Plans for the expansion of Arlington National Cemetery. (Image via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

Facing a shortage of space in the not-too-distant future, Arlington National Cemetery is plotting an expansion.

The cemetery is the final resting place for about 400,000 American troops and veterans, and warns it will run out of room in approximately 25 years.

To prevent that from happening, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has proposed a plan that would create between 40,000 and 60,000 new gravesites by expanding the cemetery to the south and keeping it all as one contiguous plot of land.

Doing that requires the realignment of Columbia Pike, converting it into what a draft environmental assessment called high capacity regional multimodal transportation corridor.” It also involves the removal of Southgate Road, as well as the construction of a new access road for Joint Base Meyer-Henderson Hall. The plans also involve incorporating the Air Force Memorial into the cemetery.

While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says that the “Southern Expansion site currently is the only available land that is suitable for a comprehensive development opportunity,” the plans have been met with some pushback from local cyclists.

A group called Sustainable Mobility for Arlington County wrote to its mailing list that the expansion as proposed would “squander a major opportunity to improve the bike connection between Columbia Pike and Pentagon City and arguably make cycling less pleasant and less safe,” ARLnow reports.

The project timeline from the cemetery shows that, if all goes according to plan, it expects to begin roadway construction in 2021. When that is slated to be done in 2023, the cemetery will start construction. They anticipate the project concluding in 2025 at the earliest.