Traveling the congested highways in the Baltimore-Washington region may take a psychological toll now. In the not-so-far-off future, the cost may be in dollars and cents.
Four major road projects in the region will open in the next five to 10 years with tolls attached. To drive on the Intercounty Connector being built in Prince George's and Montgomery counties, you'll have to pay the Maryland toll authority. The state will also take your money for using the new express lanes on Interstate 95 northeast of Baltimore.
To use the "express" lanes that bypass backups on three busy interstates in Northern Virginia, you'll need to pay a toll to the private operator that helped finance the construction.
And Maryland is considering the possibility of using tolls to add new lanes on several other highways across the state.
If forecasters are on the mark, the tolls won't be cheap. To keep traffic moving quickly in the express lanes being added to I-95 in Maryland and Virginia, some drivers will have to be priced out of those lanes. To keep the ICC free-flowing, some would-be travelers between Baltimore and Rockville will face prices so high that they'll choose to take local roads.
One recent study put the cost of a congestion-free ride from the Pentagon to Dumfries, Va., in the planned high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes of Interstates 95 and 395 at more than $20 for the roughly 35-mile trip. One way. For a five-day-a-week commuter, the weekly bill for congestion-free travel could exceed $200. A similar commute, along the Capital Beltway from Springfield to Tysons Corner, could be just as costly.
Ronald F. Kirby, transportation director for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, said that when officials started considering those projects, they assumed that tolls would run about 20 cents a mile. But the council's subsequent studies have shown that to be a low estimate.
"The toll can get up to as high as $1 a mile or $1.50 a mile for short segments at certain times of the day," Kirby said.
And if you're thinking of heading that way the day before Thanksgiving in 2015, be warned. According to Kirby, there are no limits to the tolls the operator can charge to keep express traffic moving.
Maryland officials said they have made no projections of how much tolls will be on I-95 or the ICC.
To make sense economically, any highway project that relies on what is known as "congestion pricing" - having motorists pay to avoid sitting in traffic - can't eliminate backups in the other lanes entirely.
"If the general-purpose lanes are free-flowing, by definition congestion pricing doesn't work," said Maryland Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari.
Reflecting the views of Gov. Martin O'Malley, Porcari has shifted both rhetoric and policy away from toll lanes as a means to finance major projects. For instance, the Maryland Department of Transportation eliminated tolls from studies of how to widen the Baltimore Beltway - a possibility that had been raised by the Ehrlich administration transportation secretary, Robert L. Flanagan.
Porcari hasn't ruled out the use of congestion pricing on other projects, however, calling it one tool in highway planners' tool kit.
C. Kenneth Orski, editor and publisher of an online newsletter that follows trends in public-private partnerships such as toll roads, said Virginia motorists will be getting used to congestion pricing faster than Marylanders.
"What Virginia is doing is sort of a portent of what is to come throughout the region - which is a pretty widespread use of toll lanes," he said.
The good news for motorists is that there would be no toll booths.
To use the system, you would have to have a transponder such as the ones used for EZ-Pass or agree to be billed based on photos of your license plate passing through electronic collection stations.
Critics of congestion pricing call it an elitist concept, saying "Lexus lanes" or "Bentley boulevards" allow the well-to-do to cruise while the poor and middle class stew in backups.
But proponents of congestion pricing say it's all about choice. They note that people will be free to make their own economic decisions about what their time is worth.
A middle-class teacher, they say, might decide on certain days that a trip in the express lanes is the price to avoid fines for being late to day care. A high-profile law firm might decide its partners' time is so valuable that it could afford to compensate them for using express lanes.
Supporters of the toll options say they are the only practical way to pay for large road projects in the face of public opposition to raising taxes - especially the federal and state levies on gasoline.
"When you encounter voter opposition to new bonds or new taxes, you turn to the private sector," Orski said. In practical terms, that means using revenue from tolls to pay off the bonds issued by private companies.
Proponents note that virtually every toll road or HOT lane project in the pipeline allows buses or high-occupancy vehicles to use the express lanes for free - giving commuters a potent incentive to choose mass transit or share rides.
