The thousands of new employees coming to military-related jobs in Harford County in the next three years will likely grapple with traffic congestion caused by inadequate roads, failing intersections and insufficient mass transit.
Maryland's revenue shortfall has delayed several key projects that were designed to relieve commuter traffic to and from Aberdeen Proving Ground, which is expected to grow by about 10,000 jobs within the next three years. BRAC, the nationwide military base expansion set for a 2011 completion at APG, will bring those new employees to the county. The state's fiscal problems have delayed funding to improve roads and key intersections near the post and to extend commuter rail lines.
State Highway Administrator Neil J. Pedersen said the economic downturn forced the state to defer $1.1 billion in transportation projects across Maryland. Funding for road improvements around military bases has been reduced by about one-third of what was originally planned, he said.
"We have kept the funding for engineering and right-of-way acquisition in place so we can keep these projects on schedule in the hope that the revenue picture improves," Pedersen said. "We are still working to make these projects possible, but, obviously, we have to have the revenues available."
Shortages in transportation funds have pushed many projects so far into the future that it will be nearly impossible to meet BRAC's deadline, said Donald C. Fry, president of the Greater Baltimore Committee.
"We will be looking at logjams," Fry said. "Five key intersections that are critical to ingress and egress at APG are deferred. Even the number of trains and the times are limited. We need to figure out how to expedite these projects, not delay them. We have to push and cajole legislators to make these projects a priority."
In a meeting with the General Assembly's Joint Committee on BRAC at Cecil Community College last week, Fry said nearly $115 million in road improvements, critical to handling increased traffic at APG, will lag far behind the Army's implementation of BRAC.
The planned extensions of the MARC rail service into Cecil County and Delaware will not be completed until 2015 at the earliest, exacerbating the situation by forcing commuters to use the highways instead of the trains.
"Without a doubt, the underlying challenge confronting the Maryland Department of Transportation and the justification for the delay in needed transportation projects, BRAC and non-BRAC related, is lack of funding," Fry told the joint committee.
