Rockville Pike road improvement projects to help ease BRAC traffic are expected to launch next month with utility relocation work on the Pike, The Washington Post reports. BRAC projects will affect the Pike for much of the next three years, compounding traffic headaches on the already congested thoroughfare.

State officials had expected the utility relocation work to launch last fall, Patch reported.

Intersection improvements around the newly-minted Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which saw 2,500 new employees as part of the federally-mandated Base Realignment and Closure process, will mean lane closures during off-peak hours, the Post reports.

“It’ll be a mess,” county BRAC coordinator Phil Alperson told the Post.

After a community push, federal dollars have been awarded to fund some of the BRAC-related intersection projects planned, along with deep elevators on the east side of the Rockville Pike and a pedestrian underpass to ease access to the military hospital for pedestrians coming to and from the Medical Center Metro.

The Rockville Pike utility work that will launch next month is expected to take about a year, the Post reports, followed by another two years of construction on the Pike at the Cedar Lane and Jones Bridge Road intersections.

A project at Connecticut Avenue and Jones Bridge Road is expected to launch in late March, and the elevator and pedestrian tunnel project is expected to launch in fall of 2013, the Post reports.

Federal money will cover the $68 million for the elevator and pedestrian underpass project. $30 million of the cost of the intersection improvements will be covered by the state, and $59 million will be funded through federal dollars, according to the Post.

Read the full story at the Washington Post.