QUICK ACTION ALERT: May 1st Deadline to Counter MDOT’s Latest Outrage

Here we are again! MDOT makes a stealth end-run around the public, gets caught, and — assuming we take fast action — gets sharp pushback from those of our elected officials who will choose to put the public good first.

Quick version of what’s going on:

  • Attempted end-run: MDOT pushed toll lanes for the entire Beltway into the Metropolitan Washington Transportation Planning Board’s (TPB) long-range plan, even though the TPB didn’t vote for that.

  • How MDOT got caught: Our coalition members spotted MDOT’s item buried in the TPB plan and made the info public.

  • How we affect the outcome: We have until Sunday, May 1 to submit comments telling the TPB and our Montgomery County elected officials to reject the entire toll-lane scheme, which was always going to include the Beltway.

Use this quick tool created by the Sierra Club, our valued partner, to send your message to the TPB and County officials. Add your own words to the pre-loaded text to grab attention.

Thank you for taking action!! Governor Hogan, MDOT, Transurban and their allies never expected an opposition so determined and so armed with the facts as all of us, working together.

 

Watch for next week’s DontWiden270 newsletter, and please encourage friends and neighbors to join our mailing list at DontWiden270.org.

Federal Agencies Can Stop the Toll Lanes! Tell Our Members of Congress to Make It Happen!

ACTION ALERT

Write to your members of Congress today. Tell them to give one clear message to the Federal Agencies that will decide the fate of the toll lane project: NO TOLL LANES ON I-270/I-495!

 

Click here to send your message directly to Senators Van Hollen and Cardin and Representative Raskin or Trone.

 

Read below for “why now”, the bigger picture, and quick message ideas. Then see new reasons to oppose the toll lanes, including MDOT’s recent letter to the City of Rockville, Virginia Gov. Youngkin’s toll-lane taunting of Marylanders, and hilarious new takes on the toll-lane project’s most notorious fails.

“Uncongested managed lanes adjacent to congested general purpose lanes.” From Federal Highway Administration report, Sec. 1.0

The right time to reach out to Congress…is now!

The toll-lane project can't be finalized until its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is approved by the Federal Highway Administration. MDOT and Transurban are rushing to get the incomplete, inaccurate EIS greenlighted this fall so they can sign final contracts while Gov. Hogan is still in office.

With the project increasingly on the U.S. government's radar, it's time to send thousands of constituent messages to our members of Congress, urging them to reject MDOT's project.

 

The big-picture reason for pivoting to Congress

I-270 and I-495 belong to the public. They connect us to the people and places that make up our lives. MDOT and their contractor Transurban want to privatize our highways and control how we and our children and grandchildren will connect for the next 60 years.

 

Together, we can stop this takeover and make sure transportation projects support the public good. You’ve sent waves of powerful messages before, including an astounding 5,000 comments to MDOT about the toll lane project’s wholly deficient environmental impact statements.

 

We need to mobilize again, this time to energize our members of Congress. We need them to amplify our messages and carry them to Federal Agencies that can stop the toll lanes.

 

 

Plenty of choices about what to say

 

Click here to tell your members of Congress why you oppose the toll lanes. You can use or edit the prepopulated text. Or you can give your own thoughts in your own words. Speak from your heart. Share your anger and fears. Any approach you take will work.

 

You can write to our Senators and Representatives about:

  • Sky-high rush hour tolls up to $50 each way.

  • Increased congestion due to new and worsening bottlenecks.

  • Decreased number of free lanes.

  • Destruction of the $132,000,000 improvements that have eliminated most congestion on lower I-270.

  • Five years of construction misery.

  • Decreased safety due to lack of inside shoulders; crowding of trucks into fewer free lanes; dangerous merge points.

  • Social, economic, and environmental injustice.

  • Enormous environmental damage at a time of climate emergency.

  • Significant loss of tree cover, including in our parks.

  • Huge financial risk to taxpayers; failure of MDOT to conduct/share cost analyses.

  • Entire Beltway back on the table as a future phase of the toll-lane plan.

  • Fatally flawed traffic modeling.

