Roads around Fort Belvoir and Bethesda National Naval Medical Center could receive a funding boost if a House committee can get the Pentagon to give some relief for communities about to be swamped by thousands of new military jobs.
As it stands now, local transportation projects in areas where base realignment and construction projects are occurring must meet strict criteria before the federal government will consider paying for off-base improvements. Officials are asked tocertify that a BRAC project would double the traffic on area roads — a near impossibility on the already congested arteries that front Fairfax County‘s Fort Belvoir and Montgomery County‘s Bethesda National Naval Hospital.
Local leaders in both areas have grumbled for years that the policy discriminates against urban places where traffic is already too heavy to double.
On Tuesday, however, the House Appropriations Committee approved language in their military construction bill that opens the door for policy changes.
The committee backed up a recent decision from Navy leaders to ask the Defense Department to allow two Bethesda BRAC traffic mitigation projects, a new Metro entrance and the addition of turn lanes on Maryland Route 355, to receive federal money.
“We’ve been working to get this support for BRAC-related traffic mitigation in Bethesda for a while,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said. “It’s one more important step in the right direction— we just need to keep heading down this path.”
The bill also directs the Defense Department to “proactively identify all other necessary transportation improvements” at other BRAC sites that could also be eligible for federal money, and to “aggressively plan and budget” for those projects.
“The language shows the committee’s concerns that roads in urban areas are not treated the same by the [federal funding] process,” Austin Durrer, press secretary for appropriations committee member Rep. James Moran, D-Va., said.
The military plans to move some 19,000 new workers to Fort Belvoir and shift 2,200 employees to Bethesda’s National Naval Medical Center, while doubling the number of patients and visitors going there. Both the Army and Navy have dismissed paying for many of the transportation projects that experts say would be necessary to prevent gridlock when the reorganization occurs.
Montgomery and Fairfax government leaders fear they will be left with massive bottlenecks throughout the communities that surround the BRAC projects.
