Send Ellen your comments -- read below

The Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization (DCHC MPO) programs the state and federal transportation projects in our region and is developing a Regional Priority List for the FY 2009-2015 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP). The TIP is a seven-year funding document for bicycle, pedestrian, highway, rail, and public transportation projects. Every two years, the DCHC MPO approves its Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program (MTIP), and the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) produces the State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP). The Regional Priority List provides guidance to the State and the MPO on the MTIP and STIP.

On September 12, 2007, the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC) released for public comment the draft Regional Priority List. The draft Regional Priority List is available on the DCHC MPO website at this link. It is also available at the public libraries and planning departments in Durham County, Orange County (including Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough), and Chatham County.

Public comments on the proposed list should be sent to ellen DOT beckmann AT durhamnc DOT gov by October 10 24th, 2007. The MPO is particularly interested in receiving comments on the relative ranking of the projects – not the application of the ranking methodology.

There will also be a public hearing on the draft Regional Priority List at the TAC meeting on October 10, 2007. This meeting will be held at 7pm in the Committee Room on the second floor of Durham City Hall (101 City Hall Plaza). The final Regional Priority List is expected to be approved by the TAC on November 14, 2007.

Thank you,

Ellen Beckmann
Transportation Planner
City of Durham / DCHC MPO

919-560-4366
ellen DOT beckmann AT durhamnc DOT gov

Posted by nicomachus at 8:42 AM | Permalink

September 14th marked the 108 yr anniversary of first pedestrian death at the hands of an automobile in the United States. On September 13th, 1899, Henry Bliss stepped from a streetcar on Central Park West, in New York, and was struck by a taxicab. He died of his injuries the next morning. The event was reported on the front page of the New York Times.

In 2005 alone, 39,000 automobile crashes in the United States accounted for 43,000 deaths.

Given the anniversary of Bliss' death, it's appropriate to think of September as an automobile awareness month, culminating in International Car Free Day. September 22nd is the day that cyclists, transit access activists, and municipalities the world over celebrate a moment of independence from the automobile.

But with the local Smart Commute Challenge moving to the spring (it will return in April 2008) and neither Durham nor Chapel Hill hosting any Car Free Day celebrations, September 22nd came and went much like any other day in the Triangle. The Triangle Transit Authority's Fare Free Day, on Friday Sept 21st, was the closest thing going.

Many places around the world celebrate their car free days more enthusiastically. This year, Montreal closed off sections of its historic district to private automobiles on Friday, September 21st. Last spring, Mexico City's Marcelo Ebrard launched a series of weekend efforts to encourage bicycle usage. By closing off selected city streets, the mayor creates ciclovias, or bike paths, on Sundays. Ebrard arguably borrowed the idea from Bogotá, Colombia where approximately 75 miles of its city streets are closed to motor vehicle traffic every Sunday. These car-free programs allow cyclists to gain confidence on the road before relying on their bikes as transportation.

Every day is an automobile awareness day in some parts of London. Since February 2003, London has levied tolls on drivers who take their automobiles into the core of the city. Congestion taxation, as the practice is called, aims to reduce private automobile traffic in dense urban areas by charging drivers fees, then reinvesting the profits in public transportation. Since 2003, congestion in London is down 30%. Michael Bloomberg has openly endorsed a similar tax program for relieving congestion in New York City.

But this September, we took another step backward in the US, another step tpward furthering our dependence on the automobile. A post on Google's official GoogleBlog put out the word that the software giant is soliciting proposals from entrepreneurs who think they can design the next generation of electric hybrid automobiles.

The fact that Google wants a hand in designing electric automobiles is not so surprising,considering that Tesla Motors is a Silicon Valley start-up company. Tesla Motors makes an all-electric Roadster, a $98,000 two-seater that outpaces Ferraris on the drag strip. But perhaps it is because Google is known for outside the box thinking that their request for proposals strikes me as a step in the wrong direction.

