Moran Response to Washington Examiner

To the Editor:

Barbara Hollingsworth's recent op-ed is either misinformed or willfully ignores the facts pertaining to the Mark Center and my efforts to fight the threat it poses to traffic in Northern Virginia.  Let me set the record straight.

Tom Davis and I voted against the 2005 BRAC Commission’s recommendations over concerns that adding 22,000 additional personnel to Fort Belvoir would cripple the area’s traffic. 

In part due to those concerns, the Army decided in 2007 to seek a different location than Fort Belvoir’s Engineering Proving Ground to relocate the 6,400 employees with the Washington Headquarters Service (WHS). At that time I made my preference clear: either the GSA warehouse facility at the Springfield Metro or the Victory Center on Eisenhower Avenue was a suitable option because of their access to Metro.

But on September 29, 2008 the Mark Center site was chosen by the Army because it was the lowest cost bid.  That selection took at face value the developer’s transportation plan, which included a number of glaring errors which would have been identified had they not prevented VDOT from reviewing it.

Since that wrong decision, I have worked to force the Army to mitigate the severe traffic congestion that will be created at I-395 and Seminary Rd.  Because to date the Army’s efforts have been woefully insufficient, I provided my own solution: implementing a 1,000 car parking cap until adequate infrastructure was in place. Unfortunately, after passing the House, it was taken out of the Defense Authorization bill over objections by Senator McCain and Senate Republicans who were threatening to filibuster all but a narrow, streamlined bill. 

While the parking cap was taken out, I was able to add language requiring the Army to provide a plan to prevent failing levels of service at six key intersections and to identify where the funding to make those improvements would come from. While not everything we wanted, it does have the benefit of bringing the Army legally and directly into the traffic mitigation process.

Given the questionable actions that took place all along the way during this process, the Department of Defense Inspector General is now taking a look at the entire matter, which I requested. The IG will issue a public report in the coming months that should help push the Army to do more to fix the major traffic problems they are about to create. I suggest Mrs. Hollingsworth use her pen to spend more time pressing the Army to step up to the plate for Northern Virginia to prevent the coming traffic meltdown, rather than attacking those who have been fighting tooth and nail to bring the situation to heel. 

Congressman Jim Moran (VA-08)