Without a Car, Suburbanites Tread in Peril

Lan Dinh, 32, beamed as she walked home along the quiet, shady path toting a bag of groceries for dinner. "This is nice," she said.

Before the path was built, she had relied on a narrow and sometimes slippery dirt trail along Route 7 for her shopping expeditions, she said.

As long as walkers and cyclists continue forging their own paths, hazards are inevitable.

The intersection of Edwards Ferry Road and the Route 15 bypass is one of the county's most dangerous, county and Leesburg officials say. That stretch of the bypass carries more than 50,000 vehicles a day and separates a major shopping destination from a largely Hispanic and low-income neighborhood.

Town officials recall one pedestrian fatality and another injury in that stretch over the past five years. Leesburg Town Council member Kenneth D. Reid called the crossing a "ticking time bomb." Residents have been seen bicycling and even pushing strollers across. They are willing to risk their lives "to get a loaf of bread or to get a job," he said.

Throughout Northern Virginia, more than 3,000 pedestrians were involved in car accidents between 1999 and 2003, according to a 2005 study by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Hispanic pedestrians were the most likely to be hospitalized from the injuries, at a rate of eight per 100,000 people, more than twice the rate for non-Hispanic whites.

The town has tried to prevent residents from crossing there by offering a free shuttle and erecting the iron fence next to the road. But the well-beaten paths around the fence show pedestrian traffic remains heavy. As for the shuttle, Vetura said waiting for it takes too much time.

Ilham Mohamed, 19, waited for a bus one recent morning but worried that she would be late to her job at a nearby outlet mall. So she decided to walk. She dodged traffic across the intersection and then continued along the edge of the bypass, her hair blowing with each passing car.

"I know it's sort of dangerous," she said, her voice pitched against rush hour's rumble. "But you gotta do what you gotta do."