When Walter Reed National Military Medical Center opens in September, the Bethesda base will have one parking space per four employees, half as many per employee as were available before construction.

Navy officials plan to avoid chaos by promoting alternative commuting, such as an express bus, on-campus shuttles and carpooling, and providing incentives for those using those modes of transportation.

"It's a precarious situation with parking on campus at this point," said Jeff Miller, the transportation program manager for Naval Support Activity Bethesda. "Transportation management really plays a critical role in making sure we are successful."

The federally mandated Base Realignment and Closure requires Walter Reed to consolidate with National Naval Medical Center, which includes plans for three new parking lots, a total of about 2,640 spaces, for patients, visitors and staff. Also planned is a $26 million project at five gates, to add lanes and move checkpoints farther from the road.

The campus is expected to receive 2,500 employees from Walter Reed Army Medical Center when that hospital's Washington, D.C., location closes, for a total of about 10,500 employees. Annual visits to the Bethesda hospital are expected to double to about 1 million.

Outside Navy Med's gates, community leaders are trying to promote alternative transportation for the 44,000 people who work in downtown Bethesda, just south of the military campus.

Neighborhood representatives who serve on the BRAC Implementation Committee, which is intended to coordinate the private and public players near the hospital, wrote to Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett in February to ask that he continue to fund transportation management incentives in Bethesda.

The county's fiscal 2011 budget included $400,000 for a pilot transportation incentive program, but the program never took off and the money was eliminated during mid-year cuts, said W. David Dabney, executive director of the Bethesda Urban Partnership, which maintains and markets downtown Bethesda.

With a $300 million deficit in the county, the responsibility to incentivize alternative transportation falls to businesses and commuters, Dabney said.

"It takes that conscious decision to say — I'm willing to make a change because I'm sick of sitting in traffic and looking at the bumpers of other people's cars," Dabney.

And businesses need to offer equal benefits to alternative commuters. For example, a business that offers an employee a free parking space worth $140 should offer the same amount of money to put toward Metro or bus fare, Dabney said.

Calvert Investments is among the Bethesda businesses that have taken initiative on commuting incentives.

The investment management company offers employees who commit to walking to work $120 a year to put toward sneakers and will give employees who commit to walking or biking to work for at least six months $500 for a bicycle. The company will pay in full bus or train fare for employees who decide to commute via public transit. Comparatively, the company only pays part of an employee's parking expenses, said Kathy Torrence, Calvert's vice president of corporate sustainability and community partnerships. About 60 employees, a third of Calvert's Bethesda staff, participated in the transit benefit program and less than a dozen biked or walked. Torrence declined to say how much the company spends on alternative commuting incentives.

Bethesda Transportation Solutions, run through the urban partnership, educates the downtown community about the tax breaks available to businesses, helps commuters organize carpools and vanpools and provides information about bicycle and bus routes.

Education efforts are catching on. Since 1999, the number of downtown Bethesda workers whose primary mode of transportation to work was not a single occupancy vehicle increased 11 percent, to about 37 percent of workers, according to a transportation survey the urban partnership conducted, Dabney said.

A 2010 survey by Navy Med shows a similar trend away from single occupancy vehicles.

In 2010, about 63 percent of campus employees drove themselves to work, down from 74 percent in 2007, according to the survey, which included 1,035 participants, about 13 percent of the staff. The number of people who primarily commuted through a carpool also declined, from 14 percent to 8 percent.

Regardless of trends that show more people taking alternative modes of transportation to work, traffic remains a problem in Bethesda and is expected to worsen, said Phil Alperson, the county's BRAC coordinator. About $165 million worth of intersection improvement and Metro access projects are planned; the earliest stages of the intersection projects could be complete by mid 2012.

"Once the BRAC traffic kicks in, I think reality is going to be the incentive," Alperson said.

sgantz@gazette.net