Calvert County’s top local transportation priority — widening the traffic-choked MD 2/4 corridor through Prince Frederick — has effectively stalled in Maryland’s newly released six-year transportation budget, even as a separate, longstanding priority to study the Gov. Thomas Johnson Bridge moves forward with new funding.
The Maryland Department of Transportation’s FY 2027-32 Consolidated Transportation Program shows $4.036 million already spent on planning, engineering, and right-of-way work to widen MD 2/4 into a six-lane divided highway between Stoakley Road/Hospital Road and MD 765A — but zero dollars programmed for the project across the entire six-year budget window. The document states plainly that projects on hold for more than five years won’t appear in the state’s final budget document at all, though funding could be restored later if it becomes available.
That funding gap isn’t a surprise to county officials. In its own priority letter to MDOT, the Calvert County Board of County Commissioners told the state directly that “this year’s Consolidated Transportation Program (CTP) lacks funding for surface transportation projects,” while identifying the MD 2/4 widening — specifically its Phases 3A and 3B — as the county’s top local transportation priority. A separate appendix within the same budget document shows why the project may be struggling for funding: under the state’s Chapter 30 scoring system, which ranks major transportation projects competing for limited state dollars, the MD 2/4 segment scored just 10.56 out of a possible 2,000 points, ranking 15th among the major projects evaluated this cycle — far behind the top-ranked project, Anne Arundel County’s Parole Transportation Center, at 262.61.
The news isn’t uniformly bad for Calvert’s roads. A separate, actively funded study is underway on MD 4, including the Gov. Thomas Johnson Memorial Bridge over the Patuxent River, with $1.7 million specifically budgeted for engineering work in FY2027 out of a total $7.861 million project. The state says bathymetric river-bottom surveys, Coast Guard coordination, and navigation clearance work are already underway as part of that study, which envisions an eventual four-lane divided highway with a shared-use path and sidewalks between MD 2 and MD 235. The bridge itself carries roughly 33,000 vehicles a day and is one of only two Patuxent River crossings in Southern Maryland; St. Mary’s County’s own priority letter to the state cites the span’s role in emergency evacuations from the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant and Cove Point LNG facility, and its potential importance to a future base realignment process at Naval Air Station Patuxent River. The bridge was also the site of a tractor-trailer crash Aug. 25 that damaged barrier fencing, prompting temporary repairs and traffic changes at the nearby Solomons Boat Ramp.
Elsewhere in the budget, the state is funding three phases of safety and geometric improvements along MD 231’s Hallowing Point Road corridor — at MD 508 ($14.6 million, FY2027), from Toye Lane to west of Prince Frederick Boulevard ($13.9 million, FY2028), and at Skipjack Road ($6.2 million, FY2029) — work the county has tied to its 2023 Strategic Roadway Safety Plan. Two additional resurfacing and safety projects, totaling roughly $8.1 million combined, are already under construction elsewhere in the county, and a Safe Routes to School sidewalk project on MD 261’s Bayside Road has been completed.
The budget also funds several transit improvements for the county, including a new Department of Public Works fuel depot, two replacement buses, a transit station needs assessment, and continued preventive maintenance funding, following the completion of three replacement buses and new passenger-counting equipment in fiscal year 2026.
