Six-hour gridlock caused by a tanker truck crash on the American Legion Bridge raises calls for a new bridge crossing

MCLEAN, Virginia — The traffic nightmare that stranded thousands of drivers is raising new, urgent calls to build another bridge crossing over the Potomac River.

There was no escaping the gridlock from the tanker truck crash on the American Legion Bridge. Traffic in D.C., Maryland and Virginia was jammed. The Beltway looked like a parking lot.

Neil Caulfield, trying to get from Springfield, Virginia to Olney, Maryland, thought he was being smart to try White's Ferry. Problem was, so did hundreds of other people.

"I spent about 5 1/2 hours in traffic," said Caulfield.

There was no way out of the endless traffic jams.

"It was crazy, we need another crossing somewhere. There's more and more people moving here and not enough roads to support it. The whole system is very fragile," said Caulfield.

Fragile. That's a scary word when you're talking about our transportation system. Our economy as livelihoods depend on it.

"This is a very serious problem," said Marty Nohe. He is the chairman of both the National Capital Transportation Planning Board and the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. He said elected leaders need to stop pretending we don't need an additional bridge connecting Virginia and Maryland.

"A bridge hasn't been built largely because it's been very politically difficult to get agreement with officials in Maryland and Virginia about where the bridge should be built," he said.

There are always concerns and objections from those who live and work in the areas where bridge crossings have been proposed. And they have been proposed for decades by transportation planners. "Future" bridges have even been drawn on local transportation planners' maps.

But Nohe is hoping this latest crisis, will wake up our state leaders before something even worse happens.

"Yesterday's incident happens to have created a six hour inconvenience," he said in a sobering what-if. "Just imagine rather than an overturned truck, it had been a toxic waste spill, or perhaps a terrorist attack? We could've been out of service for days or every months and that would've created an economic shutdown for the Washington, D.C. region."

Nohe puts most of the blame on Maryland.

Erin Henson, Director of Public Affairs for the Maryland Department of Transportation said in a statement to a question about the need for another river crossing, “Fixing the American Legion Bridge is the first priority for an improved Potomac crossing and the Traffic Relief Plan delivers on that priority."