Shrinking highway revenue and cost overruns have accomplished what the Maryland Department of Transportation has been unable to do, until now, on its own. It’s made them plan smarter.

    They’ve pared the I-95 express lane project back by $500 million to $900 million so they can spend the money to fix the existing deteriorated infrastructure.

    What today’s Sun coverage didn’t explain is that this city-to-White Marsh widening is a sprawl-promoting project (see Brew story from February ’09) with cost overruns of close to half a billion dollars.

    The I-95 “express toll” widening was supposed to cost less than a billion, but now that the tab has escalated to $1.4 billion, MDOT had to do something. Until now, political leaders have been clamoring for tax increases to fix existing deteriorating roads and bridges, but now they will have to do it without a tax increase.

    MDOT has always said that maintaining the existing system comes first. Now they’ve put their money where their mouth is. They’ve shown that existing revenue streams are needed simply to pay for our basic transportation needs and can’t be stretched for system expansion like the I-95 widening. Such projects would be the real reason for any tax or toll increases.

    This also demonstrates that the multi-billion InterCounty Connector project fit into a very small window of time before the existing budget crunch. If it had not been approved when it was, early in the O’Malley administration, it probably would not have been built at all. The reason for building the ICC boiled down simply to “because we can.”

    Conversely, the reason for not building other big ticket items (such as the proposed Red Line east-west transit project through Baltimore) could simply come down to “because we can’t.”

    Whether or not future tax increases happen will become the decision point. If MDOT has the money, they will spend it. But if they don’t, they’ll have to think about true priorities, which is what planning is all about.