Perez: No transparency in the toll lanes traffic modeling

On Aug. 25, the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) announced the federal approval of the Toll Lanes Project for the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270, and stated that experts at the U.S. Department of Transportation found baseless the allegations of possible fraud in the traffic modeling calculations for the project. A close look at the federal approval documents, including what the experts found, tells a different story, however. Only a memo to file, written by the Maryland Division of the Federal Highway Administration, claims that the experts did not find fraud in the toll lanes traffic model. None of the findings reported by the experts support that claim. The experts, who operate separately at the USDOT Volpe Center, did not draw any conclusions on the allegation against the integrity of the traffic calculations.