Dangerous Crossings Revisited

When I wrote about pedestrian safety on Snowden River Parkway last week, a friend mentioned:

You know someone died there on Wednesday morning...drove his car into a tree right near Lincoln Tech. Now you make me wonder...was he swerving to avoid a pedestrian?

That is a truly scary thought. I haven't seen any followup to that crash, other than the suggestion that speed was a factor.

Andy Stack, the CA Rep from Owen Brown, sent me a note responding to the same post.

I ready your article about the walk-ability of Snowden River Parkway. The County has a plan to widen Snowden River Parkway to 3 lanes and to add sidewalks/bike lanes between Broken Land Parkway and Oakland Mills Road. The Owen Brown Village Board has been carefully following this and it wants to ensure that the sidewalks and bike lanes get built. We believe they would be a great addition and improve the usability of Snowden River Parkway. Walk-ability is important to Owen Brown. I believe we have asked the County to come to a future OB board meeting to give us an update.

This is great news. I have to admit that my first thought was, "ohhh...that's in Owen Brown..." I hadn't really given much thought that an area which has so much retail and traffic was actually in a Village. Well, some of it is. I think some of the actual retail space may have pockets of outparcels. But to me, it is encouraging to think that this area "belongs" to someone, and they care about it. I am excited to see that this issue is already on the radar of the Owen Brown Village Board. Clearly they'll need an active partnership with the County to get positive changes made.

And now, that's enough Snowden for the day. I'm going to turn my attention to being snowed-in.

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