Intercounty Connector

Construction of the final segment of the Intercounty Connector, the state's first all-electronic toll road, is scheduled to begin this spring. The one-mile stretch of highway will connect Interstate 95 to U.S. 1 inPrince George's County. It will cost $89 million and be completed by late 2013 or early 2014. Officials with the Maryland Transportation Authority said the ICC is being used by about 20,000 motorists on weekdays, in line with projections. The western terminus at Interstate 270 near Gaithersburg is seeing slightly greater traffic than the more recently opened eastern end. "People are using parts of the ICC to make their own alternate routes to work," said Harold Bartlett, the authority's executive secretary.

Former Gov. Parris N. Glendening's proposal to let voters decide whether to build transportation projects ignores the long history of disconnect between the state's plans and outcomes, which cannot be resolved by a simple yes or no by voters ("Voters will support transportation projects," April 22). This goes back at least as far as the 1960s, when voters rejected a second parallel span for the Bay Bridge - and the state built it anyway. In the 1990s, even Gov. William Donald Schaefer got conned by his own Department of Transportation's promises regarding light rail.

Drivers on the new Intercounty Connector highway linking the Washington suburbs could be paying among the nation's highest tolls, as the Maryland Transportation Authority approved Thursday a plan to charge two-axle vehicles up to 35 cents per mile during peak travel times. Brushing aside complaints that its proposed tolls were too steep, the nine-member authority that oversees Maryland's bridges, tunnels and toll roads approved a variable rate plan for the ICC with few changes from what it had unveiled in September, though it did set a new "overnight" rate as low as 10 cents per mile.

Construction of the final segment of the Intercounty Connector, the state's first all-electronic toll road, is scheduled to begin this spring. The one-mile stretch of highway will connect Interstate 95 to U.S. 1 inPrince George's County. It will cost $89 million and be completed by late 2013 or early 2014. Officials with the Maryland Transportation Authority said the ICC is being used by about 20,000 motorists on weekdays, in line with projections. The western terminus at Interstate 270 near Gaithersburg is seeing slightly greater traffic than the more recently opened eastern end. "People are using parts of the ICC to make their own alternate routes to work," said Harold Bartlett, the authority's executive secretary.

House Speaker Michael E. Busch joined critics of the state's plans for funding the $1.7 billion Intercounty Connector last night, charging that the Ehrlich administration is planning to tie up too great a share of the state's transportation resources in one project. Busch objected to the Transportation Department's plan to finance the Washington-area highway project largely with a form of bond backed by a pledge of future federal funds. "You're leveraging all future federal dollars that are supposedly available for projects throughout the state," the Annapolis Democrat said.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening says the Intercounty Connector is dead.So why doesn't anyone believe him?Backstage maneuvers before January's opening of the state General Assembly are proceeding among supporters and foes of the proposed $1.1 billion highway as if the ICC is a battle whose outcome is still in doubt.This time, state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. have become active players and a rallying point for both sides in the latest twist in the often fractious, 50-year-old debate over the proposed road connecting Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

IT WILL take political courage to press ahead with building an east-west road tying Montgomery County with Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Yet that's what Gov. Parris N. Glendening must do. The Intercounty Connector, which has been discussed for 40 years, is badly needed because of traffic congestion in the Washington suburbs. It also would give travelers better access from Montgomery County to Baltimore, Annapolis, Laurel and BWI. Without that link to the airport, Montgomery County could lose companies leaving for less congested sites with quick access to airports.

Legislative leaders started a campaign yesterday to revive the stalled proposal for a suburban Washington highway designed to ease some of the area's gridlock. In a largely symbolic move, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. introduced a joint resolution urging the governor to study the environmental impact of building the Intercounty Connector. Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a supporter of the highway when he first ran for governor, halted planning for the project in 1999.

EAST IS EAST, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. Rudyard Kipling wrote that, but the bureaucrats and surveyors who laid out Maryland's highway system might as well have.There are several major north-south arteries in the state, but few cut horizontally, besides Interstate 70. The Maryland grid is one Dwight Eisenhower could still love, with its '50s pattern of ring-roads around the major cities and spokes fanning out to suburbia. The system barely recognizes the sweeping changes in work and lifestyles that now link suburb to suburb.

COLESVILLE -- Just in time for Christmas, Montgomery County Executive Douglas Duncan got his wish: a four-lane, east-west road connecting the eastern side of the county with Interstate 270.But the completed road is not the $1.1 billion Intercounty Connector, and that's the rub."This is a great addition, but it's just a piece of the solution," Duncan said before cutting the ribbon on Randolph Road. "Some people think this is it, but widening roads doesn't get us where we have to be."Randolph becomes the only continuous road with at least four lanes between I-270 and Route 29.But pressure is building to do something more to speed east-west travel in Maryland's Washington suburbs.

