MDOT Grabs Another $45M from Taxpayers for Toll-Lane Boondoggle! Write to MDOT by 11/15: U.S. Law Says Our Comments Count!

 Read all about our critically important action item right after this shocking, $45M news.

 

That’s our public money!

MDOT keeps claiming the P3 comes at no net cost to taxpayers. But the Board of Public Works just voted 2-1 (the Governor and Comptroller “for”) to add $45M to a $90M project support contract.

And who did Hogan and Franchot blame? The public!

Brace yourself, and then read the transcript of the shameless pre-vote discussion. Only Treasurer Nancy Kopp defended the public interest.

 

Action Item: Submit your SDEIS public comment! Deadline is November 15

 

The public has just a week left to submit comments on the P3 Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS).

MDOT and the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) carefully track the number of comments received and whether they’re favorable/unfavorable to the toll lanes. By law, MDOT must reply to substantive comments.

Write now! The deadline is 11:59 on November 15.

Be sure to start your comment with: “I support the no-build option and oppose the I-495/I-270 toll-lane project.”

To submit your comment, do any of the following (click here to access all instructions):

Jeffrey T. Folden, P.E., DBIA
Director, I-495 & I-270 P3 Office Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration
707 North Calvert Street
Mail Stop P-601, Baltimore, MD 21202

 

Our valued partner Citizens Against Beltway Expansion (CABE) created an excellent summary of SDEIS Points and Deficiencies to guide your writing. Pick your preferred topics -- CABE’s summary has details on all these important subjects:

  • Toll lanes won’t improve daily commutes

  • Taxpayer subsidies

  • Relocating utilities

  • Pollution and global warming

  • Harm to parks and other greenspaces

  • Selected impacts on Rockville

  • Environmental justice issues

  • Failure to study alternatives to toll lanes

 

Will SDEIS public comment period be extended?

 It’s a nail biter. Some very smart elected officials sent powerful requests for an extension, but so far MDOT hasn’t budged. Read the persuasive letters to MDOT and FHA from:

Sometimes all you need is a picture

Look at what MDOT and Transurban have planned for us at Cabin John Parkway and the Beltway, should the toll-lane scheme be implemented. Imagine driving this. Or living nearby. And remember that the SDEIS showed virtually no gains in rush hour drive times after all this is built.

Purple = Toll-lanes
Orange = Flying overhead ramps
Yellow = General purpose “free” lanes
Hot Pink = Limits of disturbance, which our experts say are underestimated
Boxed comments = MDOTs own “identifiers”

Toll-lane traffic model just found to be invalid, illogical, and wrong (a lot like the rest of the project). We’ve got til 11/15 to tell MDOT: “We’re on to you!”

The absurdities of MDOT’s traffic forecasting claims (adding toll lanes in Bethesda ends traffic jams near Annapolis??) were just uncovered by our valued partner, the Maryland Transit Opportunities Coalition. Accurate traffic forecasts are critically important. If they can’t be trusted, then MDOT’s Supplementary Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS) -- the public’s only means of evaluating the P3 project -- can’t be trusted either. DontWiden270.org and other grassroots groups are urging the Federal Highway Administration to require a do-over.

Right now, though, we’ve got an 11/15 deadline to submit public comments on the SDEIS. And public comments matter! You’ll find commenting tips and details below, including a handy guide to toll-lane facts that should convince any skeptic that MDOT’s up to no good.

*** Important Action Item ***

Register for the Maryland Sierra Club’s virtual call-to-action event on legal strategy for fighting the toll lanes: Tuesday, October 26 at 7 p.m. You’ll be welcomed by former MD Governor Parris Glendening, hear an update on the P3 project, and learn how you can support the Sierra Club’s plans to stop the toll lanes through the work of the Maryland Smart Growth Defense Fund.

Much of the fight against the P3 has to be waged on legal and procedural grounds, and that requires smart, effective legal and subject matter expertise. We’re grateful the Sierra Club is working to find and leverage that expertise. The people they engage do some pro bono work, but this effort still takes considerable funds.

