A pedestrian underpass between the National Institutes of Health and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda is "highly unlikely" in the near future without a federal grant, according to Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett.

Leggett discussed the project, which would create a nearly at-grade tunnel under Rockville Pike between NIH and Navy Med near the Medical Center Metro station, following a meeting between local, state and federal officials on Monday. The county has requested a $20 million federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant, which represents half the total cost of the tunnel. The project would allow pedestrians and bikers to safely cross beneath the traffic and could allow access to emergency vehicles in the future.

The state, meanwhile, has made $58.3 million in other TIGER grant requests for Base Realignment and Closure projects in Bethesda, in Anne Arundel County at Fort George G. Meade and in Harford County at the Aberdeen Proving Ground.

There are $56 billion in TIGER grant applications nationwide, but only $1.5 billion is available from the federal government, which will make a decision about awarding the grants in February 2010.

Leggett did note that a $20 million placeholder in the Department of Defense's budget for fiscal 2011 should increase the likelihood of getting the TIGER grant for the underpass.

"What we have done is make the process a little more competitive for us," said Leggett (D).

But a dispute has also emerged about whether the underpass was ultimately meant to be a traffic interchange between NIH and Navy Med and Rockville Pike. The project is meant to be multi-modal and possibly accommodate emergency and other traffic, said county BRAC coordinator Phil Alperson, but ideas for connecting car traffic to Rockville Pike are not in the project's specifications.

"That multi-modality, if NIH and Navy Med ever want to do it, if they want to go ahead and add their own ingress and egress system, they can do that. Our project doesn't prevent that," Alperson said. "We don't have those roads in the plan."

But Action Committee for Transit's Ben Ross argued the project is intended to serve automobile traffic at the expense of pedestrians and bikers, since Leggett's letter accompanying the grant mentions access roads to NIH and Navy Med. He also demanded that the project's details, developed by Clarke Construction but redacted from the county's TIGER application for what Alperson said were proprietary reasons, be made public.

"Why is he keeping it secret?" Ross asked, referring to Alperson.

The BRAC project will relocate Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Washington, D.C., to Navy Med in September 2011, bringing with it 2,500 new jobs. The pedestrian underpass is designed to cope with the projected 6,700 daily pedestrian crossings across Rockville Pike between the Medical Center Metro and Navy Med once the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center opens.

Another key portion of alleviating traffic woes related to Walter Reed is upgrading traffic flow at four key intersections near the current Navy Med campus. The intersections are Old Georgetown Road and West Cedar Lane, Connecticut Avenue and Jones Bridge Road, Jones Bridge Road and Rockville Pike, and Rockville Pike and Cedar Lane. The latter is considered to be the most important, but also the most expensive to upgrade.

These four intersections currently have failing grades from the State Highway Administration in terms of traffic flow, but the proposed improvements are expected to provide only marginal benefits.

In the first phase of intersection improvements, $25 million is available from the state in construction funds for improvements near the intersection of the Pike and Cedar Lane, including a new left-hand turn lane into NIH and an extended turning area into Navy Med on the Pike south of the intersection. There is also $4 million in state money for adding a southbound lane on Connecticut Avenue between the Interstate 495 offramp and Jones Bridge Road.

For the next phase of improvements, a further $18 million has been requested in TIGER grants by the state for intersection improvements at Rockville Pike and Jones Bridge Road ($5 million), Connecticut Avenue at Jones Bridge Road ($6 million), and Old Georgetown Road and West Cedar Lane ($7 million).

These second-phase improvements have not been specified, and no state or county money has been set aside for these upgrades.