When Amy Burke pulls out of her townhouse in the Elkridge Crossing neighborhood, she always — always — avoids using one nearby street to get to U.S. Route 1.
Even her 5-year-old son knows “Mommy doesn’t leave that exit,” Burke said, “because it’s not worth it.”
The street that she avoids is Doctor Patel Drive, which crosses a heavily traveled, six-lane section of Route 1 in eastern Howard County. Drivers can turn left or right onto Route 1, also known as Washington Boulevard, or cross it to get to a McDonald’s on the south side of the highway.
Between that intersection and one just south of it on Route 1, there have been three pedestrian fatalities since 2019. The most recent, a 29-year-old Odenton woman, was killed in what police have called a hit-and-run on Sept. 6. She was struck at about 9:30 p.m. by a vehicle traveling south, and then hit by another vehicle traveling north. Neither vehicle stopped, but police said they had located both vehicles and were investigating.
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Further south on Route 1, about 3 miles away, a pedestrian was killed in January 2023. And on Monday, another pedestrian was struck and killed on Route 1 in Jessup, about 6 miles south of the crossing at Doctor Patel Drive.
County Council Member Liz Walsh said the community has been traumatized by the pedestrian deaths near that intersection. The stretch of Route 1 is located in her district, and she has been advocating for safety measures there since she first ran for office in 2018, she said.
She said that she, along with area residents, are furious that more hasn’t been done to ensure the safety of pedestrians and motorists.
“It is harrowing at this point for everyone who lives there, because they know what happens. … That spot, everybody knows that’s where we kill people — that’s where we kill people,” she said.
Andrew Radcliffe Jr., a district engineer for the State Highway Administration, said the intersection was identified as a problem in 2018-2019, but that permit issues and design limitations have led to delays.
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Another intersection was the priority for safety improvements based on data showing pedestrian use and crashes, he said.
In early September, a stretch of Route 1 near Laurel Park race track received about $20,000 of temporary road adjustments aimed at improving safety.
Improvements are finally coming, however.
Starting in spring 2025, construction will begin on a traffic signal with pedestrian push buttons as well as Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant crosswalks across Route 1 along Doctor Patel Drive, Radcliffe said.
Currently, pedestrians only have access to a sidewalk along the southbound side of Route 1 — closest to Burke’s townhome — next to cars whizzing past them.
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The lack of crosswalks now leaves pedestrians on their own to cross six lanes of a heavily trafficked roadway that sits atop a hill, making the intersection a blind spot for southbound drivers.
Radcliffe said that after the project is completed next year, a new sidewalk will extend across the frontage of the McDonald’s and connect to the entrance of a nearby Popeyes.
He said that until the traffic light, crosswalks and sidewalk upgrades are completed, his team is looking for temporary solutions to slow traffic down.
“We’re looking at things we can deliver quickly,” Radcliffe said. “And those are mainly static signs, either warning signs or regulatory signs and or pavement markings to help grab people’s attention.”
The temporary measures are yet to be determined, but in an email shared with The Baltimore Banner, Radcliffe said he hopes to share with Walsh and the county any updates this week.
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Back in 2018, when the State Highway Administration first identified the intersection of Route 1 and Doctor Patel Drive, along with three other locations along the highway, as problem areas, Walsh said the SHA held public meetings to assess the danger and decide what could be done to improve pedestrian safety.
Howard County entered into an agreement to pay for the designs on the safety projects, then the SHA would take it from there because Route 1 is a state highway, Walsh said. Then, the county submitted design plans to the SHA, which were expected to be completed by spring 2022.
Then one year passed. Then another. The project kept facing delays, Walsh said.
“You guys [the state] have been talking about this since at least 2018, and in the meantime, three more people have been killed at almost the exact same location, in some cases, this most recent one, exactly the same location,” she said.
The pace of discussions began to pick up after SHA engineers and Maryland Department of Transportation officials met with Walsh, County Executive Calvin Ball and other county officials at the dangerous intersection.
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On Sept. 12, Ball sent a letter to Will Pines, the SHA administrator, about the need to expedite pedestrian safety projects.
“We know that US1 has been and continues to be one of the most dangerous roadways in the entire state, and certainly in Howard County. … It is in light of these recent tragedies, that we once again strongly urge SHA to expedite internal reviews of the Dr. Patel project and accelerate advertisement of its construction package for both Dr. Patel and Rowanberry this calendar year,” the letter read.
Rowanberry Drive is another residential street that carries traffic to Route 1.
He continued that he was troubled to see that the Doctor Patel and Rowanberry projects were listed as a “potential deferral” in the draft FY25 Consolidated Transportation Program that MDOT released in September.
State Sen. Clarence Lam, Del. Jessica Feldmark and Del. Terri L. Hill, also sent a letter on Sept. 12 to Pines and Radcliffe urging immediate action.
Walsh sent her own letter, too, on Sept. 18.
She reminded officials of the three women who died at the dangerous intersection: Zulma Maginelly Zepeda Barrientos, 29, of Odenton, on Sept. 6; Tanya Lynn Lilly, 48, of Glen Burnie, on Dec. 29, 2023; and Jackie Leroy Brown, 72, of Elkridge, on Nov. 27, 2019.
“No in the names of each of their family members and loved ones, the witnesses to the crashes and their aftermaths, the first responders and road crews returning to that same scene again and again. … These places are where those constituents of ours live their lives. And we endanger their lives every single day more we fail to act,” she wrote.
