MARYLAND PIKE Big battle rages north of DC over Intercounty Connector (ICC)

MARYLAND PIKE

Big battle rages north of DC over Intercounty Connector (ICC)

A political battle rages over efforts to build a long sought, and long opposed, east-west highway through the middle of Montgomery County Maryland, a highway which if approved is to be built as an automated toll road. The estd $1.1b road proposed as a 6-lane motorway known as the Inter-County Connector (ICC) got its name from the idea that Montgomery County, Maryland’s most populous and prosperous (pop 800k) should be better connected to its second most populous Prince George’s County (pop 750k) but in fact 23km out of its 28km (17.5ml) is within Montgomery Co, so it is a battle in the heart of the most affluent and well-educated community in the Washington DC metro area. Much of the rationale for the road now is not inter-county connection but simply improved movement east-west through Montgomery County and better connections to the interstate motorway grid at either end — via I-270 at the western end and I-95 at the east end.

The proposed ICC is 20 to 25km north of the White House, 8 to 14km outside the Washington Beltway, and a corridor reserved from suburban development in master plans (together with a partial northern alternative) for a highway the forecasters say will serve up to 130k vehs/day and 5800 veh/peak-hour in 2020. The draft Environmental Impact Statement/ Major Investment Study (DEIS/MIS) documents, about 8” high are complete, public meetings proceed this month and the county and the state are expected to decide where they stand by the fall.

10 and 15 years ago construction of such a highway as the ICC was unthinkable here. The intelligensia was mindlessly anti-highway and pro-transit then. The opposition remains very energetic and passionate and may still succeed at least in delaying the project, but the opposition is limited to more extreme anti-modernist/pastoralist elements. Attendance at public meetings has been virulently opposed but quite tiny in numbers. Support for the highway is broad-based (66% according to one opinion survey) but not very forceful. An important weather-vane is the moderate-liberal establishment “WASHINGTON POST” the dominant area newspaper, once dismissively opposed to projects like the ICC which now editorializes somewhat regretfully that transit cannot substitute for new highways and reports the issue in a balanced fashion.

DEIS/MIS documents produced jointly by USDOT and the state DOT do not include any detailed traffic or revenue study, but on tolling they say that:

• travel demand estimates for the two motorway options assume tolls on all but high occupant vehicles

• tolls would be used to finance 30 to 40% of the construction cost

• tolls could be varied by time-of-day: 7c/km in peak hours, 0.7c/km non-peak for cars, with higher tolls for larger vehicles

Because the mantra of the anti-highway critics is that “transit” should be built instead of a highway this was studied in detail but rejected as an option for the DEIS/MIS since the studies showed that light rail would make no statistically noticeable dent in the demand projections for highway usage. Likewise honky TSM/TDM (enhanced ride-share etc) measures would have “negligible” impact on demand. Cross-county trips are too varied in origin and destination and the people too rich and too accustomed to personal convenience and service to go for such planners ideas. Nevertheless the alternatives that emerge provide major roles for buses and carpools as part of the motorway options. The inside pair of lanes of the 3/3 section are designated busway/HOV and elsewhere it is stated that single-occupant vehicles would pay tolls. In addition the ICC would serve the region’s Metrorail system since it would provide an excellent link to the Shady Grove terminus of the Red line which heads to downtown DC. At several points along the 10-interchange highway there would be separate inner ramps for buses/HOV, so in fact the project will provide plenty of opportunity for bus transit and carpooling (though this is not readily acknowledged by opponents.)

In addition to two toll motorway options (on different right-of-way in the eastern half), there is a major arterial alternate with signalized intersections along roughly the route of the northern motorway alternate, and an Upgrade Existing Roads Alternative (which has the evocative acronymn UERA).

