Council chief backs modified I-270 plan
Maryland Politics Watch reports that Montgomery County Council President Phil Andrews has come out in favor of a more modest, somewhat less expensive plan to widen Interstate 270 -- the project this blog has dubbed the Sprawlway for its likely effect on northern Montgomery, Frederick County and places even farther from Washington.
Andrews is calling on his colleagues to seek construction of two additional lanes on I-270 betweeen Shady Grove and Frederick. He would make them reversible, carrying southbound traffic in the morning and northbound in the evening -- and would finance them partly by charging tolls on singly-occupied vehicles in the fast lanes.
To give credit where it's due, Andrews' proposal is less egregious than the county planning board's call to spend $4.6 billion to add two express toll lanes in each direction. That gold-plated proposal would be the most costly transportation project ever undertaken in Maryland by far.
Andrews' proposal is more on the order of silver-plated and earns the title of Sprawlway Lite. It would still be enormously expensive and it would still contribute to the outward expansion of McMansions. Also, the proposal would continue to concentrate growth in an already saturated corridor far from Baltimore instead of leveraging the Intercounty Connector to bring more growth to the center of the state.
Anyone proposing such a project up front must also acknowledge that the tolls for those express lanes are likely to make the charges proposed for the ICC look like a bargain. They also can't relieve congestion too much, because the state can't make money if there are no traffic jams to escape.
Andrews proposes that constructiion of the Corridor Cities Transitway, a mass transit extension of the Metro Red Line through the I-270 corridor to Clarksburg, take precedence. He is urging colleagues to endorse Bus Rapid Transit as the mode of travel, a potentially controversial but fiiscallly prudent choice.
Going forward with that project separately from the I-270 widening is wise because the latter will be a hard sell to the rest of the state. Maryland faces a long list of much-needed toll-financed projects to preserve or replace exiisting infrastructure. Any scheme to widen I-270 would have to get in line.
The Montgomery Council could act on Andrews' recommendation as early as Tuesday.
Comments
Our cities are suffering major problems and yet we're abandoning them, letting their infrastructure falling apart and not giving them proper mass transit--but, we can propose multi billion dollar projects to widen highways which will end up leading to more congestion from sprawl.
Rather than widening I270 we could actually build the Red Line in Baltimore and probably do all of the northern section of the Yellow Line through Towson. Maryland could finance an extension of the WMATA Red Line and could massively improve MARC service bringing more of that DC job money back to Baltimore. We have a state that would rather build new houses on farmland than redevelop the abandoned houses in many of our cities which already have sewer, water, gas lines in place.
Posted by: Fritz | November 10, 2009 11:05 AM
Relax, it would be financed by tolls. Also this is a long range plan for the corridor that will be built in phases, much like the Baltimore Beltway widening.
Posted by: Brian | November 10, 2009 4:03 PM
Is there a cost estimate for widening just the 2-lane portion of I-270 to 3 lanes each way? The $4 billion cost is for the entire corridor from I-370 north to US 15, but most of the section in Montgomery county is already 4 or more lanes in each direction and this widening would provide seperate roadways for free and tolled traffic and seperate ramps for each roadway; simialar to the local/express configuration further down I-270. I'm sure the bulk of the cost for this project is the Montogomery county section, all the new right of way, and the need to build quad carriage ways. The cost of expanding the road to 3 lanes each way along the portion that's only 2 lanes now probably isn't prohibitive. SHA could probably accomplish most of the widening in the median to hold down cost for new land. This seems like a starting point for improvements. Sprawl will always follow widening, but a minimum 3 lanes each way to Frederick seems justified from both existing usage and the need for safety upgrades.
Posted by: SgtHarry67 | November 10, 2009 4:30 PM