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[quote=Anonymous]Nice quotes, but the main thrust of the article is that a new bridge will be needed eventually, even if it will be politically difficult and very expensive.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/29/american-legion-bridge-traffic/

“The bridge was built to serve a different purpose at a different time,” said Versel, who studied transportation options between the two counties in 2013 as a senior research associate at George Mason University. “It was built at a time when there wasn’t any thought that this many people would live or work on both sides of the bridge.”

Maryland and Virginia reach agreement to rebuild and widen American Legion Bridge

Meanwhile, there are few other ways to cross the river separating Washington’s northern and western suburbs. The Point of Rocks Bridge is about 35 miles upstream. White’s Ferry, dating to 1786, said it carried about 800 people across the Potomac daily between Poolesville, Md., and Leesburg, Va., but it stopped operating in 2020 amid a property dispute.

“Your options to get to these places are the Beltway or the Beltway,” said Anderson of AAA. “There are people who have no business being on the bridge, but they have to be because there is no other way.”

“Edgar Gonzalez, a former Montgomery transportation deputy director and a leader in a pro-toll-lanes group, said he believes political pressure for another crossing will continue to build as new residents and jobs bring more Beltway traffic.

“Even with the widening being planned, it will only be good until the 2040s,” Gonzalez said of the American Legion Bridge. “But then, as the region keeps growing, you’re going to need another outlet for the traffic.””

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] W[b]hat they need to do is construct a new bridge across the Potomac further North linking 28 in Virginia to some mythical road in Montgomery County that will take it all the way up to 270[/quote][/b]

No one has considered that a viable plan in decades.  Read in Post from today:  AAA, some Washington-area business leaders and local officials continued to push for a second crossing upstream throughout the 1990s. The idea of a “techway” gained some traction in 2000, when then-Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) clinched $2 million for a federal study.

How the pandemic has shaped commuting in the D.C. region
But Wolf soon canceled the study amid fierce opposition, ignited after both advocates and opponents drew lines on maps showing where a new bridge might cross. The biggest hurdle: Any second crossing would need to connect to a new highway. That highway probably would cut through some of the region’s wealthiest neighborhoods, with multimillion dollar homes and a bucolic feel, on both sides of the Potomac. The Montgomery council also objected to any road through the county’s western agricultural preserve.

“I saw the maps and thought, ‘There goes the future of that project,’ ” Anderson recalled. “Whose mansions were you going to tear down — in Great Falls, Virginia, or Potomac, Maryland? The answer was neither.”

The idea hasn’t been seriously considered since."

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