June 27th | TollRoadNews
Similar roads can cost enormously different sums of money. A striking example is Maryland's Inter County Connector (MDICC) and Texas' 121 Sam Rayburn Tollway (TX121SRT). They have a lot in common. They are both 3+3 mainline lanes, they are roughly comparable length (18.8 miles vs 26 miles, 30km vs 42km). They both provide lateral east-west connectivity across the north of medium-large metro areas - 8.3m pop Washington-Baltimore, 6.4m pop Dallas-Ft Worth. Neither provide linkage to the central business district. Both improve access to suburban nodes of development.
The MDICC is a second ring highway and an average of 16 miles, 25km out from the White House while TX121SRT is third ring and an average 22 miles, 35km out from the Dallas central business district.
Both provide much improved access to a major international airport - Baltimore Washington International (BWI) and Dallas Ft Worth International (DFW).
Both help to relieve parallel routes - the northern portion of the Washington Beltway in the case of the MDICC and the LBJ I-635 Freeway and PG Bush Turnpike in the case of the TX121SRT. Both principally take traffic off signalized surface arterials and put it on a freeflow expressway for improved travel times and greater safety.
Both are very contemporary roads - the MDICC partially open and the rest heavy into construction, the TX121SRT just open its full length. They both toll all trips and use all-electronic tolling - a combination of transponder reads and camera imaging of license plates. No cash is collected on the pike and no one needs to slow at the tolling points on either.
Neither has any major river crossings, just stream crossings. Both are built in long preserved rights of way and required minimal property takings.
Big differences
There are major differences too - six lanes (3+3 in two roadways) versus 12 lanes (3,3,3,3 lanes in 4 roadways).
The MDICC is a simple 3+3 lanes expressway with one big fancy expressway-to-expressway interchange with I-95 plus six other simple local diamond interchanges.
The TX121SRT is a typical modern Texan urban highway with the grade separated interchanges for the tolled mainline lanes which are straddled by parallel frontage road lanes. These provide access and egress to and from the expressway lanes via simple slip ramps and untolled trips for motorists who will endure traffic signals at the at-grade intersections.
The TX121SRT has three big expressway-to-expressway interchanges (US75, DNT, I-35E) and twenty local connections - via ramp pairs, one each side.
The signalized frontage roads probably have a capacity of around 1,000 vehicles/lane/hour compared to the expressway capacity of 2,000 vehicles/lane/hour, so the MDICC has a capacity of about 6,000 vehicle/direction/hour versus the TX121SRT's 9,000 vehicles/direction/hour.
The MDICC is clearly the more modest road - fewer interchanges, shorter length and no frontage roadways.
But the costs were spectacularly different MDICC $2,566m vs TX121SRT $639m - the MDICC is almost exactly four times as expensive as the somewhat larger Texas road.
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