jim rozen wrote in
:

In article , Dave Hinz says...

On 6 Apr 2005 09:29:23 -0700, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz says...

I also heard somewhere that a Belgian 5 Franc piece is the same size as
a US quarter, but is only worth about 8 cents.

Wasn't that the famous CT turnpike toll scam?

I don't know, it's just something I noticed afer I returned from a trip
to Belgium as an exchange student.

At one point the CT turnpike issued tokens worth something like
fifty cents or so. Turned out that some foreign coin was an
exact match and they began turning up in large numbers in the
collection buckets.

Eventually they realized they were only making enough money to
pay for staffing the toll plazas, and maintainting them. So they
finally got smart and tore them out, and stopped collecting the
tolls. They were only supposed to be "until the highway is
paid for" but of course the tolls lingered on for decades after
that.

As I remember it the real driving force behind getting rid of the tolls in
CT. was a horrible crash and fire at a toll plaza (Stratford maybe?). I
don't remember the details clearly but it involved a big rig whose driver
fell asleep and plowed into the cars waiting to pay the toll full tilt.
Something like twelve people were killed including a bunch of little kids
that were in a station wagon.



--

Dan