Get your EZ pass from NJ. Their monthly fee is less than MD, and you don't pay as much for the transponder. Your transponder fee still includes the initial $25 "bank" for tolls.

Lezlie, if Robin uses the ICC (or any other Maryland toll road or toll crossing) three times a month or more, then there is NO fee at all.

That's a nice thing! But the transponder fee in NJ is $16 less than the transponder fee in MD, or at least is was when I got mine. The monthly fee NJ charges is $1. MD charges $1.50. So if you don't think you'll use the MD toll roads 3 x a month, it would be cheaper to get your transponder from NJ.

I've heard the Massachusetts' transponder fee and monthly fee is even lower and you can register online.

Yes, "Fred" (why are you compelled to hide behind a posting handle?), the NIMBYist opponents delayed the InterCounty Connector FOR DECADES. The State Highway Administration of the Maryland Department of Transportation was fully prepared to construct the ICC (it had different names then) as early as the 1970's, but did not do so in large part thanks to opposition that was whipped-up by the likes of the late Idamae Garrott.

You sound very bitter about it CPZ. A bit scary, in fact, so I think using a message board handle like 99% of everyone else is prudent. What's the matter, are you freaking out about how empty the ICC is? I just drove it (yes I plan to use it now that it is there), from I=95 to New Hampshire, at 8:15 tonight, and there were only 2 or 3 cars coming the other way during my entire trip! For awhile, the only other cars visible were two in the distance in my rearview mirror. At 8:15 PM!

I am not the least bit worried about how much or how little traffic is on the ICC after two days of tolling. Why don't you revisit the subject after the ICC has been in operation for a year - say in January 2013?

How many crashes on inadequate and dangerous east-west roads might have been prevented if the ICC had been there? Ever heard of Randolph Road? Cherry Hill Road? Muncaster Mill Road? Norbeck Road? Briggs Chaney Road? Md. 198? The opponents are absolutely to blame for nonsensical claims made by then-Delegate Garrott that a Metrorail line (!) could take the place of the ICC as a highway. Then there were the claims that instead of building the ICC, those existing east-west roads could be "upgraded." After Parris Glendening changed his mind about the ICC, the upgrades to those existing roads were very quickly and conveniently forgotten by the anti-ICC industry in Montgomery County.

couldn't agree more, Dave.

I assure you that most of us that you would call NIMBYs did not oppose those common sense grade separations. As I understand it, the main problem with improving the Randolph/Ga. and 29 interchanges is money, not opposition -- and there isn't any money to be had because the state blew their wad on the ICC. Don't know any specifics on 97/28.

But thanks for confirming that it was, in fact, ICC supporters such as yourself who opposed improvements to east-west routes like 198 . No doubt that road will remain dangerous for the foreseeable future due to your myopic pro-ICC efforts.

Morris, I commend you for saying this so well.

I graduated from high school (Northwood) a few years before you (1976), and clearly recall signs like that (there was one where the ICC/U.S. 29 interchange now stands in the 1970's) - and,of course, the master-planned route for the "Outer Beltway" (ICC today) and the never-built Rockville Facility (the western part of which is the Montrose Parkway) were clearly shown on the ubiquitous Alexandria Drafting Company maps of Montgomery County dating back at least as far as the early 1970's.

Wow, you are really claiming no subsidy for the ICC? What about the nearly half billion that came from the general and transportation trust fund, the GARVEE bonds mortgaging future federal money, and the toll revenue from other MDTA facilities?

As far as the people who bought property, it is way more complicated than your spin. Many people bought during a time when the ICC was being studied as a four lane parkway, with no trucks allowed. Maybe it was naive to believe this (especially since it was being pushed by the pro-highway folks), but that was the plan being talked about for several years.

On 198, no one is saying it alone would have been am ICC replacement. In fact, that idea was just a canard raised by the pro-ICC forces to ensure that local road improvements did not get done, furthering their argument that we needed the ICC.

Financing details from the ICC Project website FAQ:

"The project is being funded by the following sources:

Maryland Transportation Authority funding (approximately $1.23 billion);
GARVEE bonds ($750 million);
Maryland Transportation Trust Fund ($180 million);
Maryland General Fund ($265 million):
Special federal funding (approximately $19 million); and
Additional funds from the GARVEE sale ($17 million).

The balance of funding ($103 million), which is not required until FY2015 through FY2017, will be identified as it enters into the fiscally constrained Consolidated Transportation Program."

"Fred Flintstone," until you start using a real name, and stop hiding behind that posting handle, why don't you just GO AWAY (not GO AWAY mad, just GO AWAY).

