Five years ago Montgomery County officials created a pedestrian safety committee to find ways to cut in half the number of pedestrian fatalities in the county.

Instead, the county last year actually had its highest number of pedestrian fatalities since the year the committee was created.

So now County Council members will consider expanding the time frame for the specialized group by another five years.

“The county government has, in the last five years, improved its efforts, but the level are still just too unacceptable,” said Matthew Greene, the county’s pedestrian safety coordinator, who oversees the committee. “Collision injuries are down, but fatalities have not gone down enough.”

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In 2006, 18 walkers were killed on Montgomery County roadways, which is the highest level since the committee was created in 2002, Greene said.

It’s difficult to establish trends about these deaths because there are too few for a complete analysis.

But Greene said the hope is that by allowing committee members to keep meeting for five more years, they can have more time to suggest solutions.

Today’s council resolution also includes a provision to add a committee member into the mix to exclusively represent the growing bicycle community.

Doing so would mark the first time someone was assigned to a county board or committee to specifically represent the interests of cyclers.

In addition to nine citizens, according to Greene, the pedestrian committee has included eight transportation professionals.

The bicycling advocate would fill one of the nine community member slots.

“We always felt that there was enough work to tackle just on pedestrian issues (without taking biking issues into account),” he said. “We hope that with the inclusion of a bicycle advocate, we will get additional resources committed to these efforts.”

A few examples of what the pedestrian-focused group has done include holding three community forums and starting a program that coaches high schoolers at two county schools how to teach second-graders to be safe pedestrians.

It’s that type of program, Greene said, that the committee seeks to expand upon.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com