Just six months before 30,000 military and civilian defense workers are shifted to new workplaces across the Washington area, none of the necessary road or public transportation improvements needed to accommodate them have been made and local officials now fear the shift will turn already overburdened area roads into traffic graveyards. Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, and the Mark Center in Alexandria will add thousands of new commuters from the Army, Air Force and Defense Department by Sept. 15 as part of a federal realignment of military bases, moves that have been in the works since 2005.
And while local, state and federal officials have reviewed a variety of traffic improvements needed at each of the three sites, most of the new roads, traffic lanes or bus services will still not be in place when the new workers arrive, adding thousands of cars to roads already choked by rush-hour traffic.
