Local elected officials including U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen and Montgomery County Council member Roger Berliner have signed a letter asking the National Institutes of Health to rethink its policy of providing parking spaces for a given number of employees to help reduce the impact that its employees have on traffic in Bethesda.
Last month, NIH announced it selected a 20-year master plan that could see its workforce grow by about 3,000 employees. Part of the plan calls for the construction of new parking spaces at the research center to accommodate new employees at a rate of one space per three employees. That would add about 1,000 new parking spaces to the center.
However, the new master plan leaves the current parking ratio of one space per two employees intact for employees in existing buildings at NIH. Currently, the center employs about 20,000 people and has about 10,000 parking spaces.
The letter notes that the nearby Naval Support Activity Bethesda, which contains the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, adopted a 3-1 parking ratio as part of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) program.
In their letter, the elected officials wrote, “While we were pleased with NIH’s proposal to add spaces at a 3-1 rate, we remain concerned with your plans to retain the 2-1 rate for the existing facilities. We believe that is not responsive enough to the concerns of Bethesda’s residents, nor in keeping with the efforts of the neighboring federal institution.”
The elected officials, which also include state Sen. Susan Lee and Dels. Bill Frick, Ariana Kelly and Marc Korman, noted that traffic is particularly bad on the stretch of Rockville Pike where NIH is located.
“By far the single biggest negative impact that NIH has on our community is traffic generation,” the letter says. “You do not need to be regaled with stories of traffic on MD 355 [Rockville Pike]. You live it every day as well. Traffic congestion is more than a simple matter of driver inconvenience, it is actually a serious quality of life issue, an environmental issue, and an economic competitiveness issue.”
The officials wrote that the plan for an additional 1,000 parking spaces “poses a significant challenge to the already overtaxed transportation system in Bethesda.”
NIH’s Office of Research Facilities responded to the letter in a statement that noted the growth will likely not happen for a number of years. The statement said that by the time funding becomes available for its expansion mass transit developments such as the Purple Line and Bus Rapid Transit might be in place to help offset any impacts on traffic.
“The NIH has thoroughly embraced mass transit, carpools, vanpools, telework, biking and walking,” reads the NIH statement. “Since 1992, NIH has conducted traffic counts by an independent traffic engineer and is proud that it has reduced morning peak trips by 55% and afternoon/evening peak trips by 65%.”
NIH also said it has made significant investments to allow vehicles to quickly enter the campus by installing badge-activated gates so traffic doesn’t spill out on surrounding roads. The research center also noted that it's responsible for only about 25 percent of the traffic in the immediate area.
"It is important to note that the majority of the traffic flowing along 355 is associated with neither NIH nor Walter Reed, as the data have clearly shown in study after study," the NIH statement says.
In 2014, as part of the process of updating the master plan, NIH wrote in its Draft Environmental Impact Statement that it intended to keep the 2-1 parking ratio for employees in existing buildings because many of its employees live and travel from areas that have few public transportation options.