Currently, with the exclusion of tunnels and bridges, there are few toll roads in the Baltimore-Washington region.
The John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway, the formal name of I-95 northeast of Baltimore, is a conventional fixed-rate toll road. The Dulles Toll Road gives Washington travelers the choice of a faster ride to the airport. The privately owned Dulles Greenway connects the airport with Leesburg, Va.
But opening in the next few years are a flurry of toll-financed projects:
* The ICC, an 18-mile east-west highway between U.S. 1 and Interstate 270 that will be tolled based on congestion levels in all six lanes. That is, it will be more expensive to drive on the highway when it's crowded than when it's not. Its first section is scheduled to open in 2011, and completion is expected in 2012.
* The I-95 Express Lane project in Maryland northeast of Baltimore, which will add four congestion-priced lanes to the existing roadway and pour traffic onto the Beltway at a monumental interchange now under construction southeast of White Marsh. That project is also expected to open in 2012.
* The Northern Virginia Capital Beltway HOT lane project, which will add four tolled express lanes to a 14-mile segment of Interstate 495 to the west and south of Washington. The new lanes will be tolled based on congestion, but vehicles with three or more occupants would travel free. Completion is scheduled for 2013.
* The I-95/395 HOT lane project in Northern Virginia running from Arlington to just south of Fredericksburg in the fast-growing outer suburbs of Washington. The first phase of the 56-mile project, which has received preliminary approval, will expand the existing high-occupancy vehicle lanes from two to three and convert them into tolled high-occupancy lanes. The work is to be done in two phases, with the first opening about 2012.
That may not be where it ends.
The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board has conducted a study that includes a scenario under which nine existing bridges leading into Washington would be converted to toll facilities. Under that scenario, parts of New York Avenue - one of the main gateways into Washington from Baltimore - would be tolled, along with other streets in the District of Columbia.
At the request of the Federal Highway Administration, the planning board also studied the impact of placing tolls on the existing lanes of five capital-region parkways, including the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
Kirby said the Council of Governments found that adding tolls to existing facilities could raise a lot of revenue. For instance, he said, the study found some motorists might be willing to pay $10 to $15 for a congestion-free ride the length of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
However, Kirby added, such a change carries the risk of public outrage over having to pay for something that once was free. "As a political reality, it has been a total nonstarter in the United States,' he said.
Porcari explicitly ruled out any such moves on Maryland highways. "We have no plans to put tolls on existing lanes anywhere in the state," he said.
The use of tolls to finance increased capacity remains on the table - but not a certainty - for Interstate 270 between Montgomery County and Frederick, parts of the Capital Beltway and Route 5 in Prince George's County. The Maryland Transportation Authority is actively studying the possibility of adding express toll lanes to the segment of I-95 northeast of the current construction - roughly from White Marsh to Aberdeen - and won't rule out tolling new lanes between Aberdeen and the Delaware line.
State highway Administrator Neil J. Pedersen said a study of tolls on the Baltimore Beltway never got off the ground. Nor is Maryland studying tolls on the long stretch of the Capital Beltway between Camp Springs and Bethesda.
"The concept of tolls as a congestion management tool is something that needs to be looked at as an option," Pedersen said. "It is clearly not the right solution everywhere."
Pedersen noted that toll financing of highway projects has powerful support from the Bush administration. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, in particular, has argued that the federal government should shift from a reliance on motor fuel taxes to a "direct pricing" model that could include tolls on existing highways.
With President Bush in his final months in office, the results of November's election could end that support or reinforce it.
"To some extent, where Maryland heads with this is going to depend on where the federal policy ends up," Pedersen said.
where you'll pay
In the Baltimore area:
I-95 from just south of I-895 north to New Forge Road will become express toll lanes in 2012. One proposal would someday extend that northeast to just beyond Aberdeen.
Elsewhere in Md. and Va.:
Three planned toll roads are scheduled to open between 2011 and 2016, including the Intercounty Connector north of Washington, D.C., and stretches of Interstates 495, 395 and 95 west and south of the district. Several other locations in the area are also under consideration.
See toll-road map, pg 13