Writing about the ICC, as I did yesterday on BeyondDC and today for the Washington Post, is a nostalgia-filled experience for me. It’s a little like coming home.

The ICC was big news in Gaithersburg in the late 1990s, when I was in high school. Newspapers were filled with op-eds debating the merits of the road. I was fascinated, and read them all. I became a big proponent of the highway, because I was bored with suburbia and wanted Gaithersburg to be more like a big city, and in my suburbanite mind big cities had lots of big highways.

Of course I was wrong about what constitutes a big city, and about what relieves traffic congestion, and about a lot of things, but one key epiphany was there: Transportation affects land use. Whoa.

And so it was that I became interested in transportation planning. And so it was that I started writing about it, in letters to the editor of the Gaithersburg Gazette.

So while my position on the ICC has evolved over time, I continue to have a soft spot in my heart for it. The ICC is what started me down the path that has brought me here, to BeyondDC, to the Washington Post, to Greater Greater Washington, and of course to that day job as a professional transportation planner.

I can’t help but be a little nostalgic.