Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) It takes two to tango, but once again, Montgomery County is standing up Virginia on the dance floor.
The Northern Virginia Transportation Authority has added two Potomac River crossings to TransAction, which is essentially its wish list of future projects. The list does not take into account funding realities, or political ones for that matter. The commonwealth is desperate for a crossing between Loudoun and Montgomery Counties, in an attempt to relieve the prodigious, interminable congestion on the American Legion Bridge.
But top Montgomery County officials continue to slam the idea.
“I don’t think there’s any appetite for a new bridge. I don’t think it’ll ever happen,” Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner told WMAL. “The people who would be affected by a second crossing would rise up in arms against it.”
Montgomery County has long opposed additional bridges, especially in the White’s Ferry area, as it would ram cars through its agricultural preserve and increase sprawl, Berliner said.
Instead, Berliner favors improvements for the Capital Beltway’s American Legion bridge.
“We ought to be talking about fixing the first bridge, not fantasizing about another bridge that, in my judgment, will never happen,” Berliner said.
However, Loudoun County Supervisors Vice-Chairman Ralph Buona told WMAL his side of the river is in favor of a new bridge.
“The consensus is that there’s a strong need for it,” Buona said. “We have tremendous gridlock on the Beltway, Route 15 (at the Point of Rocks Bridge), and so forth.”
A new bridge could represent an economic development opportunity in both jurisdictions to create “a strong technology-type of corridor,” Buona said. He disputed Berliner’s assertion that more lanes would fix the Legion Bridge’s gridlock problems.
“Studies are showing you would need 20 lanes on the Legion Bridge,” he said. “It’s not just about widening the bridge. You would have to widen the Beltway too, and you can only widen roads so much.”
Both characterized the Legion Bridge as a national security nightmare in the making, should the region ever need to be evacuated.
“The discussion has to be the political will of jurisdictions on both sides of the river, to say ‘we can work together to get this done and solve a very, very big problem,’” said Buona.
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