Entrepreneurs who answer Google's challenge are likely to produce exactly what it asks for -- new designs for electric hybrid automobiles. The continued focus on the automobile is a limitation on creative thinking. A shift from the era of the Ford Mustang and Porsche Cayenne to an era of electric Ford Mustangs and Porsche Cayenne's is not the radical shift in our transportation design that this country needs.

Teslas and Google cars may not run on gasoline (though, as hybrids the Google cars probably will), and weaning ourselves off petroleum products will surely reduce greenhouse gases. But keeping transit focused on the free-wheeling automobile will do nothing to address the 40,000 deaths per year that result from automobile crashes.

After all, the taxicab that killed Henry Bliss was electric.

--------------

Posted by nicomachus at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The New York Times ran an article over the weekend on New York DOT's plan to road diet Ninth Avenue. A road diet is when transportation officials redesign an existing street by shrinking the number of auto lanes, making room for bicycle and other alt-transit lanes. The idea is that officials can insert new bike lanes without needing to widen a road -- a practice useful in areas where roads cannot be widened.

Locally, Durham used the road diet technique on Duke University Dr. to create its new bike lane. (seen at right)

What's unusual about in this New York example is that it's what you might call an extreme road diet. From a 70ft-wide street, 18ft are being repurposed. 10ft adjacent to the sidewalk will become a new, broad bike lane. Then, an 8ft buffer zone with planters and bollards will separate the bike lane from a 10ft parking lane. The result is that cyclists will enjoy complete separation from the swift current of automobile traffic flowing down Ninth Ave.

How bikes will negotiate intersections is my only question, but I am assuming that the bike lane will be signaled just as the auto-traffic lanes. It's an interesting idea and one that works in Europe. We'll see how well it works in NYC. While we don't really have streets in Durham wide enough to justify this kind of intervention, I am eager to see how New Yorkers (particularly the folks from Transportation Alternatives) respond to the new lane design.

A Busy City Street Makes Room for Bikes
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: September 23, 2007
Cyclists and pedestrians never quite imagined it this way, but maybe there is a use for all those cars after all. The city is planning to remake seven blocks of Ninth Avenue in Chelsea into what officials are billing enthusiastically, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, as the street of the future.

Read more.

Construction is not yet complete (neither planters nor structurally significant bollards are in place), but you can get a sense of the design here.

Analysis and diagrams at Streetsblog and Gothamist.

Posted by nicomachus at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Texas Transportation Institute's (TTI) statisticians have confirmed what common sense and simple observation have told most of us already -- that traffic congestion in the Triangle gets worse every year. What their mathematically blessed reports add to our collective understanding is that congestion in the Triangle is worse than it is in other similarly-sized metropolitan areas.

That means that, if you drive to work, you spend an extra 35 hours per year sitting in your car. And really, since "35 hours" is an average, some of you are spending much more than that. Your car might be nice, but is it that nice?

Hmm, maybe a dosage of light rail and/or commuter trains could help break up some of that congestion. Perhaps refocusing commercial and residential development through the lens of urban density would help.

If you would like to read the TTI's full report for yourself, you can download it here (a 7MB pdf), with 12 of the 138 pages having something to say about Durham.

Meanwhile, you can download a Triangle-focused version of the report here -- the 2007 Urban Mobility Information for Raleigh-Durham (downloads a pdf)

For those of you who have to spend those 35 hours behind the wheel of a car, the N&O further summarizes the report -- you surely don't have the time to read 138 pages -- in a front page article digest.

By the end of the day, I'll bet the John Locke Foundation recommends more asphalt to ease the congestion.

Posted by nicomachus at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

Durham Rising brought a lot of people downtown on Saturday -- 12,000 by some estimates. A surprising (yes, even to me) number of those folks were cyclists. So, if you walked around downtown at all that day, you surely had to step around some of their bikes. There wasn't a lamp-post, street sign, or sapling that didn't have a bike chained to it. Outside Bull McCabe's, the new Irish pub replacing Jo and Joe's, signs and lamp-posts secured two and three bikes a piece.