Please support the Maryland Smart Growth Defense Fund. It helps resource the legal strategy shared by our coalition of advocacy groups and is entirely devoted to stopping the toll-lane expansion.

Comments on the SDEIS needed! Please submit yours by 11/15. Numbers matter!

As of this writing, MDOT has granted no extension of the 45-day public comment period for the SDEIS. The current deadline is November 15.

You have the following commenting options. Click on the links below for specific instructions, or access all instructions here:

The 8,000+ page SDEIS, issued by MDOT on October 1, was supposed to give detailed information about the impact of the American Legion Bridge/I-495/I-270 project on the physical, cultural, and human environment. But the SDEIS, like the DEIS before it, lacks adequate information, analysis, and mitigations in critically important areas.

To inspire your SDEIS comments, refer to the handy guide below. You’ll also find a list of additional issues you might like to include.

A handy guide to what’s wrong with the toll lane project

Staying on top of the I-495/I-270 P3 is hard. So many moving parts and rabbit holes, so many intentional obstacles. To inspire your SDEIS comments and help you cut through the noise, we’ve put together this very abbreviated guide to refer to and share, especially with those who still need convincing that the toll lanes won’t work.

What We Know - The project’s traffic model lacks credibility.

How We Know - Analysis of traffic forecast cites pervasive errors.

What We Know - Hogan prevented an independent financial review of the P3 agreement.

How We Know - He denied State Treasurer’s funding request for financial and legal analysis (p. 6).

What We Know - The toll lanes will not help congestion.

How We Know - Free lanes will go only 7 mph for long stretches in PM rush. Bottlenecks get worse.

What We Know - The tolls will be sky-high. *

How We Know - Apply the cost escalation rate (p. 36) to the 2020 maximum toll rates (p. 22) and get $50 tolls to go 12 miles in 2026.

What We Know - Toll-setting reflects the skewed population in a key study.

How We Know - Only 27% of invited participants in this study had household incomes under $100k (p. 57).

What We Know - The full Beltway is back in the plan.

How We Know - See MDOT’s new project map.

* If you want to comment on those sky-high tolls one more time, you have til 10/28 to call the MD Transportation Authority at 855-701-1977 and leave a message; or click here to use the comment form.

Here are more topics you might like to include in your SDEIS comments

These issues are either inadequately addressed or not addressed at all in the SDEIS:

  • Impact of telework on congestion

  • Impact of induced demand

  • Increased traffic on local roads

  • Impact of 5 years of construction, and related disruptions, noise, pollution

  • Unspecified/underestimated Limits of Disturbance

  • Necessity of relocating utilities – and determining who pays

  • Air quality/air emissions, including particulate matter and the cumulative impacts of greenhouse gases

  • Climate change analysis

  • Stormwater management and water quality monitoring

  • Issues of environmental justice

  • Significant loss of tree cover, park land, and wildlife

  • Loss of portions of homeowner property (note that MDOT has said no homes will be taken for Phase 1 South)

 
 

MDOT Issues 8,000 Page Doc, Puts Entire Beltway Back in the Toll-Lane Mix, but Hopes to Distract Us with 3¢ and a Bit of Rebranding

  • Despite all the promises from the Governor, MDOT Secretary Greg Slater, and Peter Franchot, the Beltway toll lanes are back in the P3 plan. For starters, where will MDOT put them? In tunnels, as MDOT’s private partner Transurban does in Australia?

  • The State tolling authority announced a one-and-done change to the onerous proposed tolls for I-495/I-270. The Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) will reduce the rock bottom, middle-of-the-night minimum toll rate by 3¢. Yes, 3¢. No changes to the $50 rush hour tolls.

  • On October 1, MDOT issued the massive Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS) for the project’s Phase 1 South. The public and officials have just 45 days to review, analyze, and comment on 8,231 pages.

  • And then there’s MDOT’s brand new name for those lanes you pay money to drive on.

You can read about these developments, below, following this action item.

