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Environmental Impact Statement Hearing and the Inter-County Connector (ICC) |
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Thank you for the opportunity to address this issue today. I want to say from the start that I am opposed to the construction of the ICC along any of the alignments. Or more simply, I am opposed to the ICC. I have had a chance to look at some of your environmental assumptions, as well as your assumptions about traffic. This is a road that serves no good purpose. The bottom line is that for over a billion dollars in public investment, it provides no relief to major arteries that are already choked with traffic in Montgomery County. The construction of the ICC will do nothing to improve traffic conditions on the Beltway, on US Rte 29 , or on I-95. In its most optimistic projections, it removes an insignificant amount of traffic from these arteries - not enough traffic to improve drive times, reduce pollution, or otherwise improve the quality of life. It doesn't even provide significant relief to the more local roadways. The studies indicate that after building the ICC, some intersections will improve slightly, while others will actually worsen. Moreover, significant construction along the roads designed to feed the ICC will create large amounts of additional traffic. The true impact of this is obscured by the way the study looks at traffic. If one focuses only on levels of service, then some intersections do improve, but when one considers that such "improvement" is accomplished by additional lanes for traffic you get a picture of a huge increase in the number of cars drawn to these roads. Such an increase in shear volume will accelerate the transformation of the more rural/suburban areas of the county to conditions more typical of urban settings. And at a second level the notion of improvement is even more specious. At one of the shows conducted for the public benefit I had a chance to study the maps, the before and after, with one of the State's traffic engineers. I noticed that many friendly colored dots were in place to note where traffic conditions would improve with the ICC. It was very impressive. Then I looked at a second map that showed the actual and projected levels of service at the different intersections and I noted that many of the intersections that were shown as improved in the previous map had nasty red dots on them in these other maps - the no-build and the pave it over maps, both. So I asked about the apparent discrepancy and she pulled out her handy data and showed me how the so-called improved intersections failed better than they would under the no-build scenario. I teach school - I do not understand the concept of failing better. I also understand traffic jargon and I know that once we enter the F zone, the gradations of failure have little meaning to people sitting in cars at the failed intersections. To go around promoting this road project on the basis of all the intersections that will improve, but not telling people that the improved intersections still fail is a grotesque deception. The rationale for this project continues to escape me. Montgomery County doesn't need it for the I-270 corridor. It already has plans to build a major city where Clarksburg sits today, providing housing for tens of thousands of future employees in that corridor and the corridor itself is more than adequately zoned for commercial development. Moreover, the wedges are supposed to be off-limits to this kind of development. There is little traffic from up-county workers trying to get to Laurel and beyond - far too little to justify a road of this expense with these impacts. I've heard business leaders say amazing things, like making that end of the County more accessible to Baltimore and specifically the Orioles, as if major corporations will move here only if their execs can trim 20 minutes off a ride to the stadium. And I've heard the same argument regarding access to BWI, as if people shouldn't consider the closeness of DCA or Dulles. More importantly, if these really are issues, then Howard, PG and Anne Arundel will always beat us because they lie closer to these so called destinations. No highway will move MC closer to any these targets, than the jurisdictions that are already there. And despite the relative closeness of these other counties, Montgomery County still has enough competitive advantages that we continue to draw businesses and residents here. The fact is that there is no significant economic development in this County that depends on the ICC. There are land speculators and developers, on the other hand, who would love to see the ICC open up the vast green preserves to their development plans. That is the real impact of the ICC, the opening of vast new areas to more intensive development. The ICC and the improved roads that feed it will provide what the traffic engineers like to call capacity for more cars. You can be sure that every car pulled from local roads today will be replaced by new cars, from new developments within a decade after the ICC is built. Areas under moratorium will be unlocked because of the road capacity provided by the ICC. The ICC will unleash a cascade of events that will eventually create an urbanized ring where none was planned. It will add more developments and more secondary roads to accommodate such development - and not counted in the EIS. It will add more cars, creating more air and water pollution and, again, not counted in the EIS. It will create a demand for schools and services that will further overburden county taxpayers and while it doesn't count in the EIS, it means that the quality of life here will surely be lessened. All of this for Konterra and Kingman Gould, and a handful of developers waiting to gobble up the green space in between.
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