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Surprise! ICC tolls will cost everyone

The writer of the opinion ["The toll of tolls," Sept. 30] will make a good politician with surprise outrage over getting what they wanted, but not understanding the consequences of their choice. You must have missed how the project was going to be funded — $750 million of the $3 billion ICC project funding was [from] GARVEE bonds and the rest state bonds. The bonds to a state are similar to house mortgage to you. They have to be paid off within a certain time limit. The GARVEE bonds were planned to be paid over the next 20 years with future federal highway funds, which would be about $50 million a year. The state planned on using funds from tolls and possibly other funds; the state funding share would probably be $100 million per year.

Here is where your surprise comes in. The state, in its first approach to paying the bonds, is to have the users of the ICC pay. If you are surprised by the math today on toll rates, then you will be really shocked when public opinion makes them lower the rates and everyone's taxes will go up to pay for the ICC.

So in the end it will be a low-traveled toll road with high rates and every Maryland taxpayer helping to pay for it.

Mike Shirven, Derwood

ICC will relieve gridlock and congestion

I also wish to thank the governor and the state legislature for building the InterCounty Connector, but not for the reasons espoused by Dennis Opfermann in his letter, "Thanks for the Concierge Parkway," in the Oct. 7 issue.

I, among many others, make up a group of commuters that go to work from Montgomery County toward the northeast, i.e. Anne Arundel, Howard, and Baltimore counties and Baltimore City, who currently are forced to travel south on Interstate 270, across the north side of the Washington Beltway, then northbound on I-95 and back. A route that expeditiously cuts the corner, thereby bypassing the Beltway, is long overdue and will significantly reduce commute time (therefore, emissions) and provide at least some relief to the Beltway that has to bear the additional load of northeast-bound commuters like myself.

The most viable present alternate route (MD 28, Norbeck Road, MD 198) with no or little traffic still adds 15 minutes over the Beltway route. Commuters coming from Germantown and the north still have to take routes that the ICC will relieve.

Simply widening I-270 further will do nothing to alleviate being forced to drive southbound on an already widened I-270, a gridlocked beltway, etc. Yes, there are tolls to pay, but the cost is palatable on a stretch from MD 355 to U.S. 29, versus driving — and burning the extra gas — 15 miles out of my way as I currently do toward Baltimore. The naysayers of the ICC will see that in due time, it will become just as jam-packed as every other highway is now.

Allan Cobb, Rockville

Abominable ICC tolls will hurt all

In your Sept. 30 editorial ["The toll of tolls"] you complained that proposed tolls on the InterCounty Connector are just too high — "could be counterproductive." Many people will be forced to drive on local roads. Well, duh. You followed the pied piper in supporting the ICC for years. Now the piper must be paid. There were many voices saying that the ICC was too expensive and would rob other transportation needs around Maryland. In fact, not only will tolls on the ICC be high, but tolls will also be higher elsewhere in the state to try to pay for it: Baltimore tunnels, I-95, the Bay Bridge. All this and you will have to use a transponder, too, or pay another fee. And the State Highway Administration said years ago that many neighboring roads would have more traffic than before. Now, it is up to ICC proponents who don't like the tolls to come up with a better plan. Raise the gasoline tax? Property tax? Sales tax? Slots on every corner in Montgomery County? Or cut spending for schools? Pensions? Police and fire? Just what did you expect when tolls were planned in the first place? I should be laughing but the waste and destruction of this abomination hurt too much.

John Fay, Wheaton

About time editors grasp ICC toll issue

It must have been easy to write the editorial "The toll of tolls" in the Sept. 30 edition of The Gazette. Past letters in The Gazette from [Intercounty Connector] critics gave the author plenty of material. These critics warned, as did the editorial, that the tolls would be so high as to keep people off the ICC and thus the congestion on the residential roads that the ICC was alleged to alleviate would still exist. The critics even predicted the likely tolls fairly accurately, although their predictions fell in the lower end of the now proposed range.

And what was The Gazette saying about tolls before approval of the ICC? As little as possible. In 37 ICC-related items in The Gazette in 2005, as the approval neared, only three mentioned tolls. One was only a general mention and a second buried the cost estimates deep in the article. The third was an editorial calling those who were warning of high tolls, "desperate people." I guess we can now include The Gazette editors as among those "desperate people."

Roger Burkhart, Gaithersburg