A Long Walk Across Traffic

Arlington to Address Safety Issues at Busy Lee Highway Intersection Ten Years After a Pedestrian Ran Out of Time on Green

It took a decade, but the intersection where Scott Bates was killed is finally getting redone.

He was walking from a video store with his wife, Ricki, on a rare evening away from the U.S. Senate, where the legislative clerk's life seemed consumed by President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial.

They stepped into a four-lane section of Lee Highway lined with low-slung shopping centers, and a delivery driver didn't see them. Bates saw the crash coming before his wife did.

He "stepped in front of the car to try to push me out of the way, and he took the brunt of it," Ricki Bates said. Her spleen was ruptured, her liver lacerated, a lung punctured, 23 bones broken. "I was critical and he was killed," she said.

The sharply angled intersection in Arlington County had an extended, diagonal crosswalk with no median nearby as a safe harbor.

The driver was speeding, and the couple had left the crosswalk and headed directly across the road when they realized the signal was turning, Ricki Bates said. "We were losing the light, so going right across would have gotten us to the other side quicker," she said. It was misty February evening, and the driver, in the right lane, was hurrying past a stopped line of cars to his left.

More than a year later and on crutches, Bates appeared at the first of many sessions before Arlington officials seeking safety improvements at the intersection, at Lee and North Harrison Street. The county installed countdown timers at the crosswalks to give pedestrians better cues, but doing much more would be complex, expensive and time-consuming, the county said, and Bates eventually lost hope that anything would happen.

Then it did.

"Well, hallelujah. It only took 10 years," she said last week when told that road crews will soon build a median all the way up to a straighter crosswalk, shortened from about 90 feet to 80 feet.

"Having the crosswalk come right next to the median is exactly what I would want. I really think that would have made a difference for us," Bates said. "That's what I was trying to get done years and years ago. At the time, I was told that the budget was such there was just no way they could cover the cost of doing that."

County officials said the intersection project, which includes adding left-turn lanes from Lee Highway onto Harrison as well as sidewalk and other improvements, will cost about $500,000.

What eventually got the job done was a flow of transportation money from a commercial and industrial tax instituted last year, said Arlington County Board member Barbara A. Favola. It has raised $30 million at a tax rate of 12.5 cents per $100 of assessed value. "It is not as safe as we would like for pedestrians," Favola said. "We want people to walk more. We want people to get to these shopping centers, either walking or using transit, so we're really making a concerted effort to try to improve things. We believe it fits our transportation philosophy."