Action Item

Sign up for the October 13 CABE Town Hall meeting: For insight, updates, and all the encouragement you need to keep fighting the P3 project, register for the virtual Town Hall led by our valued partner Citizens Against Beltway Expansion (CABE). You’ll hear from elected officials -- including Rockville’s Mayor Bridget Newton -- advocates and grassroots activists. Click here for the registration form and all the Town Hall details.



The toll-lane project will include the Beltway…again

Our September 19 newsletter quoted the CEO of Transurban saying his company would encircle Washington, DC, with toll lanes. The very next day, MDOT posted a revised project map, confirming what the CEO had already announced. The Beltway will get toll lanes if MDOT and Transurban get their way.

From the OP Lanes Website homepage

From the OP Lanes Website homepage

This map should be an eye-opener for every politician who acted on the belief that the Beltway would be spared, and for every person who trusts what the Governor, Secretary Slater, and Comptroller Franchot tell us about the project.

The map says we and our elected officials must stop this P3 before the State hands over our public infrastructure, transportation policy, and options to Transurban, the Australian conglomerate that makes no secret of its ambitions. There are smarter, fairer, better ways to improve regional transportation. This P3 is about the worst choice our State can make.

Need more proof? Look at the spaghetti-mess MDOT and Transurban have planned for the already notorious northern bottleneck on I-270 at I-370. (The purple lines are the I-270 express lane project. The number of lanes is indicated. See the original schematic here, p. 6.)

MDOT has rebranded the I-495/I-270 toll lanes!

If a State Department of Transportation can shoot itself in the foot while giving itself a makeover, that’s what MDOT just did. On September 20, MDOT debuted a new name and image for the P3 project: OP Lanes!

OP stands for “Opportunity” and “Options.” See the new OP Lanes website! See the new OP Lanes video, featuring the cutest puppy and happy children running through the grass.

Our response to MDOT: Call it an OP Lane or a Golden Goose lane, or whatever you want. It’s a toll lane. An unwanted, congestion-worsening, exorbitantly priced, backward-looking, environment-harming toll lane.

Faced with vast inequities, MDTA congratulates itself on 3¢ toll rate reduction

The MDTA Board can’t claim it didn’t know what was at stake when it announced that P3 rush hour tolls would stay sky-high, and that the yearly escalation rate of 2.1% above the annual consumer price index wouldn’t change.

When the public spoke during the toll setting comment period earlier this year, the Board heard in detail about the harm the proposed rates would cause: the $50 rush hour tolls; the social/racial/economic injustice of the regressive tax; the increased congestion and decreased safety in the reduced number of free lanes; and on and on. See powerful examples of the public testimony here.

The Board’s response was to declare they’d “listened to the public” and reduced the minimum toll rate by 3¢/mile but kept all other rates unchanged because that “best suited the financial viability of the project.”


The SDEIS has over 8,000 pages. The public is getting a first look now.

MDOT posted the federally-mandated SDEIS for the P3 project on October 1. This is the last Environmental Impact Statement that federal agencies evaluating the project will review. It’s also the last one the public will see before a Final EIS is issued – and MDOT’s not saying when that will be.

The public needs much more than 45 days to review this document. That’s why the Sierra Club and 44 other organizations, including DontWiden270.org, sent a letter to the Federal Highway Administration and MDOT, requesting an extension of the comment period.

We’ll keep you updated on the contents of the SDEIS and let you know how to make your voice heard during this critical review. You can access MDOT’s instructions on providing feedback here.

As for what happened to the crush of DEIS public comments submitted ahead of last November’s deadline, MDOT posted this dismissive statement on the OP Lane site: “MDOT SHA and FHWA continue to consider the nearly 3,000 comments received as part of the DEIS and public hearings held last fall.”

Some early analysis of the SDEIS

  • The Washington Post finds evidence in the SDEIS that congestion would not improve with the toll lanes.

  • The Maryland Transit Opportunities Coalition cites blatant errors in the SDEIS traffic analysis.

  • WTOP says, “The [SDEIS] showed minimal improvement for driving from the Capital Beltway to Interstate 370 in Rockville, with the addition of the toll lanes improving the drive by 1 mph.”