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As I am also learning today. If you don't mind sharing, where do you live?

Here in the Bay Area all of our bridges only have tolls in one direction.




Fairly standard around Chicago area. Results for Illinois Tollway Plaza will show them (not all of them are - they can get interesting at intersections and off-ramps).

(late edit)

This is largely driven by the question "is a vehicle heading in one direction likely to return in the other?"

For trips from Oakland to SF, yes - it is very likely that the vehicle will go back across the bay bridge back to Oakland (rather than heading down to San Jose and then back up the other side).

On the other hand, a vehicle driving on the tollway through Chicago may be heading up to Minneapolis or to Detroit and then to other directions. Trips on the Illinois tollways are less likely to have a return trip and so both directions need to be tolled to capture the vehicles. It costs twice as much to do this (twice as many toll booths and staff) and so given the choice (trips to an island or other geographically isolated area) they only pay tolls in one direction.


Also tolls crossing into NYC. Since going around is impractical, it means you need half as much tolling. And since the land for tollbooths would be more expensive on the NYC side your savings are even larger.


Denmark. We have exactly one and a half toll bridges in the whole country, so I guess the both-directionalism may be down to toll-both amateurism.


some nyc bridges and tunnels charge both ways. for the bridges and tunnels connecting ny and nj, you only need to pay going nj -> ny.




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