SCHUYLKILL COUNTY — The Schuylkill Transportation System now accepts EBT Access Cards for bus fare if you have cash assistance applied to the card.
STS serves most of Schuylkill County. With such a large amount of riders, STS wants to offer them more options. Recently, STS started allowing its customers with cash assistance to pay for fares using their EBT cards.
“Well, the reason behind it was to basically make availability for riders to be able to use our service faster, easier and less expensive actually,” STS Executive Director David Bekisz said.
STS checked with the state before starting the program. This alternative payment option is so new many people didn’t even know about it.
Newswatch 16 spoke to some bus riders who say that using EBT cards might not be a good idea.
“If somebody doesn’t have food stamps, they could give theirs to a friend and let them use it and that would be the bad part,” Charlotte Gozditis of Shenandoah said.
STS said so far it’s only had one person use their EBT card for fares.
Riders who want to use EBT cards to buy a fare card will have to do so at the bus station on South Centre Street in Pottsville or the STS office in the St. Clair Industrial Park.
*An earlier version of this post referred to use of “food stamps” to pay for bus fare. It is actually EBT Access Cards with cash assistance. Users cannot use an EBT card if it is only approved for food stamps.
