Like their Virginia counterparts, Montgomery County officials have had at least five years to plan for the Base Realignment and Closure Commission’s relocation of thousands of workers into new medical facilities in Bethesda. However, with the Sept. 15 BRAC deadline fast approaching, and with existing road and transit facilities already near maximum capacity, gridlock is not only guaranteed, it’s already a reality. Three major intersections surrounding Bethesda Naval Hospital have already been rated as “failing” by the Maryland State Highway Administration. How will MHA refer to these same intersections when 2,500 new hospital workers and nearly 500,000 annual visitors converge on them starting in September? Totally failing?
The dire consequences of the county’s total failure to do everything in its power to avert this coming traffic disaster will fall most heavily on commuters themselves, Bethesda businesses, and residents who won’t be able to get in and out of their own neighborhoods. But the gridlock will have a domino effect extending into the District and onto the Capital Beltway, where chronic backups will slow commutes for everybody else in the region.
How bad will it get? About 4,500 extra vehicles are expected on the six-lane Rockville Pike while the number of pedestrians crossing the same road more than doubles — from 3,000 currently to 7,000. A $60 million project that would have created a safer alternative — an underground tunnel for Red Line Metro riders — is still on hold for lack of funding. Even if the money is approved, it would take four years — at the earliest — before the tunnel could be used.
County officials admit that they only started BRAC-related infrastructure upgrades this summer, far too late to avoid horrendous backups on Rockville Pike and Connecticut Avenue, the two main arteries (and evacuation routes) serving the National Naval Medical Center. A dozen other projects that could make an appreciable difference don’t even have secured funding, so it will be years before they are completed — if ever. Major traffic backups are also expected at Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County and Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County, where tens of thousands of defense workers will also be relocated.
After frittering away five years and failing to make BRAC a top priority, Montgomery County’s hopelessly inadequate immediate solution consists largely of building pedestrian and bike trails and urging commuters to car pool. It’s ridiculously too little — and much too late.
