Thousands of patients, workers to move within month Tens of thousands of new patients and employees will descend on military facilities in the Washington area over the next month, backing up traffic even further on already gridlocked roads.
Transportation officials, strapped for cash and time, say minor improvements to bike lanes, sidewalks and bus service will help ease traffic, but nothing has been done yet to improve roads near some facilities.
| BRAC at a glance |
| Bethesda: Walter Reed National Military Medical Center |
| » The National Naval Medical Center will absorb the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District. |
| » About 2,500 Walter Reed employees will be transferred to Bethesda. |
| » Two-thirds of Walter Reed’s patients will be moved to Bethesda, the rest to Fort Belvoir. |
| Alexandria: Mark Center |
| » About 6,400 defense workers move into the new facility along Interstate 395 and Seminary Road. |
| » About 2,300 employees will have moved in by September. |
| Fairfax County: Fort Belvoir |
| » Employees at the base will grow by about 19,000. |
| » The new Fort Belvoir Community Hospital will complement the Walter Reed campus in Bethesda. |
| » Replaces Dewitt Army Community Hospital |
Federal employees have begun to shift to Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, the Mark Center in Alexandria and a new Walter Reed medical campus in Bethesda, where traffic generated by new military facilities is expected to degrade already deteriorated roads.
All the personnel transfers must be complete by Sept. 15 as a part of the Defense Department’s Base Realignment and Closure plan, more commonly known as BRAC.
Local and state officials say quick fixes they’ve made so far, as well as some unfunded plans for broader improvements in the next few years, are the best they could do given the lack of time and dearth of funding from state and federal sources.
“The challenge is that it takes significant amounts of time to plan, design, fund and construct major transportation projects,” said Andy Scott, who handles BRAC issues for the Maryland Department of Transportation. “The BRAC projects are adding major growth in area’s where it’s not planned for.”
This reality is painfully apparent in Bethesda, where the Navy’s medical center will replace Walter Reed Army Medical Center as the nation’s pre-eminent military hospital.
About 2,500 new employees will begin commuting to work in Bethesda this month, and patient visits at the hospital are expected to double to 1 million annually.
Meanwhile, improvements to gates leading in and out of the hospital, and bike path improvements made by Montgomery County officials are all that has been accomplished thus far.
Major road improvements were out of the county’s hands — the state has control over the roads around the medical center, according to Phil Alperson, BRAC coordinator for Montgomery County.
Maryland transportation officials worked closely with the county to identify road improvements to ease traffic. But given the relatively short period of time to plan and build, widening roads was never considered, according to Scott.
Instead, the state plans to improve four intersections around the hospital and build a pedestrian tunnel connecting to the Medical Center Metro station across the street.
“These are relatively simple projects that can be implemented quickly, in the grand scheme of things in the transportation world,” Scott said. “If we were going to try and widen Route 355, we wouldn’t be anywhere near construction. That’s not something we looked at.”
Yet those projects still require funding to begin construction; state and county officials are applying for about $100 million from a federal funding pot of $300 million only recently made available to military hospitals affected by BRAC.
Fairfax County officials are encouraging drivers to find new commutes, with the influx of 19,000 federal workers to Fort Belvoir and the Mark Center expected to create gridlock on Interstate 395 and other arterial roads.
Virginia transportation officials will be vying for funds from the same $300 million pot as Bethesda to make traffic improvements near the new Fort Belvoir Community Hospital.
Overall, drivers can expect the improvements to maintain existing levels of congestion, not improve commutes. The result will not be ideal, Scott acknowledged.
“Congress passed this enormous BRAC bill and gave the military billions of dollars to do all the on-campus BRAC work, but they didn’t provide the equivalent dollars to fix our transportation,” Alperson said.
