[congestion] experienced by motorists on the Capital Beltway, I-270, or I-95 within the Study Area." Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), ICC Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), Vol. III, 1997. |
The real story of this year's election season ballyhoo about the ICC is that with or without this highway and with or without the "Go Montgomery Plan," traffic congestion will be worse in the future. Traffic on the Beltway is projected to increase by about 40 percent by the year 2020 with or without the ICC. Every ICC alternative would increase traffic on one or more stretches of I-95 in the ICC Study Area.
Proponents of this boondoggle often claim that it will reduce travel time countywide by 24 percent. What do the official studies say? In 1997, the ICC Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) modeled 529 countywide trips, which saved only 2 percent of travel time with the ICC. However, the proponents pick only 11 of these trips to come up with their fiction. And of these 11 trips, only one of the very few that go the full length of the ICC showed significant time savings while the time savings realized in the other trips were miniscule, for example, the ICC only saved 3 minutes in a trip from West Gaithersburg to Wheaton.
The ICC would not significantly relieve traffic through local intersections. The DEIS modeled evening rush hour traffic volumes at 54 intersections within the Study Area, and of these only 15 would improve their operating conditions while more than half of the 39 remaining intersections would be operating at the worst congestion levels. Moreover, the DEIS found that between 70 to 80 percent of all the travel for each of the ICC alignments studied (Northern, Master and Midcounty) would be made at very congested conditions during the rush hours. The DEIS even recognized that traffic flow through the intersections modeled could actually improve without the ICC if, among other measures, strategic improvements are made at the intersections to increase the capacity, and if local land use policies change the development patterns from the patterns that were assumed in the ICC study.
More recently, the Montgomery County Transportation Policy Task Force found that changes in development patterns to balance the location of jobs and housing significantly improved countywide travel time. The Task Force tested two scenarios for the years 2025 and 2050: a Transit-Balanced Land Use Scenario without the ICC, and a Roads Scenario with the ICC and no land use changes. The table below shows that countywide travel time was better in the scenario without the ICC.
| Countywide travel time saved over the Base Case Scenario (in minutes) | ||||
| Mode of transport | 2025 Roads Scenario (ICC) | 2025 Transit Land Use | 2050 Roads Scenario (ICC) | 2050 Transit Land Use |
| Auto Transit | 0.46 1.39 | 0.48 4.32 | -0.15 0.07 | 0.13 3.27 |
A favorite myth of the ICC proponents is that it will dramatically improve access to the airports. The Task Force tested various highway networks with and without the ICC and found that the ICC does very little to improve auto travel to the airports. For example, the ICC does not change the auto travel time for trips from Wheaton to BWI or from Silver Spring to Dulles but a trip from Dulles to Rockville actually takes more time with the ICC.
The source of our problem with traffic congestion is not a lack of road projects like the ICC or the Techway, but the abundance of land use policies, subsidies and prejudices that have worked to the advantage of the automobile and the disadvantage of transit, and the lack of visionary planning for the sustainable development of our county. How bad will our traffic have to become before we wake up to the reality that we need to seriously invest in other forms of transportation and implement land use policies that promote sustainable development to preserve our environment and strengthen rather than destroy our communities?