Five Nuggets from the Recent BRAC Transportation Report

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) last week published calling for the federal government to needed to accommodate Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) activities. 

The 90-page report offered great detail on the transportation impact in this area, as thousands of workers begin moving into Fort Meade. 

The NAS reached several conclusions and made several recommendations in its report. We've broken down five key points for you to digest. 

Off-base Impacts Weren’t Considered – One of the report’s conclusions was that when the federal government made decisions on how to realign and consolidate its military installations, it did so without properly examining how it would impact nearby communities. Too often, inquiries about such potential impacts were made to people who reside on the base, and therefore might not be aware of the area’s traffic situation.

“This situation can result in a lack of appreciation of the carrying capacity of regional infrastructure and the difficulty of expanding it to meet military needs,” the report said.

Fort Meade is a Tough Location – The shift of workers from offices in Northern Virginia to Fort Meade essentially moves thousands of people from more centrally located spots with good transit service to an area where public transportation options are limited. This means more cars will inevitably be added to local roadways.

“The majority of workers, existing and future, will come by private car and clog existing roads already straining under commuter traffic,” the report said.

Route 32 Needs Widening, But When? - About 50 percent of the existing traffic to Fort Meade uses Route 32. Negotiations are under way between the base and State Highway Administration to widen a 4-mile stretch of the road that bisects the base. But the NAS said funding for design and construction is not expected for five to 10 years, or more.

Changing the One Car, One Person Attitude - Currently, 89 percent of the people who arrive at Fort Meade do so in single-occupancy vehicles. Officials hope that a transportation demand management plan will reduce that single-occupancy vehicle number to 70 percent. They hope to boost carpool and vanpool usage from 8.6 percent to 12 percent, up public transit usage from .6 percent to 9 percent, and increase telecommuting from 2 percent to 7 percent.

A National Security Concern – The potential traffic congestion and the money spent to mitigate the problem could have an eroding effect on the quality of work performed by military and intelligence agencies at Fort Meade.

“Longer and more arduous commutes risk loss of retention of senior, highly skilled civilian workers,” the report said.