The Defense Department and the communities that benefit from its military bases should shell out more money for transportation improvements to handle the “significant” traffic expected to result from a major relocation of military workers in the Washington region, according to a new report. Congress should provide an emergency funding infusion similar to the stimulus program to begin immediate relief such as creating high-occupancy toll lanes and carpooling programs to offset the effects of 180,000 military and civilian workers moving at 18 bases around the nation, according to the report from the National Research Council’s Transportation Research Board. “We advocate doing these things as quickly as possible,” said Joseph Sussman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who led the study.
| Local effects |
| Fort Belvoir: Already Fairfax County’s largest employer, the base is expected to grow by 36,800 people and house more workers than the Pentagon. Most of the relocated people will travel to the Fairfax County base in cars, the report said, but the area is already suffering severe congestion. |
| National Naval Medical Center: The center in Bethesda already houses roughly 70,000 workers during the day and 18,000 at the National Institutes of Health across Rockville Pike, but it will get about 2,500 more. The major arteries cannot be widened, the report found, and additional turn lanes haven’t been funded. Improvements to the Medical Center Metro station haven’t been funded either, the report said. |
| Fort Meade: More than 40,000 people work at the base halfway between D.C. and Baltimore, and it is expected to get 11,200 more. Most of the planned road improvements don’t have funding, the report said, and the goals of traffic management programs will be difficult to achieve. |
The massive shift of military might, known as Base Closure and Realignment, is scheduled to occur by Sept. 15, far too soon for the surrounding communities to deal with the added traffic congestion, according to the congressionally mandated report. “In some senses, that’s virtually tomorrow,” Sussman said.
For Washington-area officials, the call for more funding was good news. The region will be especially hard hit as BRAC strikes three bases in a region already clogged with some of the nation’s worst traffic. The added congestion “cannot be accommodated in a matter of a few months or years,” the report said.
“The consequences of inaction would gridlock our national security, as well as affected urban and metropolitan areas,” said U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md.
The report focused on six of the affected bases, including three in the Washington region: Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, and Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County.
The problem is that the bases are in populated areas already plagued by gridlock, the report said. They don’t have enough transit access that will give workers alternatives, so the relocation is going to mean more cars on already congested roads.
The report found that the current Defense Department funding is “inadequate” in metropolitan areas. The current funding is limited to areas only where traffic would double — feasible in rural areas but nearly impossible in Washington. And it covers only road projects, not mass transit.
“We now have further validation that the Pentagon does bear a responsibility to offset the costs of the impacts of BRAC,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va.
The Defense Department largely considers the transportation improvements to get to the bases a responsibility of state and local governments, the report said. But it urges the department to pay more, just as developers pay impact fees to cover the cost of infrastructure improvements made for their projects.
Congress allocated roughly $150 million to the Defense Department to help relieve traffic congestion around the Washington area in December 2009, said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., but Pentagon officials can’t access the money due to a provision in its spending bill. Efforts by Congress to reverse that provision and release the funds have failed.
“We’ve been working on this for years now,” Van Hollen said.
“The clock is ticking now,” he said. “This is now an urgent priority and I think that if the Defense Department does not step up and contribute its fair share, it’s going to be embarrassing.”
