The last bridge toll taker in Cape May County nears the end in a booth above Townsends Inlet

TOWNSENDS INLET BRIDGE — Rick Shetler has worked in the booth on the bridge above the Jersey Shore inlet since that summer of 1980, back when the toll was 30 cents and he thought he’d be an accountant.

Perhaps you’ve seen him — 6-foot-tall, bearded, folded into the booth — as you were reaching into your pocket for some dollar bills, or some quarters, on your way from Sea Isle into Avalon, or maybe as you (finally) arrived at the Shore, a bit tense from the drive.

Perhaps you noticed the little desk light Shetler, or one of the other Cape May County bridge toll takers, brought to the tollbooths of scenic Ocean Drive, the glow from an especially homey lamp with a shade warming the inside of the booth at the foot of the Ocean City-Longport Bridge.

Or maybe you saw the book Shetler was deep into, or the little microwave, or the satellite TV they keep in the tollbooth, especially handy on long winter overnights. Perhaps you even complained about the traffic to him, or asked the score of the Phillies game.

Or maybe, since E-ZPass was installed in 2018, you barely waved.

Shetler, 65, might have noticed you, especially if, not uncommon, you seemed a bit impatient, coming in hot from the city for your Shore weekend. But don’t worry, he took it in stride.

“I don’t remember them, but they remember you,” Shetler said in an interview at the headquarters of the Cape May County Bridge Commission. He’s the only full-time toll taker left, but not for long.

It’s all ending on April 1, when the five Cape May County toll bridges will go all-electronic, leaving nothing but the Go E-ZPass green light as your account is charged $2.50, or maybe an invoice that is mailed to you days later (you’ll have 30 days before an administrative fee). After the transition to all E-ZPass tolls, those with bridge tickets can cash them in with the bridge commission through June 30.

A dozen of the part-time toll takers will remain as year-round bridge tenders, on hand to open and close the draw bridges that date to the 1940s.

Along Ocean Drive, the quieter, back way to the Shore, five toll bridges operated by the Cape May County Bridge Commission connect the barrier islands. More than 2 million cars passed through the one-way tolls in 2024, generating $4.8 million in revenue.

All but one, the Ocean City-Longport Bridge rebuilt in 2002, date to the 1940s.

They are Corsons Inlet, connecting Ocean City with Strathmere; Townsends Inlet, connecting Sea Isle with Avalon; Grassy Sound, connecting Stone Harbor with North Wildwood; and Middle Thorofare, connecting Wildwood Crest with North Cape May (and landing in the middle of the Lund Fisheries and Bumble Bee processing plant). That bridge is slated to to be replaced with a fixed-span bridge, incorporating pedestrian and bicycle access and recreational fishing.

The Townsends Inlet Bridge, where Shetler is now stationed, is one of four trunnion bascule movable bridges in the county designed between 1938 and 1940 by the firm of Ash Howard Needles & Tammen, a technological feat and a “monument to the Depression Era New Deal Programs to Improve America’s Infrastructure,” according to its historic marker.

In addition, the county operates 23 other bridges, in varying stages of age and disrepair, nearly all of which it says need fixing, some urgently. They range in age from Cape May’s 1927 Lafayette Street Bridge, to Ocean City’s 17th Street over Venetian-Carnival Bayou Bridge, rebuilt in 2019.

Four bridges built between 1930 and 1939 are “in immediate need of replacement.”

They are the 96th Street Bridge, connecting Stone Harbor and Middle Township (1930), Upper Thorofare and Mill Creek Bridges in Lower Township (1939) and Great Channel in Stone Harbor (1939). The county has spent more than $30 million in the last decade in bridge maintenance and repairs.

The county is projecting that the total cost for all the replacement and repairs to its bridges between 2020 and 2035 for both county and commission bridges will reach between $603 million and $890 million, which it will pay for with some tax increases, bonding, and other sources of funding.

Also, some savings from converting to all E-ZPass on April 1, which bridge commission executive director Kevin Lare estimates at $400,000 to $500,000 annually.

More than just a toll taker or a changemaker, the three dozen or so full- and part-time toll collectors have been there to signal, like the ocean breeze — or the late, great old shack on the Long Beach Island Causeway, toppled during Hurricane Sandy — that you’ve arrived at the Shore.

But Shetler never really viewed himself in such a grand way. He just did his thing, working the conveyer belt of traffic during the summer, presiding over a lonely outpost during the offseason.

“It’s windy a lot because you’re on the coast, on the water,” he said.

It all changed in 2018, when the bridge commission installed E-ZPass booths, which now about 90% of all drivers opt for. “I loved it,” said Shetler, not a sentimental kind of guy. He’s been polishing off two books a week in recent years, the latest: Spirit Crossing by William Kent Krueger.

Some people still want to talk, especially locals. “I’ve seen kids that were in high school that are now retired,” he said. “I’ve gotten to know them over the years. They’ll stop and talk, the locals in the winter. ‘Hey, I just want to say hello.’”

One big shift was in 1978, when Atlantic City opened its first casino.

“All of a sudden there was a nightlife, right? And I mean all night.”

Also big back in the pre-E-ZPass days were the pay-it-forward (or backward) chains, where people would pay the toll for the car behind them, and it would keep going.

“We’ve got foxes and they cross the bridge,” Shetler noted. “Raccoons cross.”

In 2011, the foxes that hung around the Ocean City-Longport tollbooth got some notoriety, as did the toll takers who were ready to feed them.

Shetler’s never given too much thought to the job as the years rolled by. “I just liked it,” he said. “One year led to another year and that’s it.”

He liked being outside, particularly during a thunderstorm. (The Coast Guard makes the call to leave the booth during really bad weather.) “I’ve never had a booth get hit,” he says.

“I like looking at the ocean, looking at the bay,” he said. “It’s unbelievable, sunrise, sunset. You can see it all.”

He has one note on the behavior of visitors.

“They come to the Shore, that means the rules are out the window,” he said. “You’re seeing people in there, they’re kind of in a hurry. That’s their one problem. It’s like, slow down.”

“I gotta admit, it’s not like the ‘80s were, not with Uber and all,” Shetler says. Back then, it was a dubious after-hours car parade of the party crowd from Sea Isle back into Avalon. “That’s basically what midnight guys get. Ubers all night long.“

But somebody has to be there, and will still have to be there, even after April, to open the bridges for boats. Except in Ocean City-Longport, which was built high enough for boats to go under.

“Coast Guard rules,” Shetler says. “If you’re the first one nearest the ocean, you got to open on demand. That’s actually the main job. The boats have the right of way over the cars. Because the water was there before the road was. That’s the way the Coast Guard explains it to me.”

The booth, he says, is “my home away from home. It’s just normal to me.” ”

Asked what kind of personality is best-suited for the booth, Shetler said, “You have to be a people person a little bit. I could have a conversation and know everything about somebody in about two minutes. It’s like a bartender.”

But also be OK with being alone on the top of a bridge suspended over the water.

“I guess it depends on the season,” he said. “It’s nonstop in the summer. And then the winter, you could sit there for a whole shift and no one comes.”