Tag: toll roads

The latest rankings by the Texas Transportation Institute place the Washington DC region at the top of the list, among all major metropolitan areas in the United States, in average travel delays.  Last year, we were tied with Chicago for first place, with an average of 70 hours wasted by each of us from sitting in traffic delays.  This year, the amount of time we waste in traffic has grown to a whopping 74 hours a year, nearly two full work weeks.

When you add up all the lost productivity, tons of wasted fuel, and other costs, each of us is wasting more than $1,400 per year, simply due to congestion.   Just for comparision, each of us would pay about $50 extra per year from a 10-cent increase in the gas tax, which could be used to fund a long list of projects that we know will cut travel times and congestion costs as much as 25%.  I would rather spend $50 to save $350, not to mention all that lost time. 

It is hard to see why state and local leaders are not making transportation investments a more urgent priority.  Voters in our region continue to rank traffic congestion as their number-one priority, yet elected officials continue to ignore transportation almost entirely. 

This has to change.  The Maryland legislature needs to act and it needs to act this year.  At least $800 million per year in new transportation funding has been recommended by the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission, along with new protections against diverting scarce transportation dollars for other uses.

We know exactly what we need to do to reduce congestion in our region.  It starts with building the new transit and road capacity we need to reduce delays and get people back to work.  All that’s missing is the political will among our elected representatives to make this a priority.  Maryland will not be able to sustain any level of economic recovery unless we take on this issue and invest in our infrastructure now.

 traffic
In the Metro section in Sunday’s Washington Post, transportation reporter Robert Thompson invited the two groups to “define the problem, propose solutions and tell us how we would know if their ideas worked.”  While there were commonalities in the solutions proposed, only SMTA had a realistic answer to addressing all modes of transportation and measurably reducing congestion, which continues to be the top threat to our economy and quality of life.  Here’s a brief summary:
  
SMTA Lays Out Balanced List of Transportation Priorities:  Citing the need for comprehensive solutions to our traffic problems in the Washington area, SMTA President Richard Parsons defines our top transportation problem as “too much traffic congestion.”  He cites years of traffic studies which show the primary cause is the lack of suburb-to-suburb transit and road capacity connecting our major activity centers in the region.  For solutions, most transportation experts recommend a combination of:  Investing in Metro reliability, new transit lines (Purple Line, Corridor Cities Transitway, regional bus-rapid-transit network), new highway and bridge capacity (including a regional network of high-occupancy-toll lanes on the Beltway and other key corridors), and more sustainable “transit-oriented-development” to concentrate future jobs and housing and reduce the need for future auto trips.  Studies show using all the tools in our toolbox would significantly reduce congestion, make travel times both shorter and more predictable for commuters, and keep our region more liveable, sustainable and economically vibrant.  One of the key problems, Parsons notes, is that “we’ve clouded the debate, allowing popular myths and wishful thinking to supersede sound research and expert analysis.” View the entire article here.     
 
Smart Growth Coalition Offers Familiar “Wishful Thinking” Approach that Won’t Reduce Congestion:  Coalition for Smarter Growth President Stewart Schwartz blames congestion on “bad land-use planning and poor location decisions by major employers.”  For solutions, he lays out a familiar list of land-use changes, most of which are good ideas, but are either already being done in Maryland (e.g. concentrating new development near metro stations), or too vague and unrealistic, like shifting employment from the 270 corridor to the east.  He offers no specifics on how these might impact future congestion levels.  Recent data from the Transportation Planning Board indicate that smart-growth land-use changes alone, without new transportation capacity, actually makes traffic congestion slightly worse.  Schwartz does cite the need for new transit capacity, which is a good thing.  However, transit only works for those relatively few commuters who can use it, and does nothing to address all the other non-commuting trips for which we also need to plan (interstate traffic, shipping and freight deliveries, errands, business-to-business travel, etc.), and which make up most of our daily trips.  By ignoring the mode of travel that accounts for roughly 90% of all daily trips in our State and region — our heavily congested roads — such prescriptions are simply not realistic and will have no impact on congestion in our lifetimes.   

