Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe those high-rollers will use the time they save to create more jobs in Maryland. Maybe BWI will prosper. And maybe the occasional teacher or blue-collar worker will choose to pay the toll on a day when they're running late to pick the kids up from day care, saving themselves a whopping penalty.
But in order for the ICC to work as promised, as a road where the traffic flows freely at all times, somebody has to be priced off it.
Someone like Ed Brenner, who told the board the planned tolls are exorbitant.
"Other than emergencies, I can't ever envision using it myself at the price that's proposed," the Beltsville resident said.
What Brenner was actually telling the board was that their proposal would work. The idea from the get-go was to price folks like him off the road. Sure, the proponents didn't stress that up front. It wasn't a great selling point.
Most of the old-time activists who fought the ICC for decades appear to have moved on. It was left to Greg Smith of Community Research Inc. to re-fight the old battles.
"It's a godawful waste of money," Smith said, as if that were the point of the hearing.
Smith came a little closer to the actual subject when he protested that the recommended rate range is higher than those outlined several years ago in an environmental study.
"This looks like a classic bait-and-switch. It's not fair to the public," he said.
As if fair had something to do with it.
The purpose of tolls is not to be fair. It's to pay off the bonds. The more revenue, the sooner the bonds can be paid off and the more money will be freed up for other uses.
Ronald Freeland, executive secretary of the authority, said the board wants to set a rate that would maximize traffic volume and revenue. That's far more in keeping with the board's role than trying to fashion some arbitrary measure of fairness.
Ultimately the market will decide whether the board set the tolls too high or too low.
Smith and other anti-ICC activists should welcome the steep tolls. The high cost of using that road guarantees it won't be a popular project after it fully opens in 2011-2012. And the ICC might inspire folks to ask questions the next time someone tries to sell them on a toll-financed mega-project that won't cost them anything in new taxes.
