Major Road Closures On BW Parkway For Emergency Repairs This Week

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MD -- A brutal stretch of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway near the northern border of Prince George's County has significant potholes that reportedly have been damaging the vehicles of commuters. But authorities plan to make emergency repairs starting this weekend.

The National Park Service said in a statement on Wednesday that they will begin a new phase of "enhanced repairs" to improve the road in advance of a larger repaving project previously scheduled for this fall but now set to begin in mid-April.

The NPS will close parts of the BW Parkway for two evenings this weekend: from 7:30 p.m. on Friday to 5 a.m. on Saturday the southbound lanes will be closed from MD 198 to MD 197, and from 7:30 p.m. Saturday until 5 a.m. Sunday, the northbound lanes on that stretch will be closed.

“We take our responsibility for the parkway very seriously and are making good on our promise to drivers to do everything in our power to improve the road,” Baltimore-Washington Parkway Superintendent Matt Carroll said. “National Park Service crews have been working tirelessly. The special patching this weekend should improve driving right away and will be quickly followed by repaving.”

The NPS believes these repairs will improve driving conditions until the larger repaving project begins in mid-April.

"This repaving project is part of a multi-year, multi-phase effort to repave all 18 miles of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway," the NPS statement reads. "Since 2011, the NPS has repaved the road from the District of Columbia boundary at New York Avenue, north to the Patuxent River Bridge near the MD 197 interchange. The final phase was originally scheduled for completion in 2021, but the accelerated upcoming work to completely repave the remaining section of the parkway from MD 197 to the NPS boundary at MD 175 will now be completed this year."