Due to frequently occurred three-phase unbalanced loads in the ends of large number of branches in distribution networks, it is difficult to extract reflected wave of the fault point in the complex reflected and refracted waves using the traditional single-terminal traveling wave methods. Simultaneously the precision of the fault location methods based on the difference of wave velocity between zero-mode component and line-mode component of traveling waves and the one based on mutation of line-mode traveling wave are decided by the unstable zero-mode wave velocity. Therefore, a new approach is proposed by combining the above two methods to achieve higher efficiency and precision of measuring the fault distance and location. The presented method employs the correspondence between the detected zero-mode wave velocity and the fault distance to achieve the fault location algorithm which is not impacted by zero-mode wave velocity. The approach firstly detects difference of arrival time between the zero-mode traveling wave and line-mode traveling wave at the head end. And then post-injecting high voltage pulses into three phases simultaneously and detecting the arrival time of the first line-mode traveling wave head at the head end of the transmission line. Following, it employs the stable line-mode wave velocity to execute the measurement of the fault distance. Finally, PSCAD-based simulation shows that the absolute errors of this algorithm are less than 100 m in all cases, without influence from the fault location, grounding resistance and fault initial phase angle. This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51407121).