A 1963 photograph of a man at the Golden Gate Bridge toll booth captures an entire category of work — and a physical infrastructure — that no longer exists at the crossing.

A photograph posted to r/sanfrancisco this week by user dittidot shows his father at the Golden Gate Bridge toll booth, 1963 — standing at the window, in the era when you paid in both directions. The booth is neat and functional: a small hut straddling the lane, a collector inside.

In 1963, tolls were collected northbound and southbound both. That changed on October 19, 1968, when the district switched to one-way southbound-only collection, as recorded in the bridge's official key dates.

That job — the whole category of it — lasted on the bridge until March 27, 2013, at midnight, when the last toll-taker clocked out and the Golden Gate became the first major U.S. toll bridge to go entirely electronic, according to the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District's key dates record. The board had voted 13-2 in January 2011 to make the change, with two directors dissenting over worker impact and what the East Bay Times reported as the loss of "human touch" at the crossing. The 28 full-time and 4 part-time collectors still working the booths were displaced; all but 8 of the full-timers retired or shifted to other district jobs, per the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage at the time. The remaining 8 received negotiated severance. Projected savings from automation: $16 million over a decade, per the East Bay Times.

During the 2013 conversion, four of the easternmost toll booths and their adjacent guard vestibules were removed; three others were reconstructed three feet taller to accommodate a 27-foot-wide electronic sign spanning lanes 2, 3, and 4 — reading, simply, "Do not stop — automatic tolling," per the Chronicle. The posted speed limit through the plaza went from 5 mph to 25. On September 2, 2014, eight more easternmost booths came down as part of the Moveable Median Barrier project, per the district's key dates. In April 2018, the board approved a design called the "Bridge Light" — a new toll gantry to replace the booth infrastructure that automation had made obsolete.

Today, a southbound driver passes through what used to be the plaza at near-highway speed, under a gantry that reads a FasTrak tag or photographs a plate. The rate is $9.75 for FasTrak users, $10.00 Pay-by-Plate — up from $5.00 FasTrak / $6.00 Pay-by-Plate when cashless tolling launched in 2013, per district toll data. The board approved another five-year increase program in March 2024 to address a projected $220 million structural deficit, per district board records.

What the photograph preserves — the booth, its proportions, the brief stop, the person on the other side of the glass — is gone from the infrastructure. You can see it from the photo, which is more than you can get from the road.