Roads Will Expand Years After Jobs Start at Fort Meade

School Construction Priorities Adjusted

It has been billed as the single largest job expansion in Maryland since World War II: 45,000 federal and private-sector jobs generated by the Pentagon's base realignment plan.

But many of the roads that will deliver these new workers to their jobs at Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County and other bases as early as 2011 will not expand to meet the new traffic until years later. The rail lines that could alleviate the traffic are not fully funded for expansion. The schools in Anne Arundel, Howard, Montgomery and Prince George's counties that could accommodate new families will not receive any federal money until the students start arriving.

Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC -- required by law to take effect beginning New Year's Day 2011 -- has been greeted with joy and foreboding, alternately heralded as the basis of a historic economic boom and a harbinger of unparalleled growth.

Now, nearly two years after the Pentagon announced its realignment plan, the communities most affected by the changes are working frantically to adjust their transportation and school construction priorities to match the influx of workers. Around Fort Meade, which stands to gain about 5,700 jobs directly and thousands more through related businesses, the road-building tab will run more than $5 billion.

The state will also have to invest in infrastructure to accommodate the nearly 10,000 military jobs coming to Aberdeen Proving Ground north of Baltimore and new workers at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda and Andrews Air Force Base in Prince George's County.

The demands of BRAC have promoted a rare spirit of cooperation between federal, state and county officials that has cut across party lines. In February, Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold (R) created the Fort George G. Meade Regional Growth Management Committee, which was promptly joined by Howard, Prince George's, Baltimore and Carroll counties, along with the cities of Baltimore and Laurel. Leopold also said that the county executives of the state's largest counties have also agreed to come up with a regional priority list involving BRAC.

The goal: to avoid getting swept under what Leopold describes as "this tsunami of growth." With more than $21 billion at stake in BRAC-related transportation projects statewide, counties have determined that the best way to look out for themselves is to look out for one another.

"The regional approach offers the best hope for our effort to secure the needed infrastructure dollars," Leopold said. "The voice of a regional group carries more clout."

The clearinghouse for those requests will be a new BRAC subcabinet created by Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) and overseen by Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown (D). The subcabinet will meet for the first time this month. An overriding goal will be a state plan that will address needs including transportation, higher education and availability of housing for the more than 28,000 new households.

Brown promised a comprehensive plan within six months.

He said the work of his group is "not to sound the alarm" but to fine-tune planning being done by the state. Transportation projects designed to accommodate BRAC growth are included in the state's seven-year planning cycle and in some cases are under construction. The subcabinet will determine whether any of those timetables needs to be altered.

Brown also emphasized that the base realignment will affect only a portion of the state's growth over the next 15 to 20 years, albeit a significant portion. "You can't get too far from the fact that BRAC is the single largest job expansion in Maryland since World War II," Brown said.

Some say the job growth will be greater than anticipated. A recent state study estimated that Anne Arundel and Howard would gain more than 12,000 federal and private-sector jobs as part of the reorganization bringing military workers to Fort Meade. Howard officials, however, say the number could be almost twice that, with jobs projected for the nearby National Security Agency, other defense-related organizations and businesses leasing property at Fort Meade.

"We are saying from the planning standpoint in that area on Fort Meade, there's going to be 22,000 new jobs," said Kent Menser, executive director of Howard's BRAC office.

To prepare for that growth, Howard has formed a task force to look at a half-dozen areas of concern, such as education, workforce development, transportation, infrastructure and workforce housing. "Probably the biggest challenge will be in the area of transportation, and the solutions to these challenges are not county-level solutions -- they're regional solutions," Menser said.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) has been working with Maryland's congressional delegation to push for a change that would allow school districts to start receiving federal dollars for military children before the students enroll.

Yet planning for schools is less exact than for transportation. Robert C. Leib, Leopold's special assistant for BRAC/education, said projections show that families who arrive with the highly educated workers won't necessarily settle around Fort Meade. They could choose schools as far as 45 minutes away, searching for the top schools in Anne Arundel and Howard or farther afield in Montgomery and Prince George's.

What's certain is that wherever the new workers live, they all will travel the same narrow network of roads to Fort Meade.

In Anne Arundel, widening is planned for Route 175, but only $2.5 million has been earmarked, for planning, for a project that could cost as much as $600 million. Construction has not been funded.

On another major artery, Route 3, the state has earmarked $3 million for planning, but the remaining cost of the widening -- $615 million to $690 million -- is unfunded.

Nearby, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway is being expanded from four to six lanes from Interstate 695 to I-195, at a cost of $29.6 million, starting this spring. Further widening of the parkway from Route 100 to I-195 is in the planning stage.

The state could add cars to MARC trains and expand bus service and parking capacity at train stations near Fort Meade. A proposed extension of Metro's Green Line north from Greenbelt to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport is being studied.

Leopold, who has formally asked the state to accelerate the expansion of Route 175, takes pains to emphasize that Anne Arundel sees BRAC as a blessing.

"We are going to be receiving thousands of full-time, family-sustaining jobs," he said. "Clearly we in Anne Arundel County are the beneficiaries of BRAC, and we have to step up to the plate."