tune its traffic management when it becomes the first U.S. city to use congestion pricing to charge drivers entering the busiest parts of Manhattan.
“There are a lot of good reasons to go to cashless tolling,” said Pat Jones, executive director of the bridge, tunnel and turnpike association.
But the technology has drawn criticism over privacy concerns that cashless tolling is another way to track people. Drivers have also complained about being charged in error, or being billed thousands of dollars in late fees and penalties that far exceed the actual tolls. In April, three drivers in western New York sued the Thruway Authority over billing issues after the Grand Island bridges switched to cashless tolling.
It has also increasingly displaced toll collectors, the largely unsung contributors to the transportation network. They squeeze into tight spaces, endure exhaust fumes and constant honking and, sometimes, fend off unwanted advances from drivers. Some even keep their own money handy to bail out drivers who don’t have enough.
“Toll collectors need their jobs,” said Linda Henderson, 62, a toll collector on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey since 2002. “And people are happy to see us out there. They need us.”
Thousands of toll collectors used to work across the New York region in the 1990s, but their ranks have shrunk over the years as E-ZPass lanes have proliferated.
Still, unlike store cashiers and other private-sector workers who have lost jobs to automation, many toll collectors are represented by labor unions that have often helped them move to other positions in the same agency.
By 2017, all nine tolled bridges and tunnels under the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had switched to cashless tolling. The bridge and tunnel officers who used to collect the tolls as part of their duties now focus on other things, including ensuring safety and security, responding to emergencies and managing traffic.
There are still toll collectors on some of the region’s busiest crossings — the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels — but the agency that oversees them, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, has also been moving to cashless tolling. It has already switched over two of its Staten Island bridges and plans to shift the third later this year.
There are 158 toll collectors working for the Port Authority, down from 450 in 1997. For many, toll collecting was a steppingstone to other opportunities. They moved up to become security guards, operations supervisors and managers.
The New Jersey Turnpike Authority has not announced plans to phase out toll collectors, but the numbers are shrinking. There are 884 toll collectors on the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, down from 1,680 in the 1990s.
Facing an uncertain future, some have already left the booth. Kevin Epps, 55, started as a toll collector on the Garden State Parkway in 1993 but moved to a highway maintenance job in 2002, as he saw more and more E-ZPass lanes. “I saw the change,” he said. “The security blanket was leaving. They — like everyone else — were going for the technology.”
Tolls, like taxes, were once thought to be constant, and the job of collecting them guaranteed for life. Though not physically demanding, the job can be hard mentally, toll workers say. They have to make change quickly while other drivers are waiting and honking. They memorize directions and exits to local airports and attractions. They learn to defuse confrontations with drivers who curse, yell and throw money at them.
Henderson said a man once got out of his car and stuck his head into her booth to complain that his E-ZPass was not working. “I jumped out of my seat,” she said. “Anybody can come up to you.”
Both women and men said they have faced unwanted advances. Theresa Braun, a toll collector on the Garden State Parkway, has found a way to deal with it. When drivers ask for her phone number, she writes on their receipt: 867-5309 from the hit 1981 song “867-5309/Jenny.”
Braun, 58, a mother of six, started as a toll collector in 1996. At first, her hours were 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. She eventually worked her way up to the morning shift. Her salary also improved, from about $9 an hour to more than $24 an hour, plus a pension when she retires in two years.
She is a fixture at the Barnegat toll plaza. She has seen children in car seats grow up and take the wheel themselves. She has called 911 when drivers turned up at her window with chest pains. Her regulars will wait at her tollbooth even when there is no line in the E-ZPass lanes. “They want the human connection,” she said.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the move to systemwide cashless tolling on the New York State Thruway 19 months ago. By then, the number of full-time toll collectors had already shrunk to 170 from 789 at the peak in 1991, two years before E-ZPass was introduced in the state. There were also 1,153 part-time collectors.
The youngest toll collector is 18 years old, and the oldest is 82, according to the Thruway Authority. Just over half are women. The salaries range from $13.63 an hour for a part-time toll collector to $24.35 an hour for senior, full-time employees.
“The Thruway Authority’s toll collection workforce has been the backbone of our organization for more than five decades and will continue to be through the transition to systemwide cashless tolling by the end of 2020,” said Jennifer Givner, a spokeswoman for the agency.
The agency has offered outreach and training programs to help toll collectors find other jobs, including sessions on resume writing and interviewing, and tuition assistance to those returning to school. A total of 38 toll collectors, managers and administrators have moved to other jobs within the agency.
Jeanne Marie Litts, 56, who manages toll plazas in the Hudson Valley, said she delayed her own retirement to help toll workers through the transition.
Litts, who followed her mother into toll collecting in 1984, recalled that before electronic tolling, the lines to pay cash tolls at the old Tappan Zee Bridge — replaced today by the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge — used to back up for miles. She would sometimes sleep on a cot in a nearby employee locker room to make sure she was not late for her shift.
“That’s how bad that was before E-ZPass,” she said. “I think technology is the right thing to do here.”
Still, Joseph Decheine, 35, a toll collector in the Buffalo area, said the Thruway should keep some tollbooths — and toll collectors — to help drivers. “It’s like a checkpoint for people,” he said. “You know you get to that point and you can ask for directions or somewhere to eat.”
Flint started as a part-time toll collector near Albany, New York, in 1979, earning $4.73 an hour to help pay for college, where he studied accounting. But he graduated to a tight job market and decided to stay on. He never left.
Now as tollbooths are being closed, he doesn’t know what he will do next.
“This was a very stable job; you didn’t have to worry about things like that,” he said. “If you wanted to stay here, you could.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.