A new report by the Pentagon’s Inspector General accuses the Army of using poor data in a traffic assessment it conducted before relocating thousands of workers in northern Virginia. Virginia lawmakers are furious over the findings.
The traffic surrounding Alexandria’s Mark Center is bad now, and the new report says it’s only going to get worse unless Army officials act soon. The Pentagon is shifting more than 6,000 people to the new office complex, but outside experts say the roads surrounding the space can’t handle all the new traffic.
Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner said the Army seems to have misled local and federal leaders in order to get speedy approval of their relocation plan.
"It appears that there was in a sense cooking the books going on in terms of when and how these first traffic studies were conducted," Warner said.
Northern Virginia Democratic Congressman Jim Moran said the Army created the mess and now it's their duty to come up with a plan to avoid turning some roads in Alexandria into parking lots.
"We can avoid chaos if we act now," he said.
The Pentagon should limit the number of open parking spaces at the Mark Center and consider shuttling in some workers to decrease the expected congestion, Moran said.
The Army is questioning its own inspector general’s report and said it's already providing more than $20 million for road improvements in the area.
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