About 7,000 drivers showed up Tuesday morning for the wet, foggy debut of the new section of the Intercounty Connector, a highway that has been a target of controversy for decades from environmental activists and fiscal critics who said it would do nothing to alleviate traffic congestion, but which state officials said would slash travel times for many commuters.
The longest stretch of the $2.5 billion highway connecting Montgomery and Prince George’s County opened for the first time Tuesday, allowing drivers to test-drive the highway free of charge.
State officials counted 7,000 drivers on the new section of the highway between U.S. 29 and Interstate 95, as well as 9,500 on the older stretch between I-370 and Georgia Avenue, between 6 and 9 a.m. But they won’t start figuring out whether those numbers are bad or good for a few more weeks, a Maryland Transportation Authority spokesman said.
Authorities expect 20,000 drivers to take the ICC every day once tolls are collected beginning Dec. 4, and they expect that number to go up to 30,000 vehicles by June 2012. Traffic on the first section of the ICC has missed the mark of state officials’ earlier predictions, but observers said that the real test will be once drivers start paying tolls on the full length of the highway.
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A ride on the full length of the ICC, also known as MD 200, will cost $4 in peak periods for cars with E-ZPasses. Those without E-ZPasses will pay up to $15 in video toll fees. The highway is the state’s first with all-electronic tolls.
MDTA Executive Secretary Harold Bartlett promised that the highway would cut travel time from Gaithersburg to Laurel from 47 minutes to 17 minutes, and it did just that for one reporter: driving the entire ICC clocked in at 17 minutes, 10 seconds Tuesday morning.
Jacques Doukmajian, a Germantown resident who works as a barber in Beltsville, tried out the new ICC section Tuesday.
“It was nice and smooth,” he said, but added that he won’t keep taking the highway after the tolls kick in. He was used to paying $1.45 to ride the first section. “If it’s going to be $4, then no.”
Beltsville resident George Randall said he plans to use the new highway to get to a Mount St. Mary’s College basketball game in early December.
He said he thought the highway would bring much-needed congestion relief to the area.
“I guess it’s a good thing, because I never understood the construction of the Mormon temple snake,” he said, referring to the series of S-curves between Georgia Avenue and Connecticut Avenue on the Beltway. “All it has to do is be [rainy] like today, and it’s a mess out there.”
