Some of the fewer than 10 residents who attended a public meeting on Tuesday expected answers as to why the Bethesda-based National Institutes of Health should have a higher parking space rate than other federal agencies.
Those answers weren’t forthcoming Tuesday. The formal public commenting process doesn’t allow for questions and answers with NIH officials on the spot.
NIH will respond later to the questions voiced Tuesday and all written comments about the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for its 20-year master plan. But the meeting underscored the agency’s position that it must retain its 2-to-1 parking space per employee ratio, despite federal standards that push for a 3-to-1 parking space per employee number.
This has been of great concern to nearby residents and Montgomery County officials who see the daily traffic impact the campus of more than 20,000 employees has on Bethesda.
With a master plan that calls for 3,000 additional employees at the campus over the next 20 years, a few residents from surrounding neighborhoods announced their disgust that NIH wasn’t seeking the lower parking ratio.
In a presentation before the comments, NIH Director Ricardo Herring emphasized that none of the new buildings in the master plan (of which there are more than a dozen) are budgeted. NIH Environmental protection specialist Mark Radtke said only about 650 of the expected 3,000-employee increase will be new hires.
The rest will come from off-site NIH facilities that are being consolidated on campus, something Radtke said would help relieve traffic in other areas of Montgomery County.
The redevelopment mostly consists of converting old laboratories — some old and prominent enough to be considered for the National Register of Historic Places — to administrative space, while building newer labs with better technology and energy efficiency.
Old parking lots would be consolidated into parking garages and there would be a 3 percent increase in open space on the campus at full build-out of NIH’s preferred development plan.
Richard Levine, a leader of the Locust Hill Neighborhood just northeast of the Cedar Lane, Rockville Pike intersection, commented that NIH’s traffic studies are outdated and shouldn’t be used to make decisions about the next 20 years of campus development.
Levine pointed toward the county’s master plan for bus rapid transit and an anticipated bus rapid transit corridor that would use dedicated lanes on Rockville Pike right by the NIH campus.
NIH did its traffic studies in 2011 ahead of the presentation of its master plan. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement, which usually comes before or with a master plan, wasn’t ready in time and was presented in March.
Another resident who spoke questioned if NIH had done enough outreach to promote the public meeting, held about four miles away at the Little Falls Library on Massachussetts Avenue — what some said was too far away from the affected neighborhoods.
Karen Kuker-Kihl, a Pooks Hill resident and candidate for the House of Delegates in District 16, commented that NIH’s reluctance to push for fewer parking spaces would contribute to air pollution.
Those were the only three people who commented on Tuesday. Written comments can be sent to Valerie Nottingham, Division of Environmental Protection, National Institutes of Health, Building 13, Room 2S11, 9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20892 or e-mailed to nihnepa[at]mail[dot]nih[dot]gov.
