Route 1’s newest sidewalk connecting College Park to Riverdale Park Station shows how communities along the area can address a major problem.

The sidewalk was added to resolve the gap between the new Whole Foods development and the nearby Calvert Hills neighborhood on Baltimore Avenue from Woodberry Street to Albion Road. Now pedestrians who are walking to and from Riverdale Park Station on the east side of Route 1 no longer need to walk on the road.

The lack of a sidewalk didn’t matter as much before the Cafritz property was developed, but now that pedestrians have good reasons to walk to the area, adding a sidewalk was crucial.

Though landscaping and other finishing touches are still underway, the sidewalk is completely functional, but the official grand opening won’t be until later in the spring.

And the design of the sidewalk is worth noting. As you can see from the photo above, it’s set back quite a ways from the road — more than twice as far as the typical sidewalk along Route 1, in fact.

As city planner Jeff Speck noted in his book Walkable City, people won’t walk where they don’t feel safe. One key to this feeling of safety is the distance between traffic and the area where you are walking.

In Hyattsville’s Arts District, that’s helped not only by sidewalks that are set back but also by curbside parking, which slows traffic and adds a barrier of metal (the parked cars) between pedestrians and moving cars.