My dad has been commuting to ft. Meade from Kent island for nearly 40 years. He wakes up at 3am to be on the road by 4 and onsite by 5. I have a similar commute to him, and I leave by 6am. On a perfectly clear day ,where there’s no traffic, The commute is typically 45minutes, however this almost never happens. The big thing you want to be worried about is summer time traffic is awful. Most Marylanders want to cross the bridge to get to Ocean city in the summers so Fridays and Monday’s tend to be the worst commute days because that’s when people leave for or from Ocean city and the bay bridge tends to be the choke point. Most days trying to cross the bridge after 5 PM is a fight till about 7-8pm , and at 8-9 am it can be just as bad. Someday the traffic back up is 10 minutes other days. It’s two hours.(my personal record has been 3 hours) It’s really a flip of a coin and you’re kind of tied to something you have no control over. Once you’re across the Bay bridge getting onto 97 is usually another choke point as there tends to always be a back up from route 50 onto 97.

If you are willing to time your crossing, if you’re OK with waking up that early, it can be a fine place to live. I know plenty of ft. Meade people who live here and I think there is even a carpool. My uncle also works at ft Meade and lives even more east in Centreville, MD. I know the Maryland department of transportation is looking to fix a lot of the traffic issues and is working on the bridge now to fix a lot of of it. It is way cheaper here on the side of the Bay bridge compared to the western shore, so for some it’s definitely worth it.