  • MDOT’s refusal to conduct adequate air/water analyses or stipulate mitigations.

  • Refusal to share key legal documentation, including the Capital Beltway Accord between VA and MD, and contractor agreements.

 

For more information on toll-lane topics, see “Note on References” below.

 

 

The City of Rockville’s powerful letter to MDOT

The Rockville Mayor and Council just sent a masterful response to MDOT’s request for the City to agree that “the impacts of the [toll lane project] on Rockmead Park, Woottons Mill Park, and Rockville Senior Center and Park, which are owned and managed by the City of Rockville, are minor…”

 

The City did not agree. Instead, the Mayor and Council said, among their many other strong, smart statements, “…the City of Rockville would experience by far the largest proportion of the Proposed 1-495/1-270 Project-related property impacts of any community…” and “We will not repeat our prior comments here. But we incorporate them in larger context of, at a minimum, ensuring impacts to the City of Rockville are fully recognized, analyzed, and mitigated.”

 

Thank you, Mayor Newton and Council Members Ashton, Feinberg, Myles, and Pierzchala.

 

 

Virginia Gov. shovels dirt and tells the truth about MDOT’s Toll-Lanes

The toll-lane happy talk between the Governors of MD and VA may be over. At last week’s groundbreaking for more Northern VA toll lanes -- lanes to be built in part and inexplicably by Maryland -- Gov. Youngkin shoveled actual dirt with the U.S. head of toll giant Transurban and addressed the following toll-lane remarks to Gov. Hogan (who wasn’t there):

“Yes, we’re going to take jobs from Maryland into Virginia. Yes, we’re going to compete to grow faster than Maryland. And yes, Gov. Hogan, we need you to finish your side of this project.”

 

Unfortunately, our governor is rushing to do just that.

 

 

“OOPS! Lanes”: A funny version that’s a lot truer than MDOT’s

Here’s a whole new approach to pointing out fatal flaws in the toll lane project. With MDOT now calling toll-lanes “OP Lanes,” the Maryland Transit Opportunities Coalition, our valued partner, created “OOPS! Lanes, a hilarious and most instructive website. Check out these samples:

Note on references for toll-lane issues

The most authoritative compilation of analyses and citations about the toll-lane project is the Sierra Club’s official comments on the project’s Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement. The document was written by nationally known legal and technical experts with input from local advocates and signed by our coalition of 50+ advocacy groups and the City of Rockville. The comments provide not only the basis for future legal action, but fuel to spur our grassroots efforts. For detailed discussions and supporting evidence, click on specific issues in the document’s table of contents (pp. vi-ix).

 

 

To support grassroots efforts

DontWiden270.org does not accept donations. But we strongly support the work of our valued partners. If you’d like to help with the costs of outreach materials about the toll lanes, please consider a donation to Citizens Against Beltway Expansion. Go to https://www.cabe495.com/. THANK YOU!

 

Smoke and Mirrors and Toll Lanes

You might have seen a reasonable looking petition online recently: “We are tired of sitting in traffic,” it says. “Sign our petition to support Traffic Relief NOW!”

It’s sleight of hand. The sponsoring organization is led by a former spokesman for Larry Hogan and backed by big corporations, contracting companies, and lobbyists pushing the I-495/I-270 P3.

It’s like so many things connected to the toll-lane project – what we’re told and what’s actually happening are not the same. A few examples (you can read more about them after the Action Item):

  • MDOT insists safety is a toll-lane project priority, but our story, “Four Feet of Pavement and Plastic Stalks” offers evidence to the contrary.

  • In the name of faux “congestion relief”, MDOT plans to destroy the real congestion relief it’s already brought to lower I-270.

  • The winning bidder for the I-495/I-270 P3 contract provided unrealistically low construction cost estimates, according to claims made in court by a failed bidder. The judge ruled against MDOT, must review the substance of the challenger’s claims.

 

Action Item

 The fate of the toll-lane project is tied to whoever wins the gubernatorial primaries on June 28th and the general election on November 8th. We want a new governor who will reject the harmful P3 and champion transportation that meets real needs.

