The parking lots of Best Buy and Circuit City are about 100 feet apart in the commercial district that sprawls across Route 301 in Southern Maryland. Unless shoppers want to dodge eight lanes of traffic and hop a guardrail, though, they are forced to drive to compare prices.
Walking in that strip of Waldorf is out of the question "because it's dangerous," said frequent shopper Sonya Thomas, a government contractor from Accokeek. "I wouldn't consider it."
The shopping corridor in Charles County is dwarfed by Tysons Corner, Fairfax County's vast car-centric complex of malls and high-rises. In Waldorf, no multilevel parking structures exist. The tallest building rises five stories.
But Waldorf and other fast-growing outer suburbs of Washington are facing similar challenges. Like Tysons, they were planned with cars in mind and without much thought to people on foot.
For four miles in Waldorf, there are no crosswalks, no sidewalks and no traffic lights with pedestrian signals. Fewer than 1 percent of Charles residents walk to work, the 2000 Census found, and the same is true for Spotsylvania County in Virginia.
Now, government planners in the two outer counties -- along with proponents of the movement known as smart growth -- see an opportunity to reverse course before these newer areas evolve into versions of Tysons Corner, which itself is trying to reduce traffic.
"The more people we get, the more people ask, 'Why can't I walk or bike anywhere?' " said Spotsylvania's planning director, Richard Goss. "Everything is designed for cars."
Until a recent growth spurt, Charles's size -- 137,000 people -- and spread-out rural development did not lend itself to a comprehensive network of trails for walkers and bikers, said Planning Director David Umling.
That is changing, he said. Planners have rewritten the rules for development to encourage a series of urban-style villages where people would feel more comfortable walking to shop, eat and go to work. New roads, such as a pending cross-county connector, are required to include trails for walkers and cyclists.
The developer of a project planned for the northern tip of Waldorf also is designing a footbridge for Route 301 that could support the county's long-term vision for a light-rail line and station.
What is more challenging, and expensive, is fixing the existing car-oriented design. "It's easy to throw in a sidewalk or a crosswalk. It's totally different to think about making it a friendly, walkable place," said Jessica Millman, Maryland director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
One possibility is a program in Spotsylvania aimed at filling in the missing links between sidewalks. When Goss arrived from Florida nearly three years ago, the county often allowed builders to skip the sidewalks.
