It is grappling with the issue of whether the toll for crossing DRPA's four Delaware River spans should be expensive or exorbitant. You know it's a tough call if it has to consult the common commuter.

Nobody called us in for a consult a few months ago when DRPA gave 10 million of our dollars to help bring soccer to Chester.

It has donated $350 million since 2000 to such worthy causes as the Camden Riversharks and to buy real sharks for Adventure Aquarium in Camden.

It managed to find millions in its tight budget for the Kimmel Center, Lincoln Financial Field, the National Constitution Center and a long list of other institutions of their choice.

DRPA even kicked in $13 million for causes close to Vince Fumo's huge heart including $3.57 million for Spring Garden Community Development Corporation and $10 million for Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods.

But now they find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. The $3 a day we pay to cross their bridges apparently leaves DRPA short for the little things like paint and asphalt and lightbulbs and stuff.

So, DRPA has tentatively proposed a hike that could easily go as high as $2 a day from users of their Ben Franklin, Betsy Ross, Walt Whitman and Commodore Barry bridges.

If it had cost George Washington that much to cross the Delaware we'd still be British subjects.

But it's tentative, DRPA spokesman John Matheussen told me yesterday. The DRPA won't be able to determine how big a hike it'll need until after an ongoing traffic study is completed.

It does know that it'll need a hike and expects to impose it by October, if not sooner.

So, let's see. The traffic study is scheduled for completion in early summer. They will review it to decide how much they'll need to ask us for. Then they will give us two- to-three-week notice for the series of public meetings on both sides of the river.

This puts the public meeting well into September with the toll hike to follow soon thereafter.

That schedule should give you an idea just how important public input is in this process.

Actually, the public's position is fairly easy to anticipate. I expect that most commuters will say they'd just as soon not absorb a huge toll hike.

Seems to me, you ought to call it something other than a hike when you're asking for an extra 67 percent. The term quantum leap comes to mind.

They might be hearing that term a lot at the public hearing, as in, "Why don't you people go take a quantum leap off the Betsy," or something like that.

People get angry when they give you money to cross the bridge and you spend it on ballet slippers. They don't understand how you can have $10 million for a soccer stadium but still have to borrow money to slap a coat of paint on the bridge.

DRPA is $1.2 billion in debt. More than 40 cents of every dollar it gets goes for debt service. Yet they're doing economic development in Spring Garden.

It's an odd history. A wise commuter once noted that DRPA had finished paying for the Ben Franklin Bridge shortly after Ben's death and wondered why tolls hadn't decreased after the bridge was paid for.

DRPA argued that what it didn't use to pay for the bridge or maintain it went for the economic development of river-shore projects. Hence, the rebirth of DRPA as an economic-development agency.

But we elect people to decide how much of our money to waste on economic development. If we don't like the way they waste it, we can waste them.

Not so with DRPA. You couldn't pick them out in a lineup if they wore name tags. You didn't elect them to DRPA and you can't vote them out.

All you can do is show up at the meeting to make your feelings known. Then go apply for a bridge loan. *

Send e-ma*l to sm*thel@ph*llynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.ph*lly.com/sm*th