A certain individual whose name rhymes with pay-un essentially accused me of blaming the victim in the pedestrian death of Floret Kusi-Davies. Nothing could be further from the truth, as I am well aware of the plight of someone trying to navigate our car-centric area on foot and think it’s a shame. I do think, however, that when the deck is stacked against you that makes it more important, not less, to use all those advantages at your disposal to protect your fragile life.
It did bring to mind this excellent WaPo article from a few years ago from Mary Battiata, who set out to walk – in four to six mile excursions – from the Mall to Gilbert’s Corner. I want to draw your attention to it not just because it’s well-written and discusses the unfortunate realities of being a pedestrian in our area, but because it spends a good amount of time talking about the pedestrian (and, really, non-pedestrian) nightmare that is Seven Corners.
So what? So this: after twenty years of planning, the pedestrian bridge over Seven Corners is finally going to break ground. It’s tragically comic: the brief writeup ends with “Supervisor Penelope Gross and others say they aren’t willing to wait any longer to save lives” in response to calls to do some road alteration rather than build the bridge. Well, that would hardly be possible, would it now?
Interestingly the project has gone from 4 million bucks according to this article from the Falls Church News-Press from October of last year and seven million according to the WUSA9 article. Procrastination is expensive, it seems.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
Well I used to say something in my profile about not quite being a “tinker, tailor, soldier, or spy” but Tom stole that for our about us page, so I guess I’ll have to find another way to express that I am a man of many interests.
Hmm, guess I just did.
My tastes run the gamut from sophomoric to Shakespeare and in my “professional” life I’ve sold things, served beer, written software, and carried heavy objects… sometimes at the same place. It’s that range of loves and activities that makes it so easy for me to love DC – we’ve got it all.
