WASHINGTON, D. C. (Tuesday, April 24, 2018) –– Motorists are swearing up and down all along the Intercounty Connector (ICC) these days. The variably priced toll corridor seems more crowded each work day, they swear. It is not just their imagination. Increasingly attracting more motorists in search of reliable travel times, traffic volume continues to spike along the Intercounty Connector (ICC/Maryland Route 200 Toll) Corridor, notes AAA Mid-Atlantic.

Proving the naysayers wrong, travel volume increased nine percent on the Intercounty Connector during Fiscal Year 2017, as motorists took 32,634,000 trips cumulatively at entry points and exits points along the ICC. In comparison, motorists, to the consternation of cynics, undertook 29,975,000 trips along the ICC during FY 2016, according to data from the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA). Tolls along the six-lane tolled freeway are collected electronically using E-ZPass® and Video Tolling at highway speeds. Living up to its eponymous name, the Intercounty Connector, or “the ICC” for short, connects Laurel in Prince George’s County and Gaithersburg in Montgomery County.

For the second year in a row, this cements the ICC as the second busiest toll facility in Maryland during FY2017, as was the case in FY2016. It is busier than the Bay Bridge, the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, the Nice Bridge, and every other toll facility in the state except the Fort McHenry Tunnel. With its $2.6 billion price tag, worrywarts once denounced the ICC as a “boondoggle.” The variably priced tolling regimen on the ICC was designed to keep the tollway relatively congestion-free. Defying the odds and the tsk-tsking sounds of disapproval from the skeptics, traffic is increasingly exponentially on the ICC, once the most-maligned roadway in the Washington metro area. Its foe are practically radio silent.

That is not all. Toll revenue is also soaring on the Intercounty Connector (ICC/Maryland Route 200 Toll), observes AAA Mid-Atlantic. Toll Revenue on the ICC soared 8.4 percent during FY 2017, the MDTA is reporting. The ICC generated $64,317,000 in toll revenue in the period ending, as the state garnered $5 million more in toll revenue along the ICC/MD 200 Corridor, from Konterra Drive to 1-370 at Shady Grove to MD 97/Georgia Avenue in Rockville/Olney. That compares to $59,312,000 in toll revenue during FY 2016, and $56.02 million during FY 2015.

“It is all in day’s work. More than 90,000 motorists, on average, embark on trips per day along the ICC, where tolls are collected at highway speeds as motorists zip under tolling structures,” said John B. Townsend II, AAA Mid-Atlantic’s Manager of Public and Government Affairs. “Exceeding all expectations, some ICC interchanges are topping 53,000 daily trips or questing, on average. Here is the calculus. Day by day, the ICC is siphoning more traffic off the Capital Beltway, and other roads, corridors and wyes near its pathway, including on Interstates 270 and 370, and I-95 and U.S. 1.”

Collectively, Maryland’s toll facilities “generated $601.9 million of In-Lane Toll Revenue in Fiscal Year (FY) 2017,” financial forecasts by CDM Smith a traffic and revenue consulting firm for the MDTA, show. The ICC is a game-changer and a time-saver. “A trip from Laurel to Gaithersburg that once took more than 47 minutes in the morning saves a commuter more than 30 minutes with a 17-minute trip on the ICC,” notes the MDTA.

Connecting the I-370 and I-95/US 1 Corridor, the Intercounty Connector (ICC/Maryland Route 200 Toll) is Maryland’s “first all-electronic, congestion-managed toll road.”  Motorists traveling the ICC aren’t required to stop and deposit the allusive “Charon’s obol coins” in toll booths, there aren’t any. The rationale? “All-electronic tolling helps maintain free-flowing traffic conditions and reduce vehicle emissions because drivers do not stop for cash payment at toll plazas.”

Like Vasco da Gama in search of the shortest maritime route to the east, drivers are taking the ICC to find the quickest way to BWI and other important east to west vistas and venues. Historical traffic trends reveal vehicular traffic more than doubled on key ICC segments from 2012 to 2016. The ICC’s traffic spiked 24.3 percent, and its toll revenue increased six percent in 2016.

The first leg of the Intercounty Connector (ICC/MD 200) debuted to the motoring public in 2011. Now it is outpacing the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, the Bay Bridge, the Nice Bridge, and I-95 Express Toll Lanes near Baltimore in traffic volume. It is only eclipsed by the Fort McHenry Tunnel in traffic volume. It is a remarkable feat for a roadway first planned in 1955, then derided, and finally built amid opposition.

The ICC is not expected to reach its designed carrying capacity until 2030. Until then, travel will be relatively congestion-free. Remarkably, vehicular volume mushroomed by a quotient of 118.8 percent from 20,171 vehicles daily in 2012 to 44,145 vehicles per day in 2016 on the segment of the Intercounty Connector from the Prince George’s County/Montgomery County line to I-95.

One troubling trend has dogged the ICC since its inception, as drivers and scofflaws continue to rack up unpaid fines. Reportedly, 4.7 million video toll violations occurred on the ICC in 2016, notes The Maryland Reporter. It is a perennial problem. In 2012, nearly one in three drivers, including passenger-vehicle travelers and commercial vehicle drivers, who entered ICC without a de rigueur E-ZPass® transponder, did not subsequently pay the required toll later, The Washington Post reported.

The civil penalty for such violations was set at $50 by the MDTA to discourage users from using toll roads in the state without paying the requisite toll fees, explains the Maryland General Assembly Department of Legislative Services. “Toll facility customers who do not have an E-ZPass and travel the ICC will be sent a bill in the mail and charged the Video Toll Rate (VTR),” warns the MDTA.  “VTRs at all Maryland toll facilities are 150 percent of the base toll rates with a minimum of $1 and a maximum of $15 above the base toll rate.”

Just like “straight lines” in Euclidean geometry, the ICC offers the shortest distance between two points for many commuters. With each passing day, more and more ICC drivers are experiencing the joys of cutting their travel times in half, compared to the normal time it takes them to drive to their destinations via other local east-west routes. The ICC from Georgia Avenue to I-95 (Exit 31) at Laurel debuted on November 22, 2011. The final leg of the ICC opened to US 1 on November 9, 2014.

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