There is a stretch of the Garden State Parkway that used to feel like the tollbooth capital of America. In a span of 100 miles — from Pascack Valley, in northern New Jersey, to Barnegat, along the coast — eight different toll plazas greeted drivers. In much of the rest of the country, you wouldn’t find any tolls on a 100-mile stretch.

I spent a good part of my childhood summers at the Jersey Shore, and the tollbooths on the parkway always seemed to be a cruel final obstacle between me and the beach. Every 15 minutes or so, our car would have to stop yet again to drop a measly quarter in a bucket.

The ride is very different today, thanks mostly to the electronic toll system known as E-ZPass. At four of the tolls along the Garden State, the system is so sophisticated that cars barely have to slow down. A little box attached to the car’s windshield sends a message to a computer reader looming over the road, and money is then deducted from an electronic account.

I imagine that some of the children being driven to the Jersey Shore today won’t even look away from their DVD players as they glide through a toll. And I’m quite certain that very, very few of them will remember, decades from now, how much the Garden State tolls cost back when they were young. As a result of E-ZPass and its ilk, even many adults don’t notice the cost of a toll.