Pedestrian deaths mount in Maryland town

LANGLEY PARK, Md. (AP) — At least 138 pedestrians have been struck by vehicles in the past eight years on a lethal two-mile stretch of state highway that runs through this low-income immigrant community in the Washington suburbs.

On a drizzly morning in April she balanced on a 4-foot-wide concrete median strip on University Boulevard, worrying she might "slip and fall and get hit" as three lanes of cars whizzed by her on either side.

A Capital News Service analysis of state accident data from 2009 through 2016 documented the casualties on University, a roadway that officials say wasn't designed for the walking community now living along it in an unincorporated area of Prince George's County.

Yet the Maryland State Highway Administration has done little to improve safe passage for pedestrians on all but a small portion of University in Langley Park.

[...] when asked about the high number of casualties, Charlie Gischlar, a spokesman for the State Highway Administration, which is responsible for maintaining University, said pedestrians are often to blame.

The agency had a markedly different response when students were hit in a series of accidents just a couple miles away, near the University of Maryland in 2014.

The bus stop drops people off outside the office near 14th Avenue and across from a shopping mall and restaurant.

The State Highway Administration estimates 32,000 vehicles on average travel through Langley Park each day on University -- a segment of MD-193, which snakes through the Maryland suburbs outside Washington.

[...] the two miles that cut through Langley Park are flanked by a chaos of strip malls, apartment complexes, single-family homes, grocery stores, gas stations, laundromats and fast-food restaurants.

Christopher Murtha, deputy chief of patrol for Prince George's County Police, described the community as a very dense population of folks who tend to use the sidewalks and tend to transit by foot..

The highway wasn't engineered for so many pedestrians, he said, so reducing accidents is a challenge for the state and county agencies that share responsibility for pedestrian safety.

A planned inter-county light rail system, the Purple Line, which would pass through Langley Park on University, helped spur pedestrian safety improvements at one busy intersection, New Hampshire and University.

Twenty people have been struck in or near the faded crosswalks at 23rd, where cars pull in and out of a popular thrift store, a McDonald's restaurant and two gas stations.

In addition to the 138 pedestrians struck on University, the CNS analysis identified an additional two dozen pedestrians who were hit on Riggs or New Hampshire within 105 feet of the intersections with University between 2009 and 2016.

Repeated accidents at the same locations point to a problem with the road design, not the pedestrians, said Alex Dodds, communications director at Smart Growth America, a nonprofit urban planning organization.

The organization published a study in January that found pedestrians in low-income urban communities face greater risks than those in wealthier ones, and that Hispanics and blacks were overrepresented in pedestrian fatalities.

City and university officials expressed their grief and desire for change in the months following the first incident and set out to lobby for roadway improvements.

Other changes included reducing pedestrian wait times at signals, lowering the speed limit to 25 mph in this area and increasing use of speed cameras.

A decade ago, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board produced a pedestrian safety assessment for University that recommended slowing traffic with raised crosswalks, narrowing car lanes, widening medians and prohibiting right turns on red.

State law limits speed cameras to construction work zones and school zones -- or within a half mile of "the grounds of a building or property" used by a university or college.

"There's a lot of focus and attention on making sure it's a place that's safe for families to send their kids to go to school," College Park Mayor Patrick Wojahn said about the University of Maryland and its surrounding area.

"Pedestrian fatalities on Route 1 and anywhere in Prince George's County are unacceptable," Baker wrote in a 2014 press release announcing a slew of reforms to Route 1 after the deaths of three pedestrians near the same College Park crossroad.