Alberto Duque's mother (center, holding white flowers) at the SafeStreets4MoCo rally on September 14. Image by Action Committee for Transit used with permission.

On September 14, about 50 people gathered at the Glenmont Metro Station to honor Adin Martinez and Alberto Alexander Duque, who were killed by drivers while walking in the area earlier this year. The rally, organized by the Action Committee for Transit (ACT), also aimed to push legislators to make streets safer for vulnerable road users.

“I hope that people will take away from the rally that it’s time to start prioritizing the safety and lives of people who walk, bike, use wheelchairs, and take transit over the convenience of drivers,” Miriam Schoenbaum of ACT said via email.

Area streets have deadly design for people walking

The red stars mark the areas where Adin Martinez and Alberto Alexander Duque were struck and killed by drivers.

In 2014, Montgomery County paid $75 million for a grade-separated interchange at Randolph Road and Georgia Avenue a block away from where Martinez was hit. Advocates say the renovation actually made the area more dangerous for people walking.

At the time, Governor Martin O’Malley said in a press release: “This project also will help us meet our goals of doubling transit ridership by 2020 and reducing Maryland’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020 by extending the Glenmont Greenway Trail to provide cyclists and transit users easier access to the Glenmont Metro Station.

However, Schoenbaum says the project “makes it possible for commuters in cars to drive through the area faster - and makes it more dangerous for residents to walk, bike, and ride buses in their own community next to a Metro station.”

Between 2009 and 2011, there were about 138 crashes on MD-97 between Glenallan Avenue to Mason Street, and about 83 crashes on Randolph Road between Judson Road to Glenallen Avenue, an independent road safety audit conducted in the area showed. Both areas saw crashes involving pedestrians.

Not only is the design hostile for pedestrians, people have even been punished for walking in the area. In 2015, Duque was charged with jaywalking on Layhill Road, the same street he was killed on four years later.

How to make Glenmont safer

ACT has a list of actions it wants Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT), Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT), and the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) to take to prevent further deaths in the Glenmont area. They include increasing time on the pedestrian signals, removing permissive right-turn lanes, and adding safe pedestrian crossing locations, buffered sidewalks, and red light cameras.

We reached out to MDOT and MCDOT for comment, and we’ll update the article if they respond.

“In the long run, it’s all part of our effort to advocate for safer and more sustainable transportation for Montgomery County,” Schoenbaum said.

In Montgomery County from 2012 to 2016, there were 1,849 collisions that resulted in 1,996 severe injuries and 174 fatalities to drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and bicyclists, according to MCPD. During this period, the number of severe collisions declined by 37%, but fatal collisions increased by 58%. The majority of the increase in deaths was vehicle occupants.

Montgomery County’s Vision Zero initiative, which aims to end road injuries and deaths, calls for a two-year action plan to reduce severe and fatal collisions for all roadway users by 35% by November 2019. By 2022, severe and fatal collisions should be cut in half, and by 2030 they should drop to zero.

To move towards that goal, the Montgomery County Planning Department is working on a pedestrian master plan to improve infrastructure for people walking, and recently announced a new virtual campaign called #walkinghere. Residents are encouraged to share their stories online about how they navigate the county on foot. The information will be processed and used to help create the pedestrian master plan.

If you’d like to learn more safety information about the streets in your area, check out Montgomery County’s pedestrian crash heat map below.