Metro Controversy

Despite all the feel-good noises about how it's going, the Pentagon renovation has produced conflict and controversy, too. You'll find them outside-surrounding the bus hub and subway entrance.

There's no dispute about these facts: The Metro escalators currently deposit subway riders inside the building. The nearest bus bays are only 30 feet from the building. Some 30,000 riders pass through the hub every weekday; about 30 percent of them go to the Pentagon, and the rest transfer and move on.

This all looks like big-time vulnerability to Pentagon brass. So they want to move the escalators and deposit riders in a new security building where they will be screened before entering the Pentagon proper. And they want to construct a new bus terminal.

What is in dispute is exactly what this means for riders. Will Colton, project manager for the Metro Entrance Facility, says the bus loop will be 280 feet from the building. With the new security facility 50 feet from the current entrance, by Colton's math that means a walk of no more than 230 feet, or a minute and a half.

Those numbers don't add up for some local politicians, including Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., who wrote a letter to Defense Secretary William Cohen outlining his concerns, and Chris Zimmerman, a member of both the Arlington, Va., County Board and the Metro board. After looking at the draft plans, Zimmerman says a bus rider's walk to the building or to transfer to rail would be at least 350 feet-or up to 850 feet. That's "as much as three football fields, and it would be only partially covered."

Pentagon planners have agreed to a covered walkway, but not to an enclosed and climate-controlled one, which some advocate. An enclosure could lead to "secondary damage in case of attack," says Colton. An overhead cover won't do transit users much good in a driving rain or in Washington's 90-degree summers, counters Zimmerman. And it would be particularly hard on elderly or disabled people, "some of the people who most depend on transit," he says.

For Zimmerman, this move comes at the worst possible time: The Washington area has the second-worst congestion in the country; the Springfield Mixing Bowl project is causing traffic problems on I-95 nearby; and construction on the Wilson Bridge, on Washington's overcrowded Beltway, is planned. Efforts to get people to use mass transit, including President Clinton's executive order extending incentives to federal workers, are widespread; Zimmerman thinks pushing the bus bays back will undermine that drive.

The Pentagon's "whole point is to move [the bus hub] farther away, and they've capped expenditures at $25 million," says Zimmerman. "They're not starting off from the standpoint of 'How do we make this bus station work?' They started from the point of view of 'How do we get the buses away from the building and not spend more than $25 million doing it?' " Colton says that the reaction is premature and that Pentagon planners will do as many of the things the Metro board has asked for as possible-within the constraints of the security needs, the budget and the site.