Free test drives will end this weekend on the newly opened Intercounty Connector, which links Interstate 370 in Gaithersburg to Interstate 95 in Laurel. Beginning at 12:01 a.m. Monday, motorists will pay tolls based on peak and non-peak use. Drivers without an E-ZPass transponder will receive a bill in the mail for 150 percent of the rate. The Beltsville Motor Vehicle Administration office will be open Saturday and Dec. 10, from 8:30 a.m. to noon, for E-Zpass registration. Preliminary figures released by the Maryland Transportation Authority show that in the first 10 days, the older section of ICC, from I-370 to Georgia Avenue, averaged 48,340 vehicles each day while the newer section between U.S. 29 and I-95 averaged 37,867 vehicles.

The Sun's article lauding the opening of the Intercounty Connector ("Drivers rejoice as ICC debuts," Nov. 23) quotes failed governor wannabe Douglas Duncan, "I think people will find it is worth it. " If anyone really believed it was worth it, they would have charged a toll that would pay for it. The Sun neglected to mention whether its readers felt the ICC was worth paying doubled tolls on the Baltimore harbor tunnels, the Bay Bridge, and the Susquehanna...

They gathered before dawn in a hotel parking lot, determined to prove themselves right. A former state senator. The one-time leader of Maryland's most populous county. Several local business owners. Would the Intercounty Connector, Maryland's most expensive highway, be everything they had promised the public over decades of debate and planning? To answer the question Tuesday morning, just hours after the road opened, these pillars of the community staged a road rally of sorts, pitting two time-honored Gaithersburg-to-Laurel routes against the new highway.

Melinda Peters, who has overseen construction of the $2.6 billion Intercounty Connector in suburban Washington, was named Thursday to head the State Highway Administration — an agency under scrutiny after a highly critical legislative audit. The appointment by Gov. Martin O'Malley makes Peters, 38, the first woman to head the agency, which has an annual budget of about $1 billion. The announcement was made as the SHA is completing the ICC, which links Interstates 270 and 95. The new highway is scheduled to open for traffic Tuesday morning.

Next month's opening of the main section of the Intercounty Connector linking Interstate 95 with Interstate 270 in Montgomery County is expected to have significant effects on Baltimore's economy as it brings the state's richest job and commercial market a half-hour closer to its largest city. The debut of the new section Nov. 22 will close the gap between the already opened western section of the ICC and I-95 in Prince George's County. Unlike the first section, which has been mostly used for local traffic, the opening of the new stretch is expected to bring immediate benefits to many Baltimore-area drivers for whom the trip to Rockville or Gaithersburg has long been a traffic nightmare.

The final section of the Intercounty Connector will be open by 6 a.m. Nov. 22, according to Jack Cahalan, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Transportation. Previously, the state had not said exactly when the section would open. "The weather has played in our favor," Cahalan said. Construction on the toll road, which cost $2.6 billion, started in 2007. The ICC is currently open from Route 97 (Georgia Avenue) through Interstate 370, which feeds into Interstate 270, the main artery between Frederick and Washington.

Salvaged from dusty shelves where they have languished for years, designs for the Intercounty Connector will get their most serious look this year thanks to the backing of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. Seeking to follow through on a campaign pledge he made in 2002, Ehrlich is pushing for construction of the controversial highway proposed for the Washington suburbs. The project, he said, will help relieve congestion along the state's successful technology corridor along Interstate 270 in Montgomery County and better link that area with the port of Baltimore, research universities and workers along the Interstate 95 corridor.

Construction crews began repairs Tuesday after state inspectors found hairline cracks in the supports of three bridges over the Intercounty Connector. The work requires lane closings on the section of the toll road that is already open. Melinda Peters, the State Highway Administration's project director for the $2.6 billion ICC, said the contractor was directed to fix the concrete supports, or piers, after engineers and an independent expert determined that repairs were needed to ensure the long-term safety and durability of the bridges.

When Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. won election as governor in 2002, he was faced with a tricky problem. He had campaigned on a pledge to build the long-delayed Intercounty Connector in suburban Washington. The highway project would cost a fortune, far more than the state could afford out of its Transportation Trust Fund, and the Republican Ehrlich had taken a hard line against new taxes. He had to come up with some way to pay the $2.6 billion it would eventually cost. The answer? He would make it a toll road.