Commuters Flee Intercounty Connector After Toll Charges Begin
On average, 62 percent fewer people are using the road during evening rush hour.
Now that the Intercounty Connector is charging tolls, its use by evening rush-hour commuters has dropped by more than half, transportation figures show.
According to numbers released by the Maryland Transportation Authority this week, 2,793 motorists, on average, used the road each weekday during the 5 to 6 p.m. rush hour from Feb. 23 to March 1, when no toll charges were enforced.
Last week, an average of 1,057 drivers used the road daily during the weekday evening rush hour, a drop of 62 percent.
The first segment of the estimated $2.56 billion Intercounty Connector, or ICC, a high-tech roadway designed to reduce commuting times for suburban Baltimore and Washington, D.C., residents, opened Feb. 23. Toll collection began March 7.
Opponents of the road said they expected that many drivers, faced with toll charges, would go back to their old commuting habits.
"High tolls will drive many drivers off the road," said Councilman Philip M. Andrews, D-Dist. 3 of Gaithersburg. "Some can’t afford it, others will choose to avoid it. It’s not a bridge, it’s not a tunnel, people can choose to avoid it."
Drivers who use the new road for a daily commute, once in the morning and once at night, are charged $1.45 per trip, equaling $14.50 per week. Prices go down to $1.15 per trip for off-peak hours and 60 cents per overnight trip.
Drivers will be charged on the electronic tollway with E-ZPass technology, a device placed in a car that connects to an overhead antenna identifying the vehicle and registering tolls via a credit card or other payment method.
Maryland Transportation Authority officials expected the drop in traffic once toll rates started, said Kelly Melhem, a spokeswoman for the agency.
She said traffic volumes will grow and stabilize over time, and that could take months, or even years.
“Right now motorists, drivers and businesses, they are evaluating their travel choices,” she said.
Traffic engineers have also been contacting various GPS units to make sure the ICC shows up on personal electronic mapping devices, Melhem said.
The first phase of the ICC is a six-lane highway that spans seven miles between Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring and the Shady Grove Metro station in Rockville.
Eventually, the ICC will stretch 18 miles and connect Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, linking Interstate 270/370 with U.S. Route 1.
Melhem said the next phase of the ICC will open later this year or early next year and will connect it to Interstate 95. Councilman Andrews predicts this next phase will help ridership number improve slightly, but will still fail to generate enough revenue.
"It will fail in its objective to take a significant amount of traffic off these local roads- which was the claim proponents used to sells it to the public in 2002," Andrews said.
The Coalition for Smarter Growth, a D.C.-region organization concerned with preserving natural and historic areas, is among the groups that opposed the ICC’s construction.
Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the coalition, said ICC advocates “were hoping by tempting people with free use at first, they would encourage those people to keep using it.
“Certainly, looking at the snapshot, the road wasn’t worth the price for 1,000 rush hour trips,” he said.
Penny
1:35 pm on Monday, March 28, 2011
I was opposed to this road being built and it turns out I was right. No one wants to pay $15 extra a week to go to work. People are used to traffic and will just bear with it rather than pay that amount. If they lowered the toll, they may get more users, but I doubt it.
Monica
2:22 pm on Monday, March 28, 2011
I COULD NOT AGREE MORE!!!!!!!! I was actually for the road, however, KNEW FOR SURE that making it a toll road would be a disaster.
Al
2:31 pm on Monday, March 28, 2011
Does anyone know how does the state deals with drivers who do not have an EZ Pass and who are out-of-state?
Murphy
4:21 pm on Monday, March 28, 2011
You'll get a bill in the mail. If you traveled the ICC when the tolls were still inactive you should have received statements of usage for the times your traveled on the highway. I received about 5 of these, so I'm assuming it will be a similar statement for those who are traveling w/o an EZPass.
Murphy
4:14 pm on Monday, March 28, 2011
I think it would be used more if people could get their transponders easier. It's advertised on www.ezpassmd.com that you can pick these up at Giant, but hardly any have these transponders on site yet. Extremely frustrating!!!
Al
1:52 am on Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Yes, and not only do you have to pay the ICC toll, you have to pay the EZPass fee.
Al
1:51 am on Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Yes, but what about out-of-state drivers? Is Maryland really planning on sending a bill to Florida resident who will never pass this way again anyway? It just seems unmanageable to me, the out-of-state issue.
Oscar Dinndinndinn
7:24 pm on Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Did they have to ruin I-370 while building the ICC? It used to be a straight, smooth, safe connector between the Metro and 270. Now it's got corkscrew curves, potholes, narrow lanes, and no shoulders. Unsafe.
Steve W.
8:47 am on Sunday, April 3, 2011
The state will need to mill down uneven sections of the i 370 section, as the traffic on nearby roads is abominable as the new ICC will take getting used to.
Sharon
10:11 am on Sunday, April 3, 2011
All that hype; ALL THAT MONEY for construction! Would like to be able to say officials and all those who wanted this 'asphalt jungle' got what they asked for but.... Too bleak a situation to rub it in. The dye is cast!
Mike Rubin
7:43 am on Monday, April 4, 2011
We fought hard to stop the ICC for both economic and environmental reasons. But between the "fix" perpetrated by Bush and Ehrlich and the push by our then County Exec Doug Duncan and his crew on the County Council (remember Go Montgomery) it got done. I doubt that any of us who fought the battle for so long get much pleasure from being right. We all will pay the long term bill generated by the financing of the ICC through the Garvey Bonds route (use of estimated Fed highway payments in the future to underwrite the issuance of debt) and backup with funds coming from tolls and maintenance monies from other existing Maryland transport entities. The true environmenal impact was hidden as well. The only lesson to take from this is to not allow us to be sold another bill of goods when the developer backed politicos start calling again for a Potomac River crossing through economically and environmentally crucial agricultural and parkland to connect Virginia to this fiasco of a road.
Sharon
9:57 am on Monday, April 4, 2011
Right with ya, Mike!
Mike Rubin
8:37 am on Sunday, June 17, 2012
I have reposted this comment from a year ago as the relevance is obvious. Even with the obvious failure that's coming there are those who will try to make it worse by flogging a bridge crossing to connect us with overdeveloped Virginia. I urge all of you to visit mocoalliance.org to keep posted on things that matter to our overall economic and environmental issues here in the County. Mike Rubin
Mike Rubin 7:43 am on Monday, April 4, 2011
We fought hard to stop the ICC for both economic and environmental reasons. But between the "fix" perpetrated by Bush and Ehrlich and the push by our then County Exec Doug Duncan and his crew on the County Council (remember Go Montgomery) it got done. I doubt that any of us who fought the battle for so long get much pleasure from being right. We all will pay the long term bill generated by the financing of the ICC through the Garvey Bonds route (use of estimated Fed highway payments in the future to underwrite the issuance of debt) and backup with funds coming from tolls and maintenance monies from other existing Maryland transport entities. The true environmenal impact was hidden as well. The only lesson to take from this is to not allow us to be sold another bill of goods when the developer backed politicos start calling again for a Potomac River crossing through economically and environmentally crucial agricultural and parkland to connect Virginia to this fiasco of a road.