A highway connecting Montgomery and Prince George's counties would create more traffic on the Capital Beltway, opponents of the project said yesterday, citing a state study.
A group of local and state legislators led by Montgomery County Council member Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg) said building the intercounty connector between the Interstate 270 and Interstate 95 corridors also would waste billions of dollars better spent widening smaller roads and improving public transit to ease traffic.
Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg) opposes the intercounty connector.
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State officials said Andrews and other opponents of the project overlooked another finding of the environmental impact study released last month: that an east-west highway such as the planned connector would reduce traffic on local roads.
The Maryland State Highway Administration is scheduled to begin public hearings next week about the federally required study of the 18-mile highway's potential effects on wildlife, wetlands, traffic and neighborhoods. Maryland lawmakers also will consider how to pay for the project when the General Assembly convenes Jan. 12 for its regular session. The toll road is projected to cost at least $2.4 billion, not including financing costs. The state is considering two corridor plans.
Andrews said the state's projections show what the highway project's detractors long have suspected: Rather than reducing traffic congestion, as supporters have argued, a new highway would increase daily traffic on the Beltway by thousands of vehicles by 2030. Opponents argue the new highway would increase development in the area and encourage people to drive.
According to the state study, for example, Beltway traffic at Georgia Avenue would increase in the next 25 years from 244,000 vehicles daily to 251,000 vehicles without the connector. With the highway, daily Beltway traffic would climb to 255,000.
"It defeats the notion that an ICC would somehow end gridlock," Andrews said at a news conference at the Beltway and Colesville Road in Silver Spring. "We can't afford the ICC, and we can't afford to have a highway that makes the Beltway traffic worse."
Andrews and other opponents didn't highlight another finding on the same page of the 1,400-page study: that an east-west highway outside the Beltway would cause daily traffic on nearby local roads to decrease by as many as 23,000 vehicles.
State Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan said taking vehicles off those narrow, once-rural roads would make them safer.
Flanagan said that any newfound space on the Beltway would fill up quickly and that traffic also would increase slightly because the connector would give motorists more and easier ways to get around. Drivers who now use local roads to avoid the Beltway or who skip trips because of Beltway jams could use the space left by motorists who opt for the connector to make longer trips.
A new highway could help meet "a tremendous amount of latent demand" for the Beltway, he said.
"People in Montgomery County will regain the use of the Beltway," Flanagan said.
He said the problem of continued Beltway crowding should be addressed separately and suggested widening it with express toll lanes.
State officials have said they hope to break ground on a six-lane connector highway in 2006 and open it as early as 2010.
The road has been debated intensely for 50 years, largely because opponents say it would do too much damage to the environment.
That debate is expected to continue next week, at the first of the state's four public hearings about the environmental impact study.
The hearings are scheduled Jan. 4 from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, 7601 Hanover Pkwy. in Greenbelt; Jan. 5 from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. at Gaithersburg High School, 314 S. Frederick Ave. in Gaithersburg; Jan. 8 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at James Blake High School, 300 Norwood Rd. in Silver Spring; and Jan. 22 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. also at James Blake High.
Copies of the draft of the study are available at local libraries or at www.iccstudy.org.
