While a similar highway project in neighboring Calvert County sits unfunded and shelved in Maryland’s new six-year transportation budget, St. Mary’s County’s own top highway priority scored the second-highest mark of any major project evaluated statewide.
The Maryland Department of Transportation’s FY 2027-32 Consolidated Transportation Program shows a safety and capacity project along MD 4 near Lous Way and South Patuxent Beach Road scored 168.75 out of a possible 2,000 points under the state’s Chapter 30 prioritization model — trailing only Anne Arundel County’s Parole Transportation Center project statewide. The project appears to be the same MD 4 shared-use lane safety improvement between Wildewood Parkway and Old St. Andrews Road that St. Mary’s County specifically asked the state to restore funding for in its own priority letter to MDOT this year. The county’s letter goes further, asking that the project’s scope be expanded to reach the FDR Boulevard intersection, citing safety concerns from the stretch’s multiple entrances and turning movements.
Elsewhere in the county, road work is moving forward on multiple fronts. A $32.3 million project to upgrade MD 5, Point Lookout Road, between MD 471 and MD 246 in Great Mills — including replacing the bridge over the St. Mary’s River — is in active engineering and utility work, with construction expected to begin in fiscal year 2027. The project is meant to keep pace with residential, workforce, and commercial growth in the Great Mills area.
The county also shares a familiar project with Calvert County: a $7.9 million study to upgrade MD 4, including the Gov. Thomas Johnson Memorial Bridge over the Patuxent River, with $1.7 million specifically budgeted for engineering next fiscal year and bathymetric river surveys and Coast Guard coordination already underway. St. Mary’s own priority letter notes that bridge project was the county’s single top transportation priority from 2002 to 2021, though officials now acknowledge continuing to submit it as the top ask alone has become “unrealistic” after so many years without full funding — a sign the county has shifted some of its advocacy toward the smaller, better-scoring MD 4 corridor work near Wildewood Parkway instead.
Beyond the two MD 4 and MD 5 corridors, the budget funds a broad slate of smaller safety and pedestrian projects: drainage improvements along Piney Point Road from Thomas Road to Stark Drive ($13.6 million, fiscal 2028); pedestrian safety improvements along Three Notch Road tied to the county’s Pedestrian Safety Action Plan ($3.2 million, design underway); a second phase of sidewalk improvements along Hollywood Road ($2.3 million, design underway); and a seventh phase of bicycle and pedestrian improvements along the Three Notch Trail ($3.5 million, design underway). Nearly $3.8 million in general countywide resurfacing work is already under construction.
The budget also funds several transit vehicle replacements and shelter improvements for the county’s public transit system, along with continued preventive maintenance funding, following the completion of multiple bus replacements in fiscal year 2026.
