Margate Bridge toll increase 2026 Downbeach Express cash E-ZPass

My earliest memory of going to the beach and my earliest memory of paying a toll are the same memory. That is a very New Jersey sentence and I stand by it.

It must have been around 1966. I was three or four years old. We lived in Mays Landing and the whole neighborhood did everything together — nightly bike rides, early block parties, a tight-knit group of families that moved through summer as a unit. In those early years that meant a convoy of cars heading east through Mays Landing and Egg Harbor Township, all of us pointed toward Longport via the Margate Bridge and Causeway.

I remember the excitement starting at the causeway on the mainland side, coming out of Northfield. The meadows opened up on both sides of the road and you knew — even at four years old you knew — that something was happening. The marsh grass and the open sky and the smell of the bay. Something good was coming.

Then, before you even saw the ocean, there were these small buildings right in the middle of the road that you had to drive through. How cool was that for a four-year-old. There was usually a nice older man or woman in there and you had to give them money to cross.

My mother used to read us The Three Billy Goats Gruff. In that story there is a troll under the bridge who demands payment to let you cross. Giving the kindly toll taker a few coins did not seem as scary as that — but the connection was not lost on a three-year-old. We survived the troll toll. We got to Longport. It was worth every penny.

That bridge is still there. It is still cash only. And starting June 16, it is getting more expensive.

What is changing and when

The Downbeach Express — formerly known as the Margate Bridge and Causeway — is raising its toll on June 16. Cash customers will now pay $3.00 per crossing, up 50 cents from $2.50. Express Pass holders pay $2.00, up 15 cents.

The four historic bridges and two-mile causeway connecting Margate, Ventnor, Longport and Egg Harbor Township are nearly 95 years old. The crossing is privately owned and operated by Ole Hansen and Sons, Inc. Every dollar of toll revenue goes back into the bridges and causeway — maintenance, capital improvements, storm readiness. The last increase was 2024.

The bridges are not going anywhere. Neither is the cash-only policy. The Downbeach Express uses its own Express Pass system and does not accept E-ZPass. That is not an oversight. It is a choice. And depending on who you ask, it is either the most charming anachronism at the Jersey Shore or a maddening inconvenience in an era when most New Jerseyans have not touched a toll booth coin in years.

The great Jersey Shore debate

Half the audience is going to read this and smile. The cash toll is part of the Downbeach experience — the small booth, the brief human transaction, the moment of connection with the person collecting your three dollars before you drive out onto the causeway and the bay opens up on both sides. There is something right about that. Not everything needs to be frictionless.

The other half is going to want to throw their E-ZPass transponder into the bay. We have been living in an E-ZPass world for thirty years. The Turnpike, the Parkway, the bridges, the tunnels — all of it is tap and go. Having one cash-only holdout at the Shore in 2026 feels either charmingly retro or actively annoying depending entirely on whether you remembered to stop at an ATM.

I land somewhere in the middle. The troll toll of my earliest Shore memory will always have a soft spot in my heart. The three-dollar cash requirement in 2026 when I have not carried cash since 2019 is a different thing entirely.

What the money pays for

It is worth saying what that $3.00 actually buys. Nearly 95 years of bridges and causeway, privately maintained, rebuilt after storms, kept open through every season. The company's statement says these structures are storm-ready and continuously invested in. Given what Sandy did to South Jersey infrastructure in 2012 and what subsequent storms have done since, having a privately funded crossing that reinvests every toll dollar into its own maintenance is not the worst arrangement.

This is not a state toll. There is no political football here. You pay, they fix the bridge. It has worked that way since the 1930s.

The troll from my childhood was always, as it turns out, spending the money on the bridge. A much better outcome than what happened to the billy goats.