The General Assembly continues their hard work; more than 1100 bills have been introduced into the Senate and more than 1500 into the House. Very few of the bills have had votes on the floor of the Senate or the House as we are just about two-thirds of the way through the session. The appearance is deceptive, though as there has been a lot of work in the committees and most of the bills are, in fact destined to be killed off in the committees without ever coming to a vote.
A half dozen of these bills affecting the Chesapeake Bay Bridge have been introduced by Senator E. J. Pipkin, who represents Caroline, Queen Anne’s, Kent and Cecil counties on the Eastern Shore. Here on the Shore we have a particular interest in these parallel bridges as they represent, for most of us, the only reasonable means of travel to the Western Shore and the cities, services and resources available there.
The bridges are operated by the Maryland Transportation Authority (MdTA) which also operates a number of other toll facilities throughout the state. Upon its completion, the MdTA will also operate the Inter-County Connector which will provide a direct connection from I-270 to I-95 in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.
Traffic on the Bay Bridge has been growing steadily. About 1.1 million cars crossed the bridge in 1952, the year the first span was opened. By 2004, 25 million were crossing each year. Based on projections of growth on the Eastern Shore and elsewhere in Maryland, demand will grow to almost 50 million crossings by 2025. Maximum capacity, however, is only about 30 million.
The need for additional capacity to move traffic across the Bay has been apparent for some time. Traffic backups on summer weekends have been common for some time; the US 50 approaches to the Bridge have a capacity of 6,000 vehicles per hour while the Bridge has a capacity of only 4,500 vehicles per hour. Accidents, breakdowns and necessary partial closures for maintenance and repair add to the backups.
In 2005 the Governor appointed a Bay Crossing Task Force to study the problem and recommend a solution. The task force included many prominent Maryland politicians including Senator Pipkin. the goal of the task force was to identify a location for a third Bay crossing although the task force also studied other options such as ferries.
The task force had several meetings, received advice from numerous experts, produced voluminous reports full of charts and graphs and came to an interesting, if predictable result. The task force recognized the need for a third bridge and fully supported construction of one provided that the Eastern Shore terminus of the bridge was not in Somerset, Dorchester, Talbot, Queen Anne’s Kent or Cecil counties. Since these counties, dear reader, cover the entire eastern shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, it was clear that a third bridge was not going to be built.
the MdTA, faced with this intransigent opposition, decided to focus its attention elsewhere and took on so much debt to build the Inter-County Connector that its ability to take on other projects was severely hamstrung. In fact, the MdTa recently canceled a portion of the planned expansion of the I-95 toll road north of Baltimore due to money problems. Even with the very high tolls proposed for the Inter-County Connector, the Authority is going to have to sharply raise tolls on other facilities, the tolls on the Bay bridge are scheduled to double over the next five years.
This brings us back to Pipkin’s bills. Despite his failure to get his colleagues on the task force to come up with a recommendation and despite the very high cost of such a crossing (estimated at $600 million to $900 million in 2005), he wants to spend about $15 million doing an environmental impact assessment even though there is no agreement to build a bridge or where to build it. In addition, he wants to forbid the authority from collecting tolls whenever there is a backup on the bridge, even though the backups will become more frequent and the tolls are the only means to pay for another facility. Finally he wants to have public hearings on projected toll increases.
Now I sympathize with the man; he’s just trying to serve his constituents by simultaneously pushing construction of a third bridge while eliminating some of the money that will fund it.
But seriously, if the Eastern Shore believes a third crossing is necessary for its economic development, then we need to get together, agree on a location and push for it. Otherwise the populous counties of the Western Shore will continue to claim the future revenues of the Authority for their own projects, as Montgomery and Prince George’s did with the ICC.
Already Montgomery County is floating the idea of a ‘transitway’ parallel to I
Harry Nice Bridge over the Potomac
270 at a cost of some $2 billion. In addition, the 70-year old Harry Nice bridge carrying US 301 across the Potomac River in Charles County is seriously substandard and needs replacement at a cost of several hundred million dollars.
Frankly, I doubt that the political will exists here on the Shore. But let’s see if the leadership on the Eastern Shore can pull together a consensus on the location of a third bridge. Personally I favor a northern crossing between Baltimore and Kent County near Tolchester Beach. This crossing could reduce traffic on the existing bridge by some 40,000 cars a day on summer weekends. I’m not holding my breath, though.