Where were the bike racks?

I left downtown that day feeling disgusted, and no, it wasn't from gorging on Locopops.

The city of Durham spent more than sixteen million dollars on its Downtown Improvements project as the civic investment in re-energizing downtown. They developed a new central plaza, realigned streets, and marked pedestrian crossings with stamped brick designs. But no bike racks? I was incredulous.

Turns out, bike racks were on their way. They just weren't installed yet.

Hopefully, you've been back downtown since June. As of the end of August, one city program installed bike racks downtown, and one will continue to install them throughout Durham.

First, the streetscape project did include bike racks; they simply couldn't be installed by the Durham Rising event. Ed Venable of the City says that bike racks were installed in eight locations in July. See them outside the Professional Center, the Empowerment Center, and the CCB Plaza among other spots inside the loop.

Second, the CityRacks program secured funding from the state and federal governments to install bike racks all over Durham. Under a Congestion Mitigation for Air Quality (CMAQ -- often pronounced see-mack) Improvement Program, Durham will be installing bike racks all over the city. CityRacks, as the CMAQ funded program is called, will install "inverted U" bicycle racks on city-owned property. Look for them to start popping up this fall.

There's a common story told on many college campuses (whether myth or fact doesn't matter) about how it was decided where sidewalks should go. It usually goes something like this. Suppose you want to lay out a campus, and you want to put in sidewalks only where the students will use them. The best way is to wait a few years to see what pathways the students wear into the lawn, and put the sidewalks there, because those are the pathways students use to get from building to building. Otherwise you'll have sidewalks, and then you'll have pathways across the lawn where the students actually walk.

The CityRacks program takes a similar strategy with bike racks. By letting citizens (cyclists) request where racks should go, the City ends up installing racks where they will be used.

Dale McKeel, the city's new Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation planner, says that the first bike racks were installed downtown in August at locations selected more than a year ago. Before the 2007 year is out, a total of sixty seven racks will be installed at parks, commercial districts, museums, universities, and libraries. For those of us cyclists, that means we will no longer have to lock a bike to a No-Parking sign outside Brightleaf or Ninth St.

Piedmont Parks, Inc. of Greensboro won the $48,000 contract to install the racks, and the upside-down U design was chosen by the Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, who says this style bike rack is the most secure.

In 2008, the City Racks program will focus on installing bike racks at public schools throughout Durham. And in 2009, the public will again be invited to request bike racks at locations around Durham.

----
Jim Reingruber, using Google Maps, has started a website noting all of Durham's bike racks -- at least, all the ones he can find. Check it out at http://www.durhambikeracks.com/

For the full list of all planned bike rack locations, see the pdf available at http://www.durhamnc.gov/departments/works/bikerack_form.cfm

Posted by nicomachus at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

David Hartgen's plan to repave the state of North Carolina might be accepted in some towns, but not in Durham.

Hartgen, a professor at UNC-Charlotte, recently released a study of transportation planning that looks at urban areas around the state. His conclusions simply amount to statistically backed reasons why urban areas should reduce transit spending, divert saved funds to highway construction and road widening, and embrace the private automobile as the keystone species in the ecology of economic progress.

The 200+ page study is available for download from the John Locke Foundation's website, and I encourage you to read it for yourself. At the very least, read the 15 page section on Durham because it is rife with interesting tidbits that don't sit well with his conclusions.

By his own admission, single-occupancy driving declined in Durham between 1990 and 2000, the time period at which his academic gaze is focused. The data show, and so he also admits, that carpooling and use of public transit increased. He notes further that "Durham is the only urbanized area in the state to report declining solo driving times and increased carpooling and transit shares between 1990 and 2000." You might think, then, that the conclusions he reaches for Charlotte or Raleigh ought to differ from the conclusions he reaches for Durham's future.

Across the state, however, it's all the same. Eliminate transit. Widen roads. Pave early and often.

