Leggett: County taking steps to prepare for BRAC

This will bring at least 2,500 new employees to Bethesda. While this may not bring a large influx of new families to the area, since the hospital is moving just five miles from its current location, the relocation will generate more traffic and demands for services. The Navy estimates that the number of cars and taxis driving into the Medical Center campus each year will double to 900,000, or about 2,500 cars a day, 365 days a year!

In addition, Fort Meade, just a few miles to our east, will gain 20,000 new civilian and military jobs. Many of the families moving to the facility will reside in Montgomery County.

The combined resources of the Army, Navy and NIH will make their piece of Rockville Pike in Bethesda the epicenter of medical care and research. But that stretch of road already experiences some of the worst congestion in the state.

The number of employees and outpatients at Bethesda Naval will virtually double. Active soldiers will come, seeking hospital and outpatient care for injuries incurred in the line of duty. Retired military and their families will also seek medical care they earned after a career in uniformed service. Some patients may need long-term care at the facility that will require housing for themselves and family members.

While the federal government, which mandated these BRAC moves, will finance required construction on the Walter Reed campus in Bethesda, it has not committed a single dollar to deal with roads, transit, housing or anything else beyond the medical center’s perimeter fence. Congress will surely provide some funds for communities to deal with BRAC-related infrastructure needs, but there is not nearly enough money in the public coffers to widen every road or build every train track that affected communities will cry out for.

We have formed a BRAC Implementation Task force with civic and business leaders working with county, state and federal officials to identify issues arising from BRAC and recommend ways to address them.

We are identifying projects to address anticipated traffic congestion, such as upgrading intersections and creating turn lanes at Bethesda Naval Hospital and NIH, opening an east-side entrance to the Medical Center Metro station, improving pedestrian and bicycle access in the area, and studying the feasibility of a dedicated off-ramp from the Beltway.

And we have enlisted the aid of our senators and representatives to procure federal funding for these essential infrastructure projects.

Let us not forget that wounded warriors are returning from fields of battle, some with injuries so horrific that survival was inconceivable not so long ago. And let’s not forget the active duty and retired veterans and their families who have made sacrifices to serve their country, and now come to Bethesda for medical care.

If those 2,500 cars a day cannot get in or out of the medical complex, then we will have failed in our mission to provide wounded and retired warriors the high quality health care we promised and owe them.

The leaders of our affected communities — from Capitol Hill to Annapolis to our own county and neighborhoods — must come together to address our infrastructure needs and make this work.

Isiah Leggett, a Democrat from Burtonsville, is Montgomery County executive.