Nearly 125,000 drivers used the new Interstate 95 express lanes north of Baltimore during the first week of toll collections, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority.
That's fewer than half of the more than 270,000 drivers who used the lanes the week before, when they were free so the public could try them out.
Bruce Gartner, the MdTA's executive secretary, said the numbers were "not surprising."
He also he was pleased with the usage and general response to the new lanes, but was not using the early numbers to make any long-term predictions.
"People have to get used to factoring [tolls] into their monthly commuting habits and their budgets," he said.
The early data will be used in "benchmarking" for the future, he said.
The MdTA opened the lanes for a week of free use from Dec. 6 to Dec. 12. Tolls went into effect Dec. 13. They were built as part of a larger $1.1 billion project to reconstruct the corridor, which about 177,000 vehicles use each day.
During the week of free use, a total of 270,052 trips were made on the new lanes, split about equally between northbound and southbound traffic. The number of users who had E-ZPass was not tracked.
During the first week of tolling, from Dec. 13 to Dec. 19, a total of 124,733 trips were made, also almost equally split between northbound and southbound traffic.
Of those trips, 11,495 — or about 9.2 percent — were made by drivers without E-ZPass devices, who will receive notices of video tolls due in the mail charging them about one and a half times the E-ZPass rates.
Gartner said the price increase for drivers without E-ZPass was designed to pay for the additional administrative costs associated with mailing the fees, not "to make more money."
Cheryl Sparks, a MdTA spokeswoman, said the agency doesn't yet have revenue numbers for the first week of tolling on I-95, which can't be estimated simply based on volume and rates because rates vary by vehicle size.
Gartner said he would be keeping an eye on the toll lanes to see how they are used during this week's busy holiday travel period.
He noted that on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, tolls will follow a Sunday peak period schedule, which charges peak rates from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. for traffic in both directions, as opposed to the normal weekday morning and afternoon peaks.
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