His consistency reveals his incorrigible proposition. Any good social scientist knows that an "incorrigible proposition" is a belief that answers to no one. It is a telling sign that you've fallen prey to an incorrigible proposition when your prejudices guide your research in such a way that you always conclude what you previously believed to be true.

"I think that Hartgen essentially approaches the issue with blinders," says Durham resident Barry Ragin. "He assumes that 'congestion' is the problem which needs to be solved." In the case of Durham, congestion is the problem that just hasn't happened yet.

Hartgen guesses (but can't cite any studies to back him up) that a slow economy explains why people ride the bus and carpool in Durham. So if his prognosis is that the personal automobile is the cure for what ails Durham's economy, then, you might wonder what Hartgen recommends for combatting ozone pollution and bringing the city into compliance with federal standards. That'll take care of itself, he says, "as vehicles get less emittting."

But emissions aren't the only concerns swirling around the monolithic transportation infrastructure Hartgen dreams of. "Hartgen calls for government to spend heavily on more roads without imposing any land-use restrictions -- a combination doomed to fail," says Kevin Davis, senior IT manager at Duke. "If we don't introduce transit and bike/pedestrian services in combination with smarter growth, we'll end up as gridlocked as poorly-planned, car-centric cities like Houston and Orlando."

Instead of car-culture's monolith, a thriving city is one with a truly multi-modal transit authority. That is, the more options people have for getting around town, the healthier the people of the town and the healthier the economy. Hartgen implies that congestion limits individuals' freedom by restricting their use of the personal automobile. But a city without buses, without bike lanes, without trains is a city without options. Meaningful options are what people want, and those options don't always look like more asphalt.

"This report suggests that the state should spend money here on traffic-signal optimization instead of public transit. That's ridiculous," says David Mills a Durham resident and Executive Director of the Common Sense Foundation. "Durham needs visionary leadership to make public transit viable, not backward studies such as this one."

Durham's residents have spoken loud and clear on this issue. In response to the North Carolina Department of Transportation's current plan to widen Alston Avenue, which would turn it from a neighborhood street into a mini-freeway, citizens and government representatives expressed a united voice to say that Durham values its pedestrians being able to cross streets safely.

Whether DOT will side with the John Locke Foundation or Durham residents remains to be seen, but the question remains for each of us to consider.

Do roads exist to serve people or cars?

Posted by nicomachus at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Our relationship to built space is not something we often explore, and yet these spaces define for us the world of our daily lives. Authors like Wordsworth and Thoreau write about the wonders and mysteries of the world revealed to them simply through careful observation of their environments. The observant way of moving through the world revealed, for the romantic and the transcendentalist, an overlooked simplicity of everyday life.

Being observant in this way has value intrinsically in that it is a way to feel more connected to the place you occupy and a way to recognize the importance of that connection. Often, as in the case of Wordsworth and Thoreau or even contemporaries such as Ron Rash or Edward Hoagland, those who know something about this connection experience it in wilderness -- standing on a mountain top after a day’s hike or standing on the edge of a river or lake. The unique foil that wilderness poses to the human-built environment is arguably the basis of most environmental ethics, from Aldo Leopold’s land ethic to Edward Abbey’s monkeywrench defense to Deep Ecology. In each of these versions of environmental ethics, the bottom line human/wilderness relationship is one where we ought to preserve wilderness.

But basing an environmental ethic on juxtaposing wilderness and urban areas leaves those of us who live in cities without any sense of ownership over our environmental responsibilities. "The State of World Population 1999," a report issued by the United Nations Population Fund, documents the trends of increasing urbanization. One-third of the world's population lived in urban areas in 1960. By 1999, that percentage had increased to 47 percent. The report predicts 61 percent of the world's population will be city dwellers by 2030. “The State of World Population 1999” offers this prediction about urbanization:

the ecological and sociological "footprint" of cities has spread over ever-wider areas, creating an urban-rural continuum of communities that share some aspects of each lifestyle. Fewer and fewer places on the planet are unaffected by the dynamics of cities.

