Beltway Near College Park
A new Navy Medical Center in Bethesda is expected to draw thousands of employees and new patients on the I-495 Beltway, thus in turn will most likely put a stress on its already congested lanes. The Bethesda traffic on the beltway due to the current NIH facilities can be felt as far as near College Park.
The consolidation into what will be theWalter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda is scheduled to be done by Sept. 15, under the national Base Realignment and Closing plan.
The other two federal facilities where the defense personnel will start moving are Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County and the Mark Center in Alexandria.
About 2,500 new employees will begin commuting to work in Bethesda this month, and patient visits at the hospital are expected to double to 1 million annually, the Washington Examiner reports.
There have been talks of improving road conditions to ease this increased traffic in Montgomery county, but none of these changes will happen any time soon.