WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON - When President Bush breaks ground today for a new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, Phil Alperson may be thinking about how Route 355 is going to handle the thousands of additional staff, patients and visitors the hospital is expected to draw each day.
"You cannot increase the personnel ... by one-third, or double the hospital load to nearly 1 million visits to the campus each year, without having a significant impact on traffic and congestion outside the fence," said Alperson, an aide to Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett. "If a doctor or emergency vehicle can't access the campus in a timely manner because they are mired in gridlock, then we will have let down the very people this mission is supposed to serve."
The National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, where the new Walter Reed is to be built, is one of several military installations in the state set to grow in the nationwide base realignment and closure process known as BRAC. But with a 2011 deadline to complete the moves, local and state officials say, the federal government has not provided enough support to communities around the new Walter Reed, Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County and Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County. The 28,000 new families they are expected to bring will need roads, utilities and schools.
