A host of elected officials on Monday gave the ceremonial green light to an intersection improvement project that will shut down Cedar Lane for two months starting in June.
Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, Sen. Ben Cardin, County Executive Isiah Leggett and Reps. Donna Edwards and Chris Van Hollen celebrated seven new road projects that are meant to ease traffic congestion around military installations at Fort Meade, Joint Base Andrews, the Aberdeen Proving Ground and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Rockville Pike.
The event was held at NIH’s Gateway Center in Bethesda to draw attention to the coming construction at Cedar Lane and Rockville Pike. The $15.8 million project includes $14.6 million in federal funding and will add turn lanes to Cedar Lane and widen sections of Rockville Pike.
That section of Rockville Pike has become notorious for heavy rush hour traffic, a consequence of Walter Reed’s move to Naval Support Activity Bethesda in 2011.
Starting about June 6, Cedar Lane will be closed for two months east of Rockville Pike to Elmhirst Parkway. Crews must create the new turning lanes and realign a culvert for the creek that runs under the road — work that has started already.
“There’s going to be a period of time where there are going to be some inconveniences to make the investment for the greater long-term benefit,” Van Hollen said. “But as you see certain road closures, we hope that the representatives who are here from the community will work with us to make sure that everybody in this area knows that the idea is that at the end of the day, everybody will be better off.”
On Tuesday at 6 p.m., officials in charge of the project for the State Highway Administration will be at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center (4805 Edgemoor Lane) to offer specifics on the Cedar Lane closure.
It’s one of many federally funded projects along the Rockville Pike corridor that runs in between Naval Support Activity Bethesda and NIH, the county’s two largest employers.
In September 2012, many of the same elected officials stood in the same place in the NIH Gateway Center to announce a $40 million Department of Defense grant to help pay for the Rockville Pike pedestrian tunnel crossing project at the Medical Center Metro station.
“We were looking at the prospects of 3,000 new patients a year, the fact that we would have somewhere in the league of 1 million visitors per year in a community already stressed with a huge amount of traffic congestion to begin with,” said Leggett, who thanked Van Hollen for helping to secure the federal funding to pay for road projects. “To be stuck in traffic when you see no prospects of relief is a daunting leadership challenge. To be stuck in traffic when you see they are actually working and something is about to happen is something that we can really promise and deliver for our citizens. And they accept and respect that.”
Cedar Lane photo via J.D. Mack
