Senator Mark Warner: Region Needs New Potomac River Bridge

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) thinks the D.C. region needs additional bridges crossing the Potomac River, an issue that's often the third-rail of regional planning politics.

Speaking on WAMU-FM's "Politics Hour," the former governor said "we can't keep funneling the traffic into these few choke points across the river," like the American Legion Bridge, which carries the Capital Beltway between Montgomery County and Fairfax County.

To Warner, a lack of infrastructure investment is limiting long-term economic prosperity in the region: "Infrastructure which in the capital region helped us grow is now is becoming a choke point and going to kill the golden goose where the jobs are, whether they're in Montgomery County, [Prince George's County] or out in Northern Virginia, in the Dulles corridor and elsewhere. And we've been talking about it for 10 or 15 years … Unfortunately, the progress has been at best incremental."

Smart-growth advocates have opposed a new Potomac River bridge between Maryland and Virginia for years, saying that it will only increase vehicular traffic, lead to the eventual creation of a second beltway, cause more regional sprawl and ruin Montgomery County's agricultural reserve, an area between the Interstate 270 corridor and the Potomac River that sits largely undeveloped.

Montgomery County officials have been opposed to previous proposals for a new Potomac crossing, like the scuttled Techway.

In May, Virginia's Commonwealth Transportation Board approved a measure to designate a north-south route between Interstate 95 in Stafford County and Route 7 in Loudoun County as a "Corridor of Statewide Significance," which critics say will pave the way for funding of a future "Outer Beltway."

Virginia Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton, in an interview earlier this month with The Washington Post, said: "This is not an Outer Beltway … We’re basically just trying to look. This is just a study. This is no more. We’re going to look at transit, bikes, pedestrians, roads, everything. We just can’t ignore the obvious … Northern Virginia has attempted to control growth by not building transportation facilities, and it hasn’t worked."

In the meantime, the number of suburb-to-suburb commutes in the region is expected to increase by 45 percent by 2040, commuting patterns which do not work well with Metrorail's current hub-and-spoke system that only links downtown Washington with suburban areas in Maryland and Virginia.

The Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance has called the lack of a bridge in the 35-mile stretch between the Capital Beltway and the Point of Rocks Bridge near Leesburg as the D.C. area's "single greatest regional transportation deficiency."

Comments

[John Teneyck]

04:27 PM on 09/26/2011

just build a rail connection from a massive parking lot near the 270 spur, down the median of an enhanced American Legion bridge that could connect to Tysons, because thats where most ppl using 495 from Maryland are going, and it saves us from another 12 lanes of traffic

[philryanuk]

11:04 AM on 09/26/2011

Adding roads only increases traffic; Warner would be better off relieving the Metro by championing a separated Blue Line for the Metro that would add a third rapid transit link across the Potomac and massively increase capacity for VA and DC residents.

[John Teneyck]

04:29 PM on 09/26/2011

they do need to separate the Blue Line but it must still funnel near Rosslyn for it to make sense; splitting North and South Arlington (no service from Rosslyn to Pentagon) will make more people drive, defeating the purpose of extra capacity...

[philryanuk]

05:18 PM on 09/26/2011

Well the plan is to build a new stop at Rosslyn for the Blue Line and then to run under the Potomac to Georgetown and down M Street (although I think it makes more sense to turn up to P to connect Dupont and Logan, then run down to Mt Vernon and to Union Station). At rush hour, this would increase crosstown and cross-Potomac capacity to 126,000 passengers per hour, not to mention crush loads, an increase of 50%, while adding at least 35-50,000 NEW passengers to the system considering how successful stops in Georgetown, the West End, and Logan Circle would be.