Emergency maintenance on the Governor Thomas Johnson Bridge the day after Labor Day resulted in heavy gridlock on both sides of the span.

Prince Frederick, MD – Officials with the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) updated the Calvert County Commissioners regarding priorities for the next six years. The session took place Tuesday, Oct. 18 during the commissioners’ weekly meeting.

Led by MDOT Deputy Secretary Jim Ports, department officials were ready to outline their project priority plan but yielded the floor to Commissioner Mike Hart [R – District 1] to ask the day’s most anticipated question. “The Thomas Johnson Bridge is the elephant in the room down my way,” said Hart, who asked when residents could finally see some construction activity begin. The bridge replacement project has completed the planning stages. State officials reported the next phase of replacing the bridge, which spans the Patuxent River and connects Calvert and St. Mary’s counties on Route 4, is design. According to an MDOT project synopsis, $10 million has been received for the next phase with an additional $5 million in the project pipeline for the design of improvements on Route 4 between Route 235 and Route 2.
“It’s one of our priorities,” said Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) Administrator Greg Johnson, who added the current two-lane span’s structure was stable and had “about 15 more good years.” Johnson lamented that funding for the entire replacement project has not been identified. He admitted with more 30,000 vehicles traveling across the bridge daily and an increase of 5,200 vehicles daily expected by 2030, “it [bridge] is functionally obsolete. Right now we don’t see the funding path for it.”
Commissioners’ President Evan K. Slaughenhoupt Jr. [R – District 3] declared that the state and region’s federal-level elected officials—including Congressman Steny Hoyer [D – MD District 5] “need to step up to the plate” to procure federal funds to build the replacement bridge. Of the bridge’s current traffic flow, Slaughenhoupt stated the structure “cannot handle it.”
Disenchantment with the current bridge reached a high level the day after Labor Day when a bridge manhole cover mysteriously disappeared, prompting emergency work to replace the lost component. The situation resulted in several hours of gridlock in the southern end of Calvert and the southeastern portion of St. Mary’s.


Other comments made by commissioners during the session included Slaughenhoupt’s criticism of Verizon, which he stated has held up the Fishing Creek Bridge project on Route 261 in Chesapeake Beach, as well as projects in Cove Point and Solomons. Back in July the Calvert Commissioners sent a five-paragraph letter to Verizon Communications CEO Lowell C. McAdam expressing “frustration and disappointment” with Verizon’s “extremely poor level of service.”

The board also asked transportation officials for help in seeing to it that Calvert received an appropriate share of Highway User Fee revenues. “It seems like the big six counties get everything,” said Commissioners’ Vice President Thomas Hejl [R – At large]. “Our revenue from the gas tax needs to come back.”

“We agree,” said Ports (pictured above). “There are no quick-fixes. You just can’t print the money. We have to look at our priorities.”

In a memo to the commissioners, county government department heads cited “present legislative uncertainties regarding the implementation of the Maryland Open Transportation Investment Decision Act of 2016” as the reason funding for the Thomas Johnson Bridge replacement and several other projects “in the future for Calvert County are not assured.”

In a letter to MDOT Secretary Pete K. Rahn, the commissioners thanked state officials for construction funding procured for phase two of the project widening Route 2/4 through Prince Frederick, expanded Park and Ride lots in Prince Frederick and Dunkirk, plus commuter buses to the Suitland Metro and other employment destinations such as the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Oct. 18 session was attended by state delegates Mark N. Fisher [R – District 27C] and Jerry Clark [R – District 29C] and State Senator Steve Waugh [R-District 29].

Contact Marty Madden at marty.madden@thebaynet.com