Sierra Club wearies of anti-tollroad campaign in Maryland

The Inter County Connector in Montgomery County Maryland is about a third built and contracts for most of the rest of construction of the 19 miles of 6 lane tollroad are let. But diehard environmentalist opponents of this major addition to the highway network north of Washington DC still pretend to soldier on. The Sierra Club's Metro DC page still features the same old complaints, for example that the new tollroad will "promote sprawl development."

That has an old-fashioned ring to it at a time when development has ground to an almost complete halt thanks to the financial crisis of 2007 onward, and when it is considered of great social importance by the likes of the Obama administration and most of the US Congress to revive development.

In any case sprawl development, as the Sierra Clubbers term it, was going gangbusters in Maryland long before the ICC began, being sponsored in large part by those great Washington DC sponsored banks Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae. It was their subsidized subprime lending in the 1990s and earlier in the decade that propelled development way north beyond the route of the ICC.

Also odd is the Sierra Club's statement that "Now Gov Ehrlich is pushing to make matters worse..."

Now?

Maryland ceased to have a Gov Ehrlich in January 2007, 27 months ago, since which time a Gov O'Malley (Democrat) has been signing contracts to build the ICC.

Ah, but the most stubborn anti-tollroaders look to be still able to "say No to waste... and Yes to real solutions" (trolleys, bike paths etc).

So they want to "Sign the No ICC petition".

Let's click on the link to pretend to be a petitioner against the awful road... and behold we're told: "The system cannot find the path specified."

True, true.

TOLLROADSnews 2009-04-06