According to a smart new Baltimore Sun editorial, the election should “be the final word on whether Marylanders support or oppose” the toll lane project. “Given the project’s various controversies including strong opposition in Montgomery County (including from the majority of its General Assembly delegation)…it really ought to be put to referendum, which is exactly what the governor’s race represents.”

To help clarify your voting choices, jump on the opportunity to hear most of the gubernatorial candidates answer critically important questions – likely including one on the toll-lane project – at back-to-back Climate Forums on Tuesday, March 8 and Wednesday, March 9, 7-8:30 p.m. The events will be streamed on Facebook. Find details, links and candidate line-ups here in Maryland Matters.

Even Comptroller Peter Franchot, the decider who decided to vote for the boondoggle, says he’ll be at the Wednesday forum.

  

It’s 4 feet of pavement + plastic stalks. MDOT calls this safe??

 You know from our last newsletter that MDOT’s proposed toll-lane design takes away the inside shoulder from the free lanes. Unsafe!

Now look at another source of danger in MDOT’s proposal. All that will separate the free lanes from the toll lanes is 4 feet of pavement and a row of plastic stalks (called candlestick posts). The stalks are already deployed on I-495 in Northern Virginia (see the pic and caption below, both from this Federal Highway Administration Report, Sec. 5.3). MDOT is proposing the same “barrier” design for I-270/I-495 and using the same contractor.

The really bad news: the Federal Highway Administration Report says, “Plastic posts will not stop an errant vehicle from crashing through the barrier” (Sec. 1.3).

Figure 48. Photo. The I-495 Express Lanes are operated by a private firm and are separated from the publicly owned and heavily congested general purpose lanes by a 4 foot buffer with a plastic post barrier.

Imagine this configuration on MD’s I-270 and I-495. At rush hour, the free lanes will fill with cars, trucks, and big rigs. Just 4 ft. away, in the sparsely occupied toll lanes, drivers who paid sky-high tolls will be moving faster. Vehicles from either side could plow across the 4 ft. divide because of avoidance maneuvers, inattention, going too fast for conditions, and more (ATSSA: Guardrails and Barriers).

 

MDOT solved congestion on lower I-270; now it wants to “un-solve” it

MDOT’s P3 program will tear down the highly successful Innovative Congestion Management Project (ICMP) on lower I-270 and replace it with a toll-lane design that removes lanes and is guaranteed to worsen congestion (pp. 18-40).

Since 2017, MDOT’s $132,000,000 ICMP has used roadway and safety improvements and innovative technology to nearly eliminate congestion on I-270 below the northern bottleneck at I-370.

Instead of touting the achievement, MDOT falsely claims lower I-270 is still in dire need of congestion relief. Seven months worth of compelling evidence says otherwise.

Since July 2021, independent daily traffic recording – using screenshots of the traffic overlay on the Google Traffic App during a.m. and p.m. rush hours – shows how well ICMP is working.

Barring accidents, storms, or roadwork, I-270 below I-370 consistently moves at or above the speed limit (shown as “green” in the image).
I-270 north of the I-370 bottleneck consistently shows moderate or severe congestion (shown as "orange" or "red" in the image).
And I-495 and I-95, including the locations of Virginia’s toll lanes, consistently show moderate or severe congestion.

There’s no clearer example of the waste and futility of the toll-lane P3 than this planned destruction of a successful program to make room for one that won’t work.

You can read more about the thousands of daily traffic-recording images, and find additional information and links about ICMP here (p. 63-68).

 

Toll-lane project faces new source of delay

A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge recently ruled against MDOT in an appeal of the toll-lane contract award by a losing bidder. MDOT must now go back and consider the challenge on its merits, not simply on its timing. A headline captures the impact: “Blockbuster Ruling Imperils Hogan’s I-495/I-270 Toll Lanes Timeline.”

Per the Washington Post, the losing bidder claims the Transurban team’s winning proposal “assumed unrealistically low construction costs that could result in massive delays and cost overruns…” If the challenger is right, we know that the money to cover those delays and overruns will come out of taxpayers’ pockets.