This commentary is by Marcie Gallagher, of Burlington. She is a year-round bike commuter and Complete Streets specialist at Local Motion. Local Motion works to make it safe, accessible and fun for everyone to bike, walk and roll in Vermont through advocacy and technical assistance.
On Saturday, Aug. 16, Colchester resident Michael Pickering was killed after being struck by a car on Malletts Bay Avenue. This is a tragedy for everyone involved, and it was entirely avoidable.
That’s because Malletts Bay Avenue is dangerous by design.
The stretch of the road that Michael was killed on was built exclusively for the movement of cars, despite running through a neighborhood where people live, walk dogs, collect mail, garden, exercise and greet their neighbors. It transitions abruptly from a country road into a residential area with no design elements to slow drivers down or alert them to the presence of pedestrians.
It lacks continuous sidewalks and shoulders, forcing anyone walking, biking or rolling into the lane of traffic. It lacks safe crossings. It lacks adequate lighting. The road divides a neighborhood with a high-speed corridor, with no protection for the people who live and move here.
Without protection, our neighbors are at risk whenever they use this street. There is little margin of error for drivers — any mistake can lead to another tragedy.
Malletts Bay Avenue connects Winooski and Colchester. In 2024, the Winooski Walk/Bike Master Plan identified Malletts Bay Avenue as a top priority for safety improvements. Over the past five years, more than 75 crashes have been reported along this corridor, resulting in more than 15 injuries — and now a death.
Still, our towns are not making changes we need to make fast enough to save lives. Town officials are not planning to install a sidewalk until 2028 or 2029, according to WCAX.
Two days after Pickering’s death, Strong Towns, a national leader in livable communities, published an article arguing that such tragedies are “statistically inevitable outcomes of building a place where human life outside of a car has no real value in the design.” When tragedies happen, we must have a public conversation that says, “This place killed someone. Here’s why, and here’s how we stop it from happening again.”
Malletts Bay Avenue killed Pickering. If nothing changes, it will happen again.
So, the question now is: How are we going to stop it?
We already know how to prevent tragedies like this. What we need is the public will to make it happen. Join your local walk/bike group and advocate for safer streets in your community.
