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DRPA Says It Won't Use Temporary Revenues To Fund EZ Pass Commuter Discounts

By Hadas Kuznits

CAMDEN, N.J. (CBS) -- The Delaware River Port Authority says it doesn't have the money to revive its EZ Pass discounts for commuters.

Currently, the only EZ Pass discount offered is a senior citizen discount.  But Delaware River Port Authority spokesman Tim Ireland says the issue of commuter discounts was brought up at a recent meeting when the chairman of the DRPA's Citizens Advisory Committee noticed a bump in revenue from a recent settlement.

"A million dollars from a real estate settlement here or a million dollars from a real estate settlement there, that sounds like a lot of money," Ireland says, referring to the one-time income spike, "but it really wouldn't fund a sustainable commuter discount program."

Ireland says the board is open to discounts but they must be sustainable.

"The commuter discount is a program.  So if you want to do a programmatic discount, you would need programmatic revenue," Ireland said today, "and nobody has suggested where that programmatic revenue would come from."

And realistically, he says, it doesn't look as though an EZ Pass discount program will be offered anytime soon.

"I think one of the worst things that anybody could do would be to promise people a discount that lasted for, you know, three months or six months.  I'm not sure that that would be appreciated."

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