Residents, lawmakers and small business owners from Maryland’s Eastern Shore poured into the auditorium of Kent Island High School in Queen Anne’s County. The hundreds of attendees unleashed a volley of blistering verbal attacks on the Maryland Transportation Authority Board, which proposed a three-fold toll increase on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge two months ago, shortly after the close of the last legislative session of the Maryland General Assembly.

An overflow crowd of nearly one-thousand people jammed the Perryville High School auditorium to also voice their anger with MDTA officials. People are upset over MTA’s plan to raise bridge tolls over the river to $6 this October and to $8 in July 2013. Residents who commute daily over the Susquehanna bridges via Interstate 95 and Route 40 say the toll hikes are just too large.