The Federal Highway Administration Aims To Ease Congestion Over The Bay Bridge
ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, Md. (WJZ) -- A newly published study shows a plan to ease traffic congestion for drivers who use the Bay Bridge.
The Maryland Transportation Authority and the Federal Highway Administration picked a corridor containing the Bay Bridge as the selected alternative.
The selected alternative consists of a two-mile-long corridor that follows the existing Bay Bridge road network along US 50/301 from west of the Severn River on the Western Shore to the US 50/301 split on the Eastern Shore, according to the study.
Analysis for this choice came after public comment, traffic, engineering, cost, and environmental considerations were weighed.
Some of the conclusions of that analysis included the additional capacity of the span would divert substantially more traffic away from the Bay Bridge lanes in terms of total vehicles per day.
The route would likely be the least costly on summer weekends and non-summer weekdays because of the ability to use the existing roadway infrastructure on US 50/301 and the shorter length of crossing over the Chesapeake Bay.
For residents like Derrick Molock, this alternative may improve their commute.
"The congestion backs up so bad," Molock said. "We have a bottleneck effect and it takes a while to get home."
But Anne Arundel County Executive Steaurt Pittman feels the focus should be turned to reinforcing and fixing current bridges.
"I don't think this is so much about adding capacity," he said. "This is about making sure the bridge is good for the next 50 years and that's what we need to do is replace old bridges as opposed to create a whole lot of new capacity."
According to the Maryland Transportation Authority, any next steps would require an additional environmental review through another study.
