Montgomery County legislation aims to increase pedestrian safety

Montgomery County Council members want to make things safer for pedestrians by making it easier to build sidewalks. Newly introduced legislation aims to do just that. Fox 5's Josh Rosenthal joining us live from Bethesda to explain why. Josh. Hey, guys, there are a lot of people in Montgomery County who can tell you getting one of these things built is no walk in the park. There are too many of our neighbors who are hit while simply walking or walking their dogs or going to school. and we need to make sure that our roads are safe for everybody and I want to make sure that our sidewalks are available for anybody who wants to walk. Here's the back story. According to council member Evan Glass, through the first nine months of the year, pedestrian-involved crashes are up 10 percent in Montgomery County. 335 pedestrians have been struck by vehicles. That's resulted in 41 serious injuries and 17 deaths. Thing is, if you want to build a sidewalk in your neighborhood in an effort to keep people safe, Glass says that can be really tough. So his new bill aims to remove what he calls unnecessary administrative hurdles. Here's one example. Glass said that right now, if you want to build a sidewalk, you need to get half of your neighbors to sign a petition in support of it in order to waive a public hearing. This bill would lower that threshold to 25% of property owners located along the route. From there, you would still need to go through an approval process and the sidewalk has to be funded. This legislation is likely to pass. It's being co-sponsored by all 10 of Glass's colleagues on the council, people we spoke with Wednesday evening here in Bethesda were supportive of the idea. I have several students in Silver Spring that walk to school and there's no sidewalk for quite a bit of way. They have to cross the street. So definitely an important issue. I have seen locations that I experienced myself where there's no sidewalk and if it coincides with bad weather, when they're walking in the street anyway, In general, I think it's good to have more sidewalks. Well, everybody who we spoke with today was supportive of this idea. Glass says that he has heard some opposition. It's expected to get a public hearing on November 10th.