Maryland’s Variable Pricing program

Maryland’s variable pricing program has honed in on three early demonstration projects: (1) US-50 HOT lanes (2) I-270 HOT lanes (3) Chesapeake Bay bridge summer season variable tolls. All three will start with simple eye-ballable hang-tags as first used on I-15 in San Diego, and hopefully progress to electronic tolling. US-50 is the major highway out east of the Washington DC area, branching off from New York Av NE. The HOT lanes will go 10km (6mi) from the Beltway out to US-301, presently a 2x3-lanes motorway that forms the major route to Annapolis, the state capital, and the eastern shore. HOV lanes are already funded and are mostly being located on a lefthand (inside) shoulder. Projections show very low likely utilization – these things get built because they are the only stuff allowable under clean air regs. So the toll buy-in will fill expected spare pavement. “Saving HOV’s butt,” as AAA’s Lon Anderson puts it.

I-270 is a different matter. A 200k veh/day facility it has demonstrated HOV potential. It regularly runs 1300 HOV veh/hr in peak hours, and at some point may have to go from HOV2 to HOV3, and like the Houston HOV lanes will find toll buy-in a way of managing utilization of the lanes to a reasonable volume. The study suggests a phased upgrade of the facility with direct connector ramps and other improvements. The I-270 HOV lanes have been operating for several years, 20km (12mi) southbound from I-370 to the Beltway, and northbound 30km (19mi) from the Beltway to MD-210 in Clarksburg.

The Chesapeake Bay bridge project involves a substantial toll differential in the summertime designed to encourage a portion of motorists presently jamming the bridge on Friday afternoons to travel after 9pm. The bridge operated by the Maryland Transp Auth only tolls eastbound at present but with ET, it may go to two-way tolls. Political problem for the MDTA is that it presently has a 60% discount for frequent users, which is difficult to reconcile with congestion pricing.

A number of other projects may be revisited for variable pricing later. These include the Maryland portion of the Beltway and I-95 north and south of Baltimore, MD-210 and the two Baltimore harbor tunnels. Interestingly the MDTA says there’s presently no congestion to price on the two harbor tunnels. ET by itself will eliminate congestion, they say, for the time being.

Also of note: the Maryland team has abandoned the fed’s term ‘value pricing’ and renamed them ‘variable pricing’ projects. Value pricing is a vague term, they say, and fails to convey the nature of the projects. They hope variable pricing will be more easily understood.