The new Beltway express lanes that Virginia plans to open this year may cause more bottleneck congestion at the American Legion Bridge, but Maryland officials said they won’t know how to deal with the problem until a new traffic study is complete, possibly after the lanes open.

Maryland, however, actually conducted a traffic study of the express lanes and bridge bottleneck in 2009. That report offered a variety of recommendations for how to deal with the problems that are likely to arise once 12 lanes of traffic are forced to merge into 10 lanes over the bridge.