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.

Speed-limit signs on the Intercounty Connector will be changed from 55 mph to 60 mph at the end of the week, the Maryland Transportation Authority announced Wednesday. The 18.8-mile, all-electronic toll road connects Interstate 270 in Gaithersburg to I-95 in Laurel. Weather permitting, westbound signs will be changed on Friday followed by eastbound signs on Saturday. In addition, warning signs will be added for curves. Motorists and state lawmakers have complained since the $2.56 billion highway opened in 2011 that the speed was set too low. The higher limit will shave about 90 seconds on a full-length drive, MdTA officials said.

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.

The Maryland Transportation Authority has thrown some cold water on the idea of leasing the Intercounty Connector as a relatively pain-free way of raising money to pay for other projects - saying such deals are too complex to enter into without extensive study. In a position paper sent to the legislature, the authority does not rule out privatization deals but warns “they are not easy and should be approached prudently.” The authority's statement comes in response to a bill from a Republican delegate that would require the state to issue an invitation for bids for the ICC and the Express Toll Lanes being built on Interstate 95 by the end of the year, but it also addresses one of the ideas raised by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller in a comprehensive transportation revenue bill.   Miller has proposed a study of the merits of entering into a long-term lease of the ICC to provide near-term funds for large transportation projects.

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.

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.

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.

The topic of the day on Capitol Hill was steel tariffs, an issue Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has pushed for years on behalf of industry laborers who live in his congressional district. But yesterday, the Timonium Republican had somewhere else to be: a committee room in Annapolis, where state legislators revived a decades-old argument over a proposed highway through Montgomery County. For those seeking clues about Ehrlich's plans, the congressman's appearance offered the strongest evidence to date that he is leaning more toward a run for governor than a re-election bid. "We have an exploratory committee for governor," Ehrlich said in an interview after his brief committee testimony.

The state will be raising the speed limit from 55 mph to 60 mph next month on the Intercounty Connector, Maryland's first all-electronic toll road. The decision Monday by the Maryland Transportation Authority came after more than six months of study of engineering data and the 20 single-vehicle crashes that occurred in the highway's first year of operation. It also renders moot a bill filed last month by two Montgomery County lawmakers to increase the speed. State officials estimate the higher speed will shave 90 seconds off a trip from Interstate 270 in Gaithersburg to Interstate 95 in Laurel.

Emergency legislation to raise the speed limit on the Intercounty Connector from 55 mph to 60 mph has been filed by two Montgomery County state senators. Democrats Jennie Forehand and Nancy King want the speed increased on the 18.8-mile toll road between Interstate 270 in Gaithersburg and Interstate 95 and U.S. 1 in Laurel to take effect immediately because it is "necessary for the immediate preservation of the public health or safety. " The majority of the road opened in November 2011, and almost immediately critics demanded a speed hike.

An engineering study of the year-old Intercounty Connector has concluded that the speed limit on the highway between Gaithersburg and Laurel could be raised from 55 mph to 60 mph so long as an analysis of crash data finds no safety concerns. The accident review of the $2.5 billion all-electronic toll road is expected to be completed by the end of February, after which time the Maryland Transportation Authority will make a decision. "We said we wanted to have a year's worth of experience, and we've got that now," said Harold Bartlett, the authority's executive director.

Nearly a year old, the Intercounty Connector is about $1 million ahead of toll revenue projections and gaining users at a rate of about 3 percent a month, the Maryland Transportation Authority announced Thursday morning. The all-electronic toll road runs 18 miles, connecting the Interstate 270 business corridor in Montgomery County to Interstate 95 in Prince George's County. Between July of last year and June, the end of the fiscal year, the highway has generated $19.73 million in revenue from 11.6 million trips.

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.

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.

The Ehrlich administration showed off a new fast-track process for a controversial highway project yesterday, proposing two possible routes for the Intercounty Connector in the Washington suburbs and announcing plans to hold public meetings on the proposals in just two weeks. The two routes for the proposed $1.7 billion highway follow corridors drawn in a 1997 draft plan but incorporate what state officials call "environmental stewardship features" intended to lessen damage to parks, wetlands and forests, and ease the highway's visual blight on communities it would skirt.

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.

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...