Basing environmental ethics on wilderness preservation alone is a luxury we can no longer afford.

There are other models, however, for an urban environmental ethic. It took a while, but the Sierra Club finally gets it. It released a white paper endorsing more density in urban growth. The US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) awards for sustainable architecture reasonably acknowledge the fact that environmentally friendly building design contributes to far fewer resources consumed for every person who lives and works in those structures. To get a sense of what’s required by LEED certification, read the article in this week’s Independent on a proposed building in Chapel Hill that, if built, will be North Carolina’s first LEED Gold standard building. Apart from urban planning, Michael Pollan’s works can be thought of as an attempt to design an environmental ethic that’s based on agriculture instead of on wilderness. His theory of co-evolution (developed in Botany of Desire) and the agro-industrial food policies he calls into question in The Omnivore’s Dilemma both serve as models of how to think responsibly about the environment and be a city dweller.

Durham has its own theorist on urban environmentalism, and his focus, like most enviro-ethics theorists, is on preservation. Only this time, Gary Kueber is trying to preserve buildings. Preservation and sustainable urban design go hand in hand, argues Kueber.

Endangered Durham, Kueber’s medium for developing his preservationist ethic, is a website dedicated to showing what happens to a city when poor planning decisions dominate its development culture. Probably the most striking feature of his project are the before and after photographs. Using historical photography from archives, libraries, universities, and books, he identifies areas of Durham that have changed significantly -- and identifiably -- over the years. As you can imagine, much of the time this change is not for the good.

A good example of the kind of relevance his site has is his collection of posts on DOT’s woeful redevelopment plans for Alston Avenue. He’s done a great job articulating just what's wrong with DOT's current way of thinking. See http://endangereddurham.blogspot.com/search/label/Alston%20Ave. for more. These posts speak to his concern that sustainable design is about more than just preserving buildings. "An equal part of my intent is that what we build new," -- whether roads or buildings -- he says, "is human-scale - respecting the lessons of how we used to build cities for pedestrians and integrating knowledge of our impact on the natural environment."

His breadth of familiarity with historical documents and evident depth of thought on urban design would lead you to believe he is a life-long urban planner. Not the case, however. Originally trained in Internal Medicine, he practiced primary care in Durham for four years -- right up until he decided that his “hobby” of historic preservation was more important to him. “ So I gave up medicine, went back to school to get a Master’s in Public Health, and a Master’s in Urban Planning. I’m finishing up the latter this May,” he says.

Kueber grew up in New Orleans. Like many of us who live in historic cities, he took the beautiful architecture for granted. It was only after college at Duke, medical school back in New Orleans, then moving back to Durham for a second time that he got involved with efforts to save historic properties. He worked with and eventually chaired the Endangered Properties Program with Preservation Durham.

He started the Endangered Durham website when he realized that “Durham had lost so much historic architecture, and the majority of folks who live in Durham weren’t aware of it.” Creating a publicly accessible tool for researching Durham’s landscape and architectural history, he thought, could strengthen preservation efforts. He describes an often-repeated pattern of development thinking “when someone would propose a teardown, there was no context – people would see it as ‘well, that building is pretty far gone’ instead of ‘we’ve lost hundreds and hundreds of buildings – we really need to go above-and-beyond to keep what we still have.’ Along with that, I saw that the same ethos that led to the loss of so much architecture was still around.”

While Endangered Durham’s posts are tagged by property types and streets, Kueber’s concerns also fall into themes -- loss of greenspace or demolition by neglect, for example. He confesses that site organization is one of the biggest challenges he faces.

“I would like it to exist in perpetuity as a community resource where people can look up a site and the history of that building/buildings that came before. The tags are a mixed bag, and they include both themes and locations. They could really be overwhelming, because I see the creation of a healthy, vibrant community as the whole, and these landscape pieces as parts of that whole.”

