The Maryland Transportation Authority has extended the grace period to pay video tolls to December 14th, at 11:59 p.m.
RELATED: Pay off your video tolls by midnight to avoid fines
The decision came in a board meeting the MDTA held on Wednesday afternoon.
The first agenda of the meeting was the customer service plan, over a 9 month period $151 million in fees were waived for more than 700,000 customers. The plan was set to expire Wednesday at 11:59 p.m.
According to MDTA Executive Director Will Pines, MDTA received 30,000 calls to their call centers on Tuesday. The last two days they've experienced four times the call volume to their call center.
"We've asked for this special meeting because the staff is recommending to the board, that we give those customers an additional 2 weeks - until 11:59pm on December 14th to give customers one final opportunity to clear their account balances," said Executive Director Pines.
Pines also reiterated the the multiple options for people to pay regarding the online and mail-in options, but many customers come to the building because they want to discuss their bill.
The Board was keen on getting the message across to the "last minute" people who haven't gotten around to paying their tolls.
"The harm of the program is that people are calling up with 60 tolls," says Pines. "Because they knew about the grace period and waited until November."
Director Pines stated that it's not clear cut what the financial impact is due to the unclear impact of what actually the number would be after sending this debt to a collection agency.
"We will come back to the Board and present when we have the full set of numbers," said Pines.
After further deliberation with the board, the motion was brought upon to officially extend the deadline, the motion was then seconded.
The Aye's have it. @WMAR2News @TheMDTA approves the extension of two weeks for video tolls grace period.
— Amanda Chaya Engel (@acdrazen) November 30, 2022