When you want to post with your real name and act like an adult, please come back.

Fred:

Thanks for the information. It would appear that "tolls" aren't going to quite do it if those numbers are correct.

Dave:
I liked the Fred Flintstone "handle", I may go with Barney Rubble?

Be my guest, but that would violate the Patch terms of service!

Very strange the way this site nests replies in reverse order.

Dave -- It might take a page refresh for replies to appear in chronological order. But you're right, it is strange. I'm writing our engineers.

"Dave," how's about more than that?

"Dave," it's reasonable to know who I am debating with. With "Dave," I don't, and the readers of these comments don't either.

Might I suggest that you back this claim up with some numbers with some basis in fact? Also, you might want to fill in reporters at the Post and the Sun who have been presenting Maryland as "road poor" due to the cost of building the ICC and the HOT lanes on I-95 north of Baltimore and who have reported that the steep toll increases recently approved and partially implemented on other other MDTA toll facilities needed to be raised, in part, to subsidize the ICC. You might also cite some source for your claim that the MDTA is obligated in any way to pay back anything other than their bonds. The GARVEEs are backed by future federal highway money, not tolls.

Sure, if the Chamber of Commerce's dreams for future development actually come true and we get a strong economic rebound and sustained growth, or alternatively, gas prices soar again, people may choose to pay high ICC tolls. So someday, MDTA will likely be rolling in cash and can share that wealth. But that day doesn't appear to be on the horizon anytime soon because the road is virtually empty most of the time. So for now, we will be lucky if the MDTA can afford to service their bonds and maintain the road properly.

Oh, by the way, I was an A student in math from grade school through college, and also excelled at finance and economics. But you offer absolutely no evidence. I offer the actual ICC financing plan and the recent article by Katherine Shaver about the state of Maryland's transportation funds.

Perhaps. But there seemed to be quite a few ICC boosters who, like CP admitted about, were against improvements to 198, for fear it would become the de facto ICC.

I was (and am) against Md. 198 improvements because such upgrades would be especially unfair to residents living near and along it west of U.S. 29, and especially in Spencerville. Md. 198 (unlike the master-planned route of the ICC), was never intended or envisioned in master plans to be a substitute for a six-lane highway with full access controls. I don't mind safety improvements along Md. 198 (and a major one was done some years ago when the road was re-aligned near Good Hope Road).

Still obsessed with attacking the messenger, I see. I answered most of this already, earlier in this thread. As I said above, I live very close. I moved in fully aware of the master plan. But some of my neighbors moved in later, when the state was studying and assuring them that if it was ever built, it would use a parkway design, be only four lanes, and no trucks would be allowed. Others moved in after Governor Glendenning claimed that the middle portions could never be built. Also, no one told anyone beforehand that the state wouldn't stay within their master plan route right of way and would therefore take most of the HOAs wooded greenspace, intended by our neighborhood's developer to provide a buffer between the houses and the proposed road, and to do so without ANY prior notice. So blame us people all you want for being naive, call us names, but please don't just repeat the mantra that the ICC has been on the planning maps forever, yadda, yadda, because there are details that matter.

None of this, including my proximity to the road, changes the fact that some of the most pristine forests in the entire region were destroyed, or the fact that the road is big dud so far, or that paying for he ICC has sucked all the oxygen out of other improvements, etc. (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/icc-puts-strain-on-marylands-transportation-funds/2011/11/15/gIQAb2k7iN_story.html).

Regarding promises, I don't recall any promises of the sort you describe. The Transportation Solutions Group, appointed by Glendening to look at the ICC in 1999, did indeed suggest a four-lane parkway-type road, with tolls charged to single-occupant vehicles (at a minimum).

But Glendening rejected the suggestions of the TSG.

There were never any promises that the ICC would be a road without truck traffic.

As for Glendening "cancelling" the ICC, while he did tell the MDOT and its modal administrations to cease working on studies of it, he did not have the authority to remove it from the Master Plan of Highways of Montgomery Co. and Prince George's Co., and efforts by members of the Montgomery Co. Council to do so were thwarted.

The ICC has been on planning maps since the 1950's for segments (roughly) east of the National Capital Trolley Museum and since the 1960's for segments west of the NCTM.

As for "pristine" forests, that's not correct, regardless of claims to the contrary by the anti-ICC industry. All of the ICC master-planned route runs through land that had been logged at least once, and probably more than once, so it's probably 2nd or 3rd growth forest.

I bought a home near U.S. 29 & the ICC - in 1985 - AFTER looking on the master plans and seeing Route F-9 (as the ICC was shown on planning maps) shown there.

I don't work in any of those businesses. Sorry.