Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the Chesapeake Bay Crossing Study: Tier 2 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Highway Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FHWA-2024-0073]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the Chesapeake Bay Crossing Study: Tier 2 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of Intent (NOI) to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FHWA, in coordination with the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA), is issuing this Notice of Intent to solicit comments and advise the public, agencies, and stakeholders that an environmental impact statement will be prepared for the Chesapeake Bay Crossing Study: Tier 2 NEPA (Tier 2 Study) to address existing and future transportation issues at the William Preston Lane, Jr. Memorial (Bay) Bridge and its approaches along U.S. 50/301, from Anne Arundel County on the Western Shore to Queen Anne's County on the Eastern Shore, in Maryland. The unique identification number for this project is EISX—XMD-1729253019. This NOI contains a summary of the information required in the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations. This NOI should be reviewed together with the NOI Additional Project Information Document, which contains important details about the study, information on the Purpose and Need for the proposed action, alternatives considered, and expected impacts on the human, natural, and built environments. Persons and agencies who may be interested in or affected by the proposed study are encouraged to comment on the information in this NOI and the NOI Additional Project Information Document. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on the NOI or the NOI Additional Information documents must be received on or before January 13, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> This NOI and the NOI Additional Project Information Document are also available in the docket referenced above at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> and on the Tier 2 Study website located at <E T="03">https://baycrossingstudy.com.</E> Comments on the NOI or the NOI Additional Project Information Document can be submitted through the methods outlined below: • <E T="03">Website:</E> For access to the documents, go to the Federal Rulemaking Portal located at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or the project website located at <E T="03">https://baycrossingstudy.com.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> • <E T="03">Mailing address or for hand delivery or courier:</E> Docket Management Facility, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590. • <E T="03">https://baycrossingstudy.com.</E> • <E T="03">Mailing address or for hand delivery or courier:</E> Maryland Transportation Authority, Division of Planning & Program Development, Bay Crossing Study, 2310 Broening Highway, Baltimore, Maryland 21224. • <E T="03">Email: info@baycrossingstudy.com.</E> • <E T="03">Call:</E> 667-203-5408. All comment submissions should include the agency name and docket number that appear in the heading of this notice. The comments received by the comment period end date of January 13, 2025, will be posted without change to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. A summary of the comments received will be included in the forthcoming Draft EIS (DEIS). For tracking purposes, the unique identification number for this project is EISX—XMD-1729253019. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Heather Lowe, Project Manager. Maryland Transportation Authority, Division of Planning & Program Development, 2310 Broening Highway, Baltimore, MD 21224; Phone: (410) 537-5665; Email: <E T="03">info@baycrossingstudy.com;</E> or Alexander Bienko, Environmental Protection Specialist. Federal Highway Administration, Maryland Division, 31 Hopkins Plaza, Suite 1520, Baltimore, MD 21201; Phone: (410) 779-7148; Email: <E T="03">alexander.bienko@dot.gov.</E> Interested parties can also sign up for the Tier 2 Study mailing list located at <E T="03">https://baycrossingstudy.com</E> to receive notifications for future study information and upcoming public engagement opportunities. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The FHWA, as lead Federal agency, and the MDTA, as the project sponsor, will prepare an EIS for the Tier 2 Study, in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, as amended (42 United States Code [U.S.C.] 4321, <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), 23 U.S.C. 139, CEQ regulations implementing NEPA (40 CFR 1500-1508), FHWA regulations implementing NEPA (23 CFR 771.101-771.139), and applicable Federal, State, and local governmental laws and regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Project Background</HD> The Chesapeake Bay Crossing Study (Bay Crossing Study) is a two-tiered preliminary engineering and environmental study to address existing and future transportation issues at the Bay Bridge and its approaches along U.S. 50/301. The Bay Bridge is a two-span structure that crosses the Chesapeake Bay from Anne Arundel County on the Western Shore to Queen Anne's County on the Eastern Shore. The MDTA and FHWA initiated Tier 1 of the Bay Crossing Study (Tier 1 Study) in 2016. The Tier 1 Study EIS encompassed a broad geographic area that spanned nearly 100 miles of the Chesapeake Bay between Harford and Cecil counties to the north, and St. Mary's and Somerset counties to the south. The Tier 1 Study EIS defined existing and future transportation conditions and needs at the existing Bay Bridge, evaluated 14 possible corridor alternative locations, documented the corridor alternative screening process, and concluded with the identification of a Selected Corridor Alternative. The Tier 1 Study was completed in April 2022 when FHWA issued a Final EIS/Record of Decision (FEIS/ROD) identifying the corridor including the existing Bay Bridge and its approaches (Corridor 7) as the Selected Corridor Alternative for further evaluation in a Tier 2 Study. Activities for the Tier 2 Study were launched in June 2022. The Tier 2 Study, a project-level (site-specific) analysis, will describe potential environmental effects and evaluate alternatives of the proposed action. To ensure that all potential alternatives, important issues, or significant environmental effects and analyses relevant to the proposed action are considered in the EIS, comments and suggestions are invited from all affected or interested parties. The FHWA requests comments on the purpose and need, reasonable range of alternatives for evaluation in the EIS, existing environmental conditions and potential impacts, and identification of any relevant information, studies, or analyses concerning impacts affecting the quality of the human or natural environment. The purpose of this request is to bring relevant comments and information to FHWA's and MDTA's attention as early in the process as possible to enable the agencies involved to make maximum use of this information in the decision-making process. Comments may be submitted according to the instructions in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Purpose and Need for the Proposed Action</HD> The Tier 1 Study purpose was to consider corridors for providing additional capacity and access across the Chesapeake Bay in order to improve mobility, travel reliability, and safety at the existing Bay Bridge. The evaluation of potential corridors included assessments of existing and potentially expanded transportation infrastructure needed to support additional capacity, improve travel times, and accommodate maintenance activities, while considering financial viability and environmental responsibility. The Selected Corridor Alternative was chosen because it would provide the greatest congestion relief at the existing bridge crossing for existing and future traffic volumes, particularly at peak hours, thus having the greatest ability to meet the Purpose and Need of the Tier 1 Study EIS. The transportation issues identified during the Tier 1 Study have been further developed and refined to better describe the specific needs for the Tier 2 Study. The purpose of the Tier 2 Study is to address existing and future transportation capacity needs and access across the Chesapeake Bay and at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge approaches along the U.S. 50/301 corridor. The Tier 2 Study is evaluating measures to reduce congestion; improve travel times and reliability, mobility, and roadway deficiencies; and accommodate maintenance activities and navigation while minimizing impacts to local communities and the environment. The Tier 2 Study is also considering objectives for environmental responsibility, as well as cost and financial responsibility. The Purpose and Need for the Tier 2 Study EIS was developed in close coordination with Cooperating and Participating agencies (see section 7.4 below or appendix B (Coordination Plan) for a list of Cooperating and Participating agencies). The MDTA presented the draft preliminary purpose and need to these agencies and the public in 2023 for comment. Based on the comments received, the MDTA completed a Preliminary Purpose and Need Statement and Report and received concurrence from the Cooperating agencies in 2024. The complete Tier 2 Study Preliminary Purpose and Need Statement and Report may be reviewed in Appendix A to the NOI Additional Project Information Document, which is available in the docket established for this study and on the study website. Comments on the Preliminary Purpose and Need for ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 31k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━