Montgomery County leaders urged Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown and other state leaders Thursday to remember Montgomery County when the state doles out funding to assist with military base realignment.
Montgomery County, already notorious for its traffic woes, is expected to be inundated by cars under plans to close Walter Reed Army Medical Center and consolidate it with Bethesda’s National Naval Medical Center.
The new facility is expected to see its patient load nearly double to about 900,000 visits per year and add as many as 2,500 workers, according to Phil Alperson, coordinator of Montgomery County’s BRAC implementation plan.
He said the county estimates it will need at least $70 million to make the necessary changes to accommodate the influx of traffic the consolidation will generate.
But county leaders are worried Montgomery may lose out on state funding because BRAC projects at Fort Meade and in Aberdeen, Md., will encompass significantly larger areas than the roughly one-mile stretch of Route 355 where the Bethesda plan will unfold.
“As you travel around the state to other [military base realignment] areas that may have a larger and broader impact on an entire region, remember the one here, although it’s narrower, has a tremendous impact because it is in fact an urban center,” County Executive Ike Leggett told state officials. “The challenges that you heard today are tremendous for us and will have repercussions throughout the entire area.”
County planners are recommending Montgomery County widen Maryland Route 355 from Cedar Lane to Jones Bridge Road, add turn lanes to several points on Route 355 and Connecticut Avenue, construct an east entrance to the Medical Center Metro station and add Park and Ride lots with shuttle service, among other changes.
Patrick O’Neil, a representative of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Chamber of Commerce, told state leaders he was concerned that the release of an environmental impact statement associated with the project had been pushed back from June to December.
“Funding cycles are not going to cooperate with the release of an environmental impact statement in December,” since the General Assembly convenes only from January through the beginning of April, he told The Examiner.
Brown said the delay in issuing the environmental impact statement had not affected the state’s BRAC planning work so far.
“It’s important, you don’t want to start committing big dollars when you don’t fully understand the impact,” Brown told The Examiner. “The [impact statement] incorporates a lot of issues, but like all components it is just part of the puzzle.”
