People were posting comments online about removal of the tolls on the Coquihalla long before the staff collecting them were told.

“At 12:50 [p.m.], they called us in and told us we were out of a job,” said Janet Poehnell, one of the people who has been collecting the road-use surcharge since the highway was built more than 20 years ago.

She said she and her co-workers first learned of the announcement Premier Gordon Campbell made Friday at the Union of British Columbia Municipalities meeting when a driver passing through told them.

“I was totally shocked that we had to hear it from the public first.”

By 1:30 p.m., more than an hour after the first posting about the announcement on the CBC website — “Yay, more mixed messages from Campbell on government’s role in fighting carbon-dioxide emission.” — all of the 37 staff had been told the tolls had been ordered removed 30 minutes earlier.

Seventeen staff are auxiliary, which means they work on a part-time or on-call basis.

Poenhell said they won’t receive severance pay.

“In a week, they’ll be tearing the toll plaza down,” she said.

“With it goes my job and my financial security has been blown out the window.”

The 20 full-time staff have been offered jobs elsewhere in the government, said Jeff Knight of the provincial ministry of transportation.

In making the announcement, Campbell said cities throughout the Interior benefitted from the highway and the investment and those tolls were well worth it.

“But, as of one o’clock [Friday], the tolls are gone for good on the Coquihalla,” he said to uproarious applause.

“I thought you’d like that.”

The first phase of the highway, from Hope to Merritt, opened in 1986, with two other phases, from Merritt to Kamloops and the connector to Kelowna finished by 1990.

Each year, more than three-million trips are made across the Coquihalla, with the tolls bringing in about $57 million in revenue.

“Removing the tolls will mean literally hundreds of dollars annually in the pockets of British Columbians who regularly use the highway,” Campbell said, noting nearly eight-million passenger vehicles and 700,000 commercial travelled the corridor last year.

“It will also mean thousands of dollars in annual saving for truckers, who account for 20 per cent of highway traffic along the corridor, but pay more than half of the total toll revenue.”

Money collected went into the government’s general revenue fund, said Knight, from which money will still be allocated for maintenance of the highway.

He couldn’t confirm when staff were told about the removal of tolls, adding the information was to have been passed on to staff “to coincide with the premier’s announcement.”

Knight said staff on site were told in person; those on days off were phoned.

The toll booth is scheduled to be removed sometime later this week.