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that all the customers coming to the store would drive rather than walk.

Galyan's relented gradually, first installing a buzzer that pedestrians could ring, summoning an employee to open the street-level door, and then replacing the buzzer with a button that automatically opened the door.

"The whole transportation system has been built around moving around in the automobile and people on foot have literally been forgotten,'' said Barbara McCann of the Surface Transportation Policy Project. "If there is a sidewalk at all, it ends. Many people don't respect people in crosswalks.

"And there is just a sense of, 'What are you doing out here? You must be jaywalking.' It's blame the victim even though our studies show 60 percent of pedestrian deaths happen where no crosswalks are available at all.''

Most suburban developments are built around the assumption that the average American will walk no more than 600 feet, or the distance of two football fields, according to urban-growth expert Joel Garreau, author of "Edge City: Life on the New Frontier."

"There is nothing more galling than the fact that most of the safety improvements that have been made in this country over the last few decades have made things worse for pedestrians," said Ellen Vanderslice, an architect and pedestrian advocate in Portland, Ore.

For example, instead of the nearly square corners common in older neighborhoods, traffic engineers in recent years have pulled curbs back to make a wider radius so that drivers can see greater distances and cars don't have to slow down as much when they turn the corner.

"This is just deadly for pedestrians,'' Vanderslice said. "It lengthens their crossing distance. It means that since the cars aren't slowing down as much when they turn the corner, they are moving faster when they fail to yield to you in the crosswalk. And it leaves less room on the corner for waiting for your turn to cross."

The impact of pedestrian-unfriendly communities is felt most keenly by those who can't drive - the young, the elderly and the disabled. Gone are the days when most children could walk or ride a bike safely to a school, park or playground. As a result, children are more dependent on adults to drive them to destinations and to make decisions for them about where and when they will travel.

"You get to a point," Vanderslice said, "where you have created so much territory, so much landscape, that is really unforgiving to anything but travel by an automobile that young people growing up now really don't know anything different - they don't know what it's like to live in a place where you can walk out your front door and walk to a store or walk to school."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that only 10 percent of public school students walk or bike to school today compared to a majority of students a generation ago. Indeed, the most common means of transportation to school is by car, not bus.

"We're paying some huge social costs here,'' said Wilkinson, of the National Center for Bicycling and Walking. "I hate to say the answer is sidewalks, but if we don't get down to the point of fixing our communities on something as basic as ensuring that our kids and our parents can walk and ride bikes safely ... quality of life is just going to spiral down.''

Copyright 2001 Scripps Howard, Inc.

A bridge over troubled traffic
Pedestrian pathway approved to serve Forest Glen Metro

by Greg Simmons
Gazette Staff Writer
March 21, 2001

As traffic continues to snarl along Georgia Avenue at the rush hours, members of the North Hills neighborhood near the I-495 intersection may soon be able to eliminate headache-inducing commutes, and have a safer travel in the process.

Last week the Planning Board approved a pedestrian bridge that would link the neighborhoods south and north of the Beltway and create access to the nearby Forest Glen Metro station.

"There are thousands of people that live within walking distance of the Metro station but have not used it because they're afraid of getting killed," said Laurel McFarland, a previous civic association president in the area.

She said she has been trying to get the pedestrian bridge built for 10 years, and she's happy that the Planning Board has finally given its approval.

"This [bridge] to us is kind of a memorial" to the people who have been killed in pedestrian accidents,

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