 

With area transportation funds dwindling, and legislators shirking their responsibilities year after year to ensure that dedicated revenues for transportation (like the gas tax) keep pace with inflation and population growth, State officials across the region have little choice but to raise toll rates.  So here is what is coming: 

The toll man cometh

Reason
Tolls for two-axle vehicles

Maryland

 Rate before July 1, 2011 As of Oct. 1, 2011 As of July 1, 2013

Hatem Memorial Bridge

 $10/year with decal, $5 for trip

 $72/year EZPass plan to replace decal, $6 for trip

 $8

 $132 million in repairs needed
Bay Bridge $2.50

 $5

 $8

 $225 million needed to maintain Bay Bridge over next six years
Nice Bridge $3

 $5

 $8

 $21 million in repairs needed
I-95 Turnpike (Kennedy Highway) $5

 $6

 $8

 $121 million needed for highway work
Francis Scott Key Bridge $2  

 $3

 $4

 $410 million needed for combined work on Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key and Baltimore Harbor Tunnel repairs
Baltimore Harbor Tunnel $2

 $3

 $4

 see Key Bridge
Fort McHenry Tunnel

 $0.90

 $2.70

 $3

 see Key Bridge
ICC $1.45/peak, $1.15/off peak/$.60 overnight

 Only toll exempt from raise

Virginia Current

 Jan. 1, 2012

Dulles Toll Road

 $0.75

 $1.50

Dulles Greenway

 $3.70 ($4 during peak hours)

 $4.50 ($4.80 during peak hours)

The choice we face is clear.  We can: (a) pay a few pennies more at the pump, (b) get used to a lot more tolls and higher transit fares, or (c) watch roads, bridges and transit service deteriorate to the point where the region becomes unliveable, major employers leave, and our economy tanks like Detroit.   Some combination of (a) and (b) would be a lot less damaging to our economy, business climate, and pocketbooks than option (c).

The Maryland Transportation Authority has given preliminary approval for the first significant hike in toll rates in decades.  They are now in the process of receiving public input on the proposed rates before they go into effect October 1st. 

Among other things, the new proposal would increase tolls on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from $2.50 to $5.00 this year (and to $8 in 2013).  Tolls on Baltimore’s Harbor Tunnel, Fort McHenry Tunnel and the Key Bridge would go from $2 to $3 one-way.

The funding is needed to make up for decades of inflation since the last major increase, according to the Authority, and to restore the agencie’s ability to keep pace with maintenance, safety and repairs.

After 56 years of study and debate, the first segment of the Inter County Connector (ICC) is now open and traffic on opening day exceeded expectations, with some 36,500 vehicles test-driving the first major new limited-access highway built in Montgomery County since 1967 on day one. The first completed segment of the ICC runs from I-370 near Shady Grove Road across Georgia Avenue, and ends at a temporary exit onto Norbeck Road just east of Georgia Avenue.

When completed, the ICC will connect two of Maryland’s key employment corridors and reduce travel times between I-270 and I-95 by roughly half. The time savings are already apparent. In my first real trip on the ICC, other than a ceremonial drive just for the fun of it on opening day, I used the ICC to get from Rockville Pike near Shady Grove Road to a meeting in Olney. This trip from Shady Grove Road to Georgia Avenue used to take about 30-35 minutes, depending upon traffic and lights, but this time it took about 7 minutes. Imagine how much more accessible the two counties spanned by the ICC will be, from east to west, when the entire project is complete. The full ICC should be open in the next year.

It will be interesting to see, once the whole project is complete and the tolls are operational, how many people use it on a daily basis. With just the first segment open, it is much too early to draw any conclusions. However, if it performs as the traffic models indicate, there will be significant traffic diverted off crowded local roads and dramatic improvements in congestion levels at dozens of intersections across this highly traveled corridor. While other recent projects have performed exactly as the models predicted (Montrose Parkway and the Wilson Bridge come to mind), we shall all have to wait and see if the ICC does the same.

For more information, see local coverage on Patch.com here.