Suburbs Struggling To Make Walking Safe

By Steven Gray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday , May 22, 2000 ; B02

Rain had turned the spring evening humid a week ago Saturday as two
teenagers headed home from last-minute Mother's Day shopping at Wheaton
Mall. The bus was slow in coming, so they walked up Viers Mill Road.

As the teenagers crossed the six-lane thoroughfare near Connecticut Avenue,
a car plowed into them, crushing 13-year-old Henry Hill's legs between it
and another car. When help came, the teenagers were flown to Children's
Hospital in the District, where doctors amputated part of Hill's right
foot. Steven Galloway, 15, was treated for minor injuries and released.

It was the latest unevenly matched encounter between pedestrian and
automobile in Montgomery County, a suburb that often appears to have been
built for cars rather than pedestrians. It is a county were pedestrian
fatalities have rivaled murders in recent years, yet there is far more fear
of crime than there is of walking around.

In March, a 5-year-old boy in a crosswalk was struck by a car and dragged a
half-mile through downtown Silver Spring. In February, three pedestrians
were hit by cars within three hours.

The accidents highlight what Maryland officials and transportation experts
say is a leading public-safety challenge facing inner-county suburbs:
designing roads safe for motorists and pedestrians.

"It's the number-one safety issue for our county at this point," said
County Council member Marilyn J. Praisner (D-Eastern County). "The growing
number of traffic fatalities and serious accidents involving pedestrians is
very alarming, very troubling to me."

Traffic accidents killed 12 pedestrians in 1999 and 13 in 1998. By
comparison, there were 13 homicides in the county last year and 12 in 1998.

"It's shocking," said Sgt. Michael Buchan, head of the Montgomery County
Police Department's collision reconstruction unit. "It should be a big deal
here, but it's not."

In neighboring Prince George's County, pedestrian fatalities fell from 25
in 1998 to 13 in 1999.

Spurred by the concerns of Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose,
County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) is expected to appoint a commission
that will examine ways to make streets more pedestrian-friendly.

One goal of a $321 million Silver Spring redevelopment project is to draw
pedestrians to downtown shops and restaurants. But planners said giving
pedestrians safe and quick access between a planned shopping complex and
the $150 million world headquarters of Discovery Communications Inc. posed
major challenges.

The development's designers plan wide crosswalks--bricked for visibility to
pedestrians and motorists, and roughly textured to slow cars, said Bryant
Foulger, vice president of Foulger-Pratt Development Inc.

Dozens of trees will be planted along sidewalks designed to keep
pedestrians roughly six to eight feet from the curb.