He adds,

“To a lesser extent St. Theresa (Southside) and West End. These areas of town have persistent economic disinvestment and difficult to change social forces that mire people in poverty and crime. And to a large extent, those problems are bigger than Durham. But people need help and want change in their neighborhoods, because they need a better life. Unfortunately, old buildings play a pretty small role in the creation or maintenance of those problems, but they become symbolic of decay. I often joke with people that the reason buildings (and trees) get knocked down is because they are the only parts of the neighborhood than can’t run away when the bulldozers come. It’s something tangible for politicians to point to as an accomplishment. Unfortunately, there is no good evidence out there that demolition helps neighborhoods, and some evidence that it exacerbates neighborhood social conditions.”

A rare honor for bloggers is to meet in person the strangers who read and enjoy their sites. But Kueber was in attendance at the grand opening of the Bull City Headquarters, a mixed-use community center that local artists have opened up in Little Five Points. During the organizers’ speeches about the Headquarters’ mission, they indicated that one reason for locating in LFP was based on what they had read about the area on the Endangered Durham website. Kueber says, “that went beyond my best hopes for what the site could do -- inspire others to community action in neighborhoods other than their own, to see all of Durham as their city.”

Posted by nicomachus at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

DURHAM -- Cafeteria conversation at work on January 31st revolved around the predicted ice storm. Bread, milk, and bottled water would be cleared off grocery store shelves by the time we left work that evening we all joked. We also guessed that the next day's news would be littered with images of cars skidding off the road.

It's not that Southerners can't drive in wintery conditions. Neither can the local transplants from New England or the midwest. No one can drive on ice.

And since no one can drive on ice, the answer is not to drive at all.

What we can do to prepare for the next ice storm is break away from our dependence on the automobile. The problem with giving up the car is that our communities are designed so that driving is necessary. Walking to the store is often not an option.

Since the 1950s, residential development in this country has revolved around the personal automobile. Because cars enable us to drive farther, our communities have been spreading. Look at growth patterns for any major city in the US for the past forty years, and you'll see a consistent pattern. Unless locked by geographic features (like Pittsburgh's rivers) or municipal decisions (like Portland, Oregon's growth belt), cities grow at the periphery. They expand. And Durham is no exception.

So, no one lives around the corner from the corner store anymore, and very few of us live around the corner from work.

The outskirts of town is where new neighborhoods go up. But while residential development sprawls, employment hubs like downtowns, universities, government buildings, and dense commercial districts remain the daily destinations for hundreds of thousands of drivers Triangle-wide. Research Triangle Park is the archetypal employment center -- zoned for businesses only, every single one of the nearly 40,000 employees has to get into and out of RTP every week day. (Lest anyone thinks I'm pointing the finger at others, I'm one of those 40,000 traveling into RTP every day.)

The Triangle Transit Authority's buses serve the park, and DOT recently striped bike lanes on the freshly repaved Cornwallis Rd. But in an ice storm, neither buses nor bikes handle the roads any better than cars.

This growth at the periphery mindset is what drives big-box retail. Giant grocery stores and retail chains anchor parking lots larger than football fields, just waiting for us to drive to them. In fact, in some parking lots you get the feeling that you're out of place if you're not in a car. Try walking or riding your bike to Southpoint Mall. It's clear the expectation is that we drive to the store.

Not only do giant retail chains water down the flavor of business by making the suburbs of any town indistinguishable from any other (what Parisians are currently calling "banalization"), national chains drive locally owned hardware stores, fruit stands, and grocery co-ops out of business. And this means that our development patterns determine for us our transportation patterns -- car dependent and subject to the weather.

Why can't Durham lead the effort to offer up another development model?

Ice is not the only reason to think about creating different kinds of cities. Even OPEC, the cartel of the largest oil exporting countries, finally admits that "peak oil" -- the term reserved for the economic aftermath of a world in which oil production reaches a peak and then rapidly declines -- could happen in the next decade.

