One of the most contentious transportation projects in the region moved closer to reality Monday when Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich announced a route for the Intercounty Connector. For five decades, fits and starts led Montgomery and Prince George’s residents to believe that the ICC would remain a proposal merely on paper. Monday’s news changed those circumstances. While federal, state and county governments must still weigh in (and opponents vow to file lawsuits), the Bush administration stands as we do behind the much-needed toll road. “We will begin construction next year,” Maryland Transportation Secretary Robert Flanagan said.
The National Capital Planning Commission first proposed connecting the counties in 1950, in conjunction with the Beltway. Since then, most of the deliberations and opposition has focused on the toll road’s environmental impact. Indeed, during Parris Glendening’s eight years as governor and eight years as Prince George’s county executive, not only were there more studies, but studies that Mr. Glendening would initiate and put on hold — depending on which way he suspected the political winds were blowing during the election cycle. Mr. Ehrlich put the ICC atop his transportation agenda during the 2002 governor’s race. Since then, the Ehrlich and Bush administrations have pushed the ICC as a project whose time has come.
Still, Monday’s announcement was but the beginning of the long road. The chosen 18-mile route wends it way southeast from the I-270/370 corridor in Montgomery and intersects with I-95 before ending at Route 1 in Laurel in eastern Prince George’s. Along the way it cuts through streams, communities and parklands. Environmental concerns, of course, have their place in serious deliberations regarding such road projects. But of more importance are the landowners and families who might be displaced by the ICC. They should be given government officials’ due diligence and offered genuinely fair-market compensation plus the cost of moving for their losses.
Now that a route has been chosen, the Bush administration, which put its review on the ICC on the fast track, and the state must now revisit issues involving the environmental and the projected costs, which at this juncture stands at $2.1 billion. The Bush and Ehrlich administrations, as well as the county governments, should move expeditiously so that construction can begin next year (the year of the gubernatorial election).
Regional discussions about an intercounty “loop” began long before the “Father of the Interstate System,” Dwight Eisenhower, became president. The threat of lawsuits means delays may be inevitable. The sooner pertinent agencies complete their respective studies, the sooner residents in both continues can begin reaping the benefits of the new jobs and other economic windfalls — not to mention the traffic relief — that such years-long projects create.
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