The D.C. Council is rebuffing the U.S. Navy’s long-term plan for its base in Southeast, saying it further isolates the base from the community and ignores the traffic strain the growing military population will create. The Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling was consolidated last year as part of the Base Realignment and Closure process. Many have said that the realignment’s effect on the Washington area’s already taxed roads could be devastating.
“Washington is going to be impacted perhaps more severely … than any place in the country,” said Thomas B. Deen, the former executive director of the National Research Council’s Transportation Research Board.
Part of that is because of the Defense Department’s policy that it doesn’t pay for infrastructure changes unless a road’s traffic count will double.
“Which makes sense if you’re building a base in the boondocks somewhere,” Deen said. “But that criteria doesn’t have much meaning in an urban situation.”
The council passed a resolution this week asking the military to revise its plan for Anacostia-Bolling. The National Capital Planning Commission and Department of Homeland Security says it is equally unimpressed.
While the master plan predicts that Anacostia-Bolling’s daytime population will increase from 13,200 to more than 18,000 over a decade, it fails to analyze the “effects of the increased employee population on the larger transportation network around the base,” the council’s resolution said.
Council members also said the plan didn’t consider
the increased activity in the area directly adjacent to the base with the redevelopment of St. Elizabeths Hospital, which includes the relocation of about 14,000 DHS employees.
A Homeland Security memo says the plan ignores a proposed realignment of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge north of the base. The planning commission takes issue with parking, saying the proposed ratio of roughly 2 1/2 people per parking space is far below the federally recommended four people per space.
The council resolution even insinuates the base is partly to blame for Ward 8’s high unemployment rate.
“[The base] has operated as a self-contained facility, including retail, recreational and other amenities,” it said. “If these amenities had been offered in the community, they would have undoubtedly contributed to the economic vitality of Ward 8.”
