Army moves jobs to its most frugal option: away from Metro

September 30, 1:51 PMDC Transportation ExaminerKatherine M. Hill

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            The Army’s done it again! Following its Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) to move 15,000+ military jobs to Aberdeen Proving Ground by 2011—and force approximately 40,000 jobs to the Aberdeen area as a result—the Army announced that thousands of jobs intended for Fort Belvoir will, instead, be moved to Alexandria off Seminary Road, despite clear objections from Fairfax County and to the applause of Alexandria city officials.

            The Aberdeen move, now a few years old, is still a huge mistake. The community isn’t large enough to hold the jobs and its lack of adequate transit hurts the families forced to move to the area. Its nearest city is Baltimore but MTA lacks sufficient connections between the two, except for one MARC stop. Carless residents are out of luck, and commuters are hurt by the substantial rise in heavy traffic.

            So rather than to take the myriad of Aberdeen problems into account, the Army signed up for more of the same tribulations, as the move would save $1 billion dollars compared to the previous plans for construction. As The Washington Post noted this morning, these 6,400 new jobs in Alexandria are miles from the nearest Metro station but conveniently near I-395. Approximately 18,000 cars enter Fort Belvoir every day, promising a bigger headache for the nearby neighborhood and area commuters.

            The move, related to 2005’s BRAC, is also related to Congress and the Army’s plan to move 20,000 total jobs outside of the Beltway. Many of the 20,000 rely on mass transit to get to work, and most of the positions, like these 6,400, will be moved far from WMATA access.

            Fairfax County Board of Supervisors chairman Gerald E. Connolly told The Washington Post that the Fairfax shuffle was an excellent chance for reviving Springfield and supporting transit.

            Keeping the small percentage of revenue gained from these positions before they moved should, in some way, have aided the budget crisis WMATA is currently mired in. How will removing transit access hurt ridership with the removal of jobs? Moreover, how will the move of the 20,000 positions throughout the Washington area affect transit? Some studies have shown that most of Metro’s daily riders are federal employees, shouldn’t it stay that way in this transit crisis? And finally, doesn’t it seem a little unfair to move employees to a car-dependent area? The district is, thankfully, an area that one can, alebit just barely, live carless. Why can’t we at least keep it that way?