Feds Delay Action On Hogan Plan To Build Toll Lanes In Montgomery

By Bruce DePuyt, Maryland Matters

August 5, 2022

A key federal agency has delayed Maryland’s plan to build toll lanes on the Capital Beltway and I-270, the latest setback for the star-crossed project.

The move was immediately criticized by Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who said the delay will imperil the state’s efforts to ease one of the nations worst bottlenecks. He called on President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to reverse the Federal Highway Administration decision, which the state learned about on Wednesday.

It was not immediately clear how long the federal delay will be or what triggered it. Hogan said the acting federal highway administrator, Stephanie Pollack, made the decision.

“President Biden and Secretary Buttigieg pledged to support the states’ most critical infrastructure projects to create jobs and improve the quality of life in our communities,” Hogan said in a statement.

“But now we have learned that the acting federal highway administrator plans to further delay Maryland’s transformative Traffic Relief Plan. We were completely blindsided by this action, particularly given that every comprehensive analysis we submitted had already been reviewed and approved by the agency.”

The Federal Highway Administration was expected to issue its final verdict — known as a Record of Decision — on Hogan’s $7.6 billion toll lanes plan on Friday and a federal dashboard that tracks large infrastructure projects still lists Aug. 5 as the “target date.”

In 2017, Hogan announced plans to add four privately funded toll lanes to all of I-270, the entire Maryland stretch of the Beltway and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

In the five years since, the project has been scaled back significantly, in large part in response to local pushback his proposal generated. The thrust of the project’s first phase is now the replacement of the American Legion Bridge and a limited stretch of variably priced toll lanes, similar to those found in much of Fairfax County, along the Beltway in Bethesda and on I-270 in North Bethesda and Rockville.

The bridge replacement would be handled in partnership with Virginia. The state has a 15-year relationship with the Australian toll-road operator Transurban, the company Maryland hopes will finance and construct its lanes.

A Final Environmental Impact Statement, a lengthy document mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act, was released in June, a key milestone for the project. But local officials and an array of environmental and civic groups urged the federal government to delay a final decision so that people could dig more deeply into the 26,000-page document.

In his statement, Hogan said his administration is “not going to let politics delay [the project] any further,” but the delay could prove crippling to his bid to bring Virginia-style “express toll lanes” into Maryland. The term-limited governor is set to leave office in January, and the two major party candidates for governor, Wes Moore (D) and Dan Cox (R), have both expressed reservations about Hogan’s plan.

This story will be updated.

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