Motorway least disruptive: Now the rather immutable physical laws of traffic suggest that a motorway lane carries about 2.5 times the vehicles/lane/hour at more than twice the speed and at half the accident rate of signalized and less access-controlled alternatives, whether they are upgraded roads (UERA) or a major new surface/signaled arterial. So such studies tend to point in favor of the motorway alternatives, and the more direct they are, the better the numbers. So it is for the ICC, though the conclusions are not spelled out by the study writers for to do so might be interpreted as bias. The direct motorway alternative takes fewer houses and businesses (30 and 17) than the less direct motorway (53,22) and the major arterial (45,7) and much fewer than the UERA upgrade of all the existing arterials (139, 35). That’s because the planners by and large managed to hang on to a motorway right-of-way reservation through the many years when the antis prevented construction. The rallying point for ICC opponents is the large number of north-south wild areas traversed by the east-west highway — 5 major and 2 small parkland areas constituting 7km out of the total 28km on the masterplan alignment. It is choppy country, the headwaters of Rock Creek and other streams that flow generally south into the Potomac, and these stream headwaters contain a variety of wild flora and fauna. Much has been logged once, even farmed and regrown but enough is grand old growth including stuff like “The Big Tree” an 18 foot (5m) circumference tulip poplar that these areas provide an emotional rallying point for highway opponents. A highway of cut-&-fill would be a major barrier to wildlife.

There’s a genuine clash of interest here too. Many of the residents are north-south transport oriented with jobs and shopping and friends on north-south axes. East-west traffic is so painfully slow on higgledy-piggledy broken sections of old zig-zagging rural lanes, only slightly upgraded from when this was a mix of orchards and small farms. Because of the poor quality of east-west connections the locals have not developed many links east-west. The business community however which is motivated to sense unexploited economic opportunities can see the benefits of a high quality east-west connection more clearly so it is beating the drum very strongly for the ICC. Ron Resh of the county Chamber of Commerce calls the ICC “the key element of our economic development plan,” adding “Firms need accessibility and timely access to other parts of the state, otherwise they won’t locate here. Right now there is no east-west corridor to get to a meeting in Baltimore or to BWI (airport).”

The existing motorway standard facilities are the Washington Beltway (I-495) 8-lanes (220k veh/d) running east-west, off which splay to the northwest I-270 8 to12-lanes (210k v/d) and to the northeast I-95 8-lanes (160k v/d). US-29 or Colesville Rd/Columbia Pike (6-lanes 60k v/d) is another northeast heading highway being upgraded, very slowly, from arterial to motorway standard.

Critics of the ICC say quite accurately that it will not help much in relieving congestion on the existing motorways. But by connecting I-270 and I-95, and bypassing a long busy stretch of the Beltway it will prevent conditions on those roads from getting worse than it would in its absense, and provide dramatically improved service to a considerable number of drivers. Probably only areawide time-variable road pricing can produce freer flowing traffic around the clock on the Beltway and its associated spurs. The studies show however that there are huge local benefits in an ICC that takes traffic off the slow-moving stop-&-go local roads and in improving mobility across the county. The modelling suggests 2/3 of the ICC traffic will be taken off local roads and 1/3 will be induced demand, increased trips generated by opportunities opened up by the improved east-west accessibility.

Parks: Much of the design for the ICC is enlightened, parkway-like. The wide, minimum 90m (300’) right-of-way allows a generous 22m (72’) grassed and bushed median and side slopes. Generally it is depressed, going under more cross streets than it tops, which should reduce neighborly concerns about noise. The real show-stoppers however are the parks and wildlands crossings — 5 major ones and 2 smaller. The obvious solution is come combination of land tunnels and bridging to minimize impact. Study spokesman Don Whitcher says that tunnels and bridging could be considered after a route is selected. Trouble is that the choice is being posed at this crucial stage as (1) bulldozing through the forests on fill for the highway, or (2) the preservation of the wilds — a choice that plays into the hands of the anti-highway groups.

The masterplan route involves parkland crossings of 2.3km, 2,2km, 300m, 750m, 1.3km and 2x120m. The northern alterate further upstream goes through 1.9km less park (5.2km vs 7.1km) replacing the two major crossings of the masterplan route with three of c500m, so if tree-hugger/save-the-critters opposition proves to be of show-stopper strength, an obvious extra study should be to cost out such under-park tunnels and over-park bridging compared to cut-&-fill. Glen Harper, an interested local resident told us two tunnels, and the remainder on bridging, makes most sense. He and several other locals are looking for details of environmentally responsive park crossing techniques, and are prepared to support the highway if it incorporates these. (Contact Don Whitcher ICC project office 301 989 1925 icc@mncppl.state.md.us, Glen Harper 301 982 7947)