Crippling ice storms give us a glimpse at what life after peak oil may look like if we don't start designing transportation around something other than the automobile. While many communities around the country are already making plans for the peak oil crisis, the Triangle is back to ground-zero designing a regional rail system.

Of course, anyone who's seen the movie The Ice Storm knows that not even trains can move safely through the frozen glaze, so regional rail is not the answer. But as long as we look for the one thing to deliver us from auto-topia, our future planning will be as stalled as a Camaro on I-40 in an ice storm. Regional rail is part of the answer; so is a more efficient bus network. So is mixed-use, high-density residential development in our existing employment hubs. So is a sidewalk and crosswalk infrastructure that accommodates wheelchairs and strollers.

Each city and county has a development review board, which can be more than just a rubber stamp on developer-submitted plans. Durham County Commissioner Becky Heron knows that, and that's why she's one of Durham's best advocates for smart development.

In addition to being ranked among the "Best Places to Live" and "Best Places to do Business," Durham's most recent honor is a spot among Forbes Magazine's December 2006 list of the top ten "Smartest Cities". If we're so smart, then we can figure out how to make Durham a more walkable community.

Walkable communities are safer communities. Whether a community is safe isn't always a measure of crime -- a safe Durham is one where you can cross Roxboro Street without fearing for your life. A safe Durham is one where Duke Street and Gregson Street are no longer freeways running through the middle of neighborhoods.

A safe community is one in which getting to the store, running errands, caring for an elderly friend or parent, or getting to work isn't made impossible by the weather.

A walkable community is one in which during Triangle-wide ice storms, we can get to the food, firewood, or friendship we need to endure it.

Posted by nicomachus at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

From the City of Durham's website:

CityRacks is a bicycle parking program, which will install "inverted U" bicycle racks on city-owned property throughout the City of Durham. Sites are selected by taking into account density of bike traffic. These areas will most likely include parks, schools, business districts, universities, museums, and libraries.

* Sidewalk or walk area much be at least 8' in width to prevent walkways from being blocked by bikes attached to bike racks.
* Bike racks must be installed approximately 13' from fire hydrants, and 15' from bus stop shelters and newsstands.
* Racks would preferably not be installed on brick/pavers, stone/slate or patterned concrete.
* Area must not be in a direct walkway entrance from a commercial business.
* Location should be in a high traffic biking area in order to accommodate as many bikers at possible.
* Area of location should be on city property and not under private ownership.
* Dimensions of the inverted "U" shaped racks are:

If you'd like to request that a bike rack be installed near a business you frequent or other destination, just fill out a Bike Rack Request Form online.

Let's hope ours fare better than Toronto's.

Posted by nicomachus at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun
December 22nd, 2005

DURHAM -- One reason Lars Trost took his current job is that he knew he could bike to work from home. His office is about six miles south Forest Hills West, and it was important to him to find a route he could ride safely at night, since he often leaves work in the dark. After months of riding, he feels that the American Tobacco Trail is the safest and most direct route.

Ever since Daylight Savings Time ended in October, Trost, like most bike commuters in Durham, finds himself riding home in the dark most of the time. Trost says that after dark he's not comfortable riding in the traffic of Fayetteville or Roxboro streets, his only alternatives to the ATT. So, he chooses to ride Durham's most popular greenway instead.

One evening a little more than a month ago, he left work around 6pm. The sun had set, but his path was lit by a headlight mounted to his handlebars. Near the ATT's intersection with Cornwallis Rd, a Durham Police Officer patrolling the trail pulled him over and issued a warning for trespassing.

The officer pointed to a sign near the intersection and noted that the American Tobacco Trail, like all parks in Durham, closes at dusk. The officer advised Trost that the next time he is caught on the trail after dark, he could be issued a $135 fine.

This incident brought to light a problem for Durham's greenways. If users rely on greenways to get to and from different sides of town, then why should the trails close at sunset? Doesn't closing greenways at sunset limit their utility, especially in the winter months when the sun sets as early as 5pm?

