Why is the Maryland State Highway Administration planning to spend $11 million of federal Base Realignment and Closure money on a four-block “Road to Nowhere” in Bethesda when an already-built ramp leading directly to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center from the Capital Beltway lies buried under a local park? The planned “improvement” would widen the three northbound lanes of Rockville Pike to four lanes for just four blocks before returning the road to its three-lane configuration. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that this $3,000 per foot project would save motorists all of eight seconds in travel time. But there are apparently no plans to exhume the hidden 30-year-old Beltway exit, which crosses Cedar Lane and goes directly to Walter Reed, even though it would take thousands of cars off the pike.
Nearby homeowners told The Washington Examiner that the proposed widening of the northbound lanes won’t ease the traffic jams created by BRAC because almost all of the bottlenecks occur in the southbound lanes. They also say that suddenly forcing traffic back into three lanes from four creates an unnecessary crash hazard. A local engineer points out that the “only purpose” of the “Road to Nowhere” is to artificially inflate the p.m. peak vehicle/count score at the intersection — not to actually improve traffic flow. Even more disturbing, residents who live on a service road parallel to Rockville Pike only learned about the widening plans, which will restrict their access to their own homes, at an Oct. 21 meeting at which they were given only five minutes — in total — to express their opposition.
This non-solution “solution” to Bethesda’s very real BRAC problem only makes sense, they say, when viewed as a way to divert $11 million of federal BRAC funds to road improvements that will eventually be required for the $745 million White Flint redevelopment project, which still has a $90 million funding gap. Such a bait-and-switch maneuver mirrors MSHA’s previous diversion of $11.3 million of highway construction inspection funds that was discovered by a recent legislative audit. And the appointment of John Carman, chairman of a consulting group working on the White Flint project, as former chairman of the BRAC Implementation Committee, raises disturbing questions about a possible conflict of interest. Residents want the state to conduct an independent, third-party traffic study — which should include the buried Beltway ramp — before making a final decision. The Department of Defense should insist on it.
