A Home panel has given its approval to a measure meant to carry the Maryland Division of Transportation to its guarantees on a controversial road-widening undertaking.
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A Home panel has given its approval to a measure meant to carry the Maryland Division of Transportation to its guarantees on a controversial road-widening undertaking.
House Bill 67 handed the Surroundings & Transportation Committee by a party-line vote of 16-6 on Friday night.
The vote got here as Home and state Senate careened in the direction of a Monday deadline to maneuver laws from one chamber to the opposite, an annual ritual often called crossover day.
The laws, backed by Del. Marc Korman (D-Montgomery), is actually a catalog of guarantees that Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) and Transportation Secretary Greg Slater have made on behalf of the governor’s bid to rebuild the American Legion Bridge and widen parts of I-495 and I-270.
Hogan desires to have a consortium led by two Australian companies, Transurban and Macquarie, construct “high-occupancy toll” lanes that will run alongside current free lanes.
Motorists would pay a toll to enter the brand new lanes, which might pace them previous automobiles utilizing the present lanes. Levies would fluctuate primarily based on site visitors volumes to ensure speeds of 45 miles per hour.
Virginia, the place Transurban has its U.S. headquarters, has a sprawling community of “specific” lanes that use “dynamic” tolling.
The invoice authorised by the Home panel on Friday is significantly longer than an analogous measure that handed the complete Home final 12 months. Provisions had been added to replicate a raft of further guarantees made by state transportation officers.
Added to final 12 months’s invoice can also be a requirement that the state’s concessionaire enter a “undertaking labor settlement” with native unions. MDOT would even be required to maintain a promise to develop transit on the Shady Grove Metro station and Montgomery Mall.
HB 67 would additionally require that:
- a minimum of 10% of toll income left after development prices are paid would go to an area transit fund;
- mass transit automobiles be allowed to make use of HOT lanes free of charge;
- the brand new American Legion Bridge have a separate bike and pedestrian lane;
- no state funds will probably be used to accumulate land earlier than the Board of Public Works approves the undertaking;
- MDOT share transportation knowledge with native planners; and
- MDOT might not submit a public-private partnership contract to the Board of Public Works till a federally mandated environmental assessment is full.
“What we’ve got right here now’s a invoice that I imagine will increase our oversight and doesn’t hurt the undertaking because it’s going ahead,” stated Del. Kumar P. Barve (D-Montgomery), chairman of the Surroundings and Transportation Committee.
Senate President Invoice Ferguson (D-Baltimore Metropolis) informed reporters on Friday that he’s “very conscious” of the invoice.
“I believe Secretary Slater has been forthright to date and has a really totally different method than the prior secretary in relation to these tasks,” he stated. “However after all the administration has to do what they stated they’d do.”
“I believe we are going to most likely see a invoice that ensures excessive expectations but additionally doesn’t jeopardize tasks,” the Montgomery County native added.
Baltimore Enterprise Journal reported on Friday that the Maryland Transportation Authority has deferred motion on a “pre-development” contract as a result of one of many shedding bidders has filed a protest with MDOT over its collection of Speed up Maryland Companions, the consortium headed by Transurban and Macquarie.
The protest agency’s identify has not been publicly recognized.
bruce@marylandmatters.org
