Posted on 10/17/2018 7:42:33 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Maryland voters narrowly oppose adding express toll lanes to widen three of the state’s most congested highways, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll finds, highlighting public skepticism about one of Gov. Larry Hogan’s signature transportation plans.
The centerpiece of the Republican governor’s proposal — a $9 billion project to add four lanes apiece to the Capital Beltway, Interstate 270 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway — is even opposed by voters in the Washington suburbs, whom the plan is supposed to help. More than half of voters in the D.C. suburbs prefer to invest in public transit rather than building more roads.
The poll finds 44 percent of registered voters statewide favor adding express toll lanes, while 50 percent oppose them. Nearly twice as many strongly oppose the idea as strongly support it, 33 percent to 18 percent.
In follow-up interviews, even voters who said they would like to see roads widened to relieve severe congestion — which slows traffic to 15 mph or less for several hours each day on some highways — don’t want to pay tolls for that relief. Several said they fear a repeat of Northern Virginia’s experience, where tolls on the nearly year-old 66 Express Lanes have exceeded $45 at times to travel the 10-mile stretch.
Hogan’s proposal to address gridlock in the Washington suburbs would add managed toll lanes through a public-private partnership. Tolls would fluctuate based on traffic — costing more when it is heavier and less when it is lighter — both to ensure traffic remains free-flowing and to encourage commuters to seek other options, such as transit. The existing free lanes would remain.
The plan is undergoing a complex federal review, including a study of whether to transfer the B-W Parkway from federal to state control.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
PING!
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
Dont worry. The govt will find a way to do it anyhowl.
Am I reading this right? FOUR additional toll lanes in the Beltway? And the BW Parkway?? That’d double or more the size of those highways.
I’d want to hear more of the reasoning for such dramatic expansion, especially for toll lanes.
Widening roads does NOT relieve congestion. Longer off ramps and sympathetic traffic signals do.
Let me tell you why it’s opposed.
No, faithful Republican FRers, it’s not simply “liberals in MD”.
We already HAVE these kinds of “lanes”. They are NOT just “lanes”, they are full-throated separate roadways, requiring massive amounts of space and massive structural additions/modifications.
The I95 they mention just floored me when I first passed there a few years ago (apparently, I hadn’t ridden by White Marsh in a long time). What a huge waste of concrete - and, God forbid you accidentally go down the “wrong” lane? I can just imagine all the thru-travelers getting confused and ending up in the wrong part. Good Lord.
So, you’re not simply adding tolls and a nice lane - you’re adding major infrastructure, confusion, and deleting yet more land significantly.
See my post. It is NOT “widening roads”. It’s as if an entire new highway was being built.
I like it!
That’s a great point. The road in question is the cause of massive traffic tie ups on the DC Beltway every day, just to get onto 270. I’ve never taken 270 but I imagine it breaks up a bit. By widening the exit ramp and entrance ramp with several miles of merge lanes, that might solve much of the problem.
There’s an express toll road on I-95 north of Baltimore. It barely gets used and I’d bet that the majority are government vehicles and company cars. (I drive a company car and refuse to use it.)
The additional tolls are always a problem. But-—IMO, there is another problem that is bothering lots of voters.
NO ONE knows where the toll money actually goes. NO ONE is getting public information about this breakdown of those revenues & how that money is spent.
The same problem is applied to the Lottery money. Keep in mind that the Lottery jackpots are only 1/2 of the sales income from the tickets.
In California, 1/2 of the sales income from the California Lottery is supposed to go to schools. That Lottery started in 1986. 32 years later, I have NEVER seen ANY information about where that money goes-—ht gets given to ‘the schools’ & how it is spent.
When I ask others, it stops them in their tracks. NO ONE I have asked has ever heard ny such info, either.
I not against the Lotteries——BUT I believe that the public has the right to know WHERE that $$$$ is going-—along with toll $$$$.
\Comments???
I can get behind tolls on bridges and tunnels if they are reasonable. $8 to cross a bridge is insane ripoff.
Maryland has several toll bridges and tunnels. It’s $4-8 a shot.
To go from my house to Delaware is $8 for a bridge, $4 to enter Delaware, $4 to leave. I don’t remember how much the bridge is to NJ, then there’s the NJ Turnpike,
And by the time construction is complete, they will need to build even more.
10-lbs of crap... meet Maryland, your 5-lb bag.
Disappears into the general fund.
It is a fool's game to try to cram more cars into DC and the inner ring suburbs. There is no place to put them. We can build faster funnels in the exurbs, but drivers will still hit the same congestion as they approach the urban core.
The solution is to live closer to your job. The suburbs have to accept densification, especially along the metro lines. DC itself has already cleared the mental hurdles on this. We have gentrification on steroids, and everything new is being built/rebuilt with multi-use neighborhoods and multi-modal transportation in mind. If people want to live in Urbana or Haymarket or Stafford County, fine. That's their prerogative. But they need to buy a clue, and start to ride the train.
I have no idea if Amazon will bring HQ2 to the DC area, but if it does, Bezos would be a perfect imbecile to build another suburban office park and add to the sprawl and congestion. If Amazon comes here, it should commit to the city. If it's not willing to do that, go somewhere else.
So basically we are setting up a grudge match between private toll road operators and the public transit lobby over who gets their mitts on $9 bil in government spending.
The cheapest thing to do is get rid of HOV.
Public transportation that few will use and where gangs of feral urban yutes will run amok robbing and assaulting at will, and without any response from local law enforcement. Stupid people get stupid solutions.
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