In afternoon rush hour on May 18th, residents of neighborhoods near the intersections of MD routes 28 and 97 (Ga Ave near Olney) protested at the intersection against MD's decision to remove one left turn lane Northbound on Ga Ave to rt 28, to favor traffic going to the ICC or Inter-County Connector instead.

At 5:40PM on a Wednesday, traffic on the ICC was almost nonexistant, about one car, one lane only at a time, passing a street sign every 5 seconds on a 4 lane superhighway in the heart of rush hour. The rest is just empty space. By comparison to the empty left turn at the ICC's intersection with northbound Rt 28, the left turn lane for Route 28 was overflowing onto the main road and severely backed up. The State Highway Administration rated this intersection as a failijg grade of "F" even before the ICC, now it's massively worse.

The removal of one of the turn lanes have created traffic backups that in some cases can turn a 5 minute car trip to a grocery store into a 30 minute crawl of "InCarCeration." Some drivers turn left anyway from what USED to be a turn lane before someone decided drivers on it maybe should be paying to use the ICC instead of using the strteets they always have. Of course, many of these folks live near Rt 28and could no use the ICC even if they were not adverse to the ICC's record-keeping, electronic tolling, to paying tolls, or to the legions of ticket-writing cops on the ICC. All those speeding tickets are being blamed by some for the overwhelming refusal of motorists to use the ICC.