While greenways are parks, they are parks of a different sort. Linear parks double as transportation corridors, and transportation is more than a daytime activity. Whereas recreational cyclists have more flexibility to arrange rides at convenient times, commuters are at the mercy of their work schedules and mother nature.

Trost isn't alone. I see the same people every morning on my way to work, he says. If I had to guess based on my experience, I'd say close to a hundred people a day use the trail.

Through email, Trost initiated a conversation with the Durham Police Department, City Council, and the City's Transportation and Parks and Recreation departments. A meeting was arranged, at which the City acknowledged that it would be squandering a resource if a transportation corridor is unavailable to those who need to use it.

Bike commuters in other cities also face the problem of dusk trail closures, so Durham was able to look to other places for solution models. While some municipalities, such as Baltimore, Maryland, address the problem simply by exempting commuters from the trail closure, how to enforce this exemption creates a new problem for law enforcement. The idea of establishing a permit system was also looked at. But requiring cyclists to register with the city in order to lawfully use a greenway after hours would prevent folks from spontaneously using Durham's greenways to bicycle to and from a Durham Bulls game.

After hearing from Trost as well as many other commuters who use Durham's greenways as transportation routes, Darrell Crittendon, Director of Parks and Recreation, decided that extending the hours that the trails are open is both the simplest and most democratic solution.

As of Monday, December 5th, the Parks and Recreation department extended the hours of the American Tobacco Trail from dawn until dusk to 5AM until 10PM.

Crittendon also notes that The Durham Police Department (DPD) will continue to monitor the ATT for safety throughout the extended usage hours. He encourages any commuters who use the trail at night to consider using a buddy system. The more traffic there is in any area, the safer it tends to be from a public safety perspective.

None of Durham's greenways are lit and the City does not plan to install lighting along the trails. So,
if you're going to ride the trail at night, be aware that it will be dark. From sunset until 10pm and 5am until sunrise, Durham police will be enforcing the state laws concerning nighttime cycling.

All cyclists riding at night must be equipped with a headlight visible from at least 300 ft. and a red tail light visible from at least 200 ft. All local bike shops carry these lights, which can be attached to either your bike or your clothing.

--
NC General Statutes
20-129. Required Lighting Equipment of Vehicles.
(e) Lamps on Bicycles. Every bicycle shall be equipped with a lighted lamp visible up to three hundred feet in front when used at night and must also be equipped with a taillight or rear reflector that is red and visible for up to two hundred feet from therear when used at night.

Posted by nicomachus at 8:14 PM | Permalink

The Herald Sun
February 10, 2005

On the one day you forget to carry a spare tube, patch kit, or pump in your pack you feel your front tire roll unsteadily around corners.

You arrive at work as the remaining useful psi's escape with that dreaded hiss. A shard from the broken bottle on the side of the road that you didn't see until the last minute, catches the sunlight from where it sits halfway in your tire.

Anxiety over being stranded at work by a flat tire, a broken chain, or unscheduled overtime is a big reason that people don't try bike-commuting.

Until recently, cyclists had to rely on sympathetic co-workers or their own wallets/purses to get them home. But now, if you register for the Triangle Transit Authority's Emergency Ride Home program, TTA's got your back.

Here's how it works: TTA issues registered users a voucher good for "a reliable, emergency ride home on the day the person has used an alternative mode of transportation to get to work." When you find yourself stranded, call one of the transportation providers that TTA has partnered with -- a taxi if your ride home is less than 20 miles, a car rental if it's more than 20 -- and the voucher is your payment.

It's that simple. But you have to be a registered user, so sign up now. Don't wait until there's an emergency.

TTA's not just there in emergencies; they're helping bikers get just about everywhere they need to go with a bike rack on the front of every bus. The $1.50 fare (going up to $2.00 in March) will get you and your bike anywhere within the Authority's region of coverage -- from Franklin St. in