There wasn't much public in the public hearing held by the Maryland Transportation Authority last week in Beltsville on its proposed tolls on the just-around-the-corner Intercounty Connector.
A couple of dozen folks who might actually be described as public - not media, not state officials or contractors - took seats in the sparsely occupied cafeteria at High Point High School. But only a handful actually approached the microphone to share their views with the members of the authority's board. More than two hours into the hearing, only 11 people - three of them elected officials - had spoken, and the board was taking a break to see whether any stragglers would show before 9 p.m.
How should one interpret the non-outpouring of citizens at a hearing on a toll plan that could result in a peak-time charge of $12 to go from Interstate 95 to Interstate 270 and back? Does it imply acceptance or merely resignation?
There were a handful who took a leap of faith and tried to influence outcomes that were decided long ago.
Richard Landon of District Heights showed up to testify against any tolling. "We as taxpayers have already paid our share of taxes," he said.
Actually, we haven't.
At least, we haven't paid enough to build a $2.6 billion, six-lane highway through suburban Washington. The toll road vs. freeway issue was decided during the Ehrlich administration with the acquiescence of the General Assembly. Neither wanted to put their necks on the line to raise gas taxes, which haven't gone up since the early 1990s, to build the road as a freeway. It was either toll road or no road.
Prince George's Councilman Tom Dernoga, a longtime ICC opponent, showed up to give one more speech denouncing what is already a done deal. "This is an anti-working family proposal and an anti-working family road," he told the board.
Actually, there are many working families that make enough money to use the ICC. It just so happens that they tend to live in places other than Dernoga's Prince George's County district.
The fact is that since the ICC was revived in 2003, the plan has never been about transporting the poor or the middle class - except on an occasional emergency basis or by taking a bus. It was conceived as a road for the movers and shakers. It was designed to get the biotech executives of Montgomery County to BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport without all those annoying traffic jams on the Capital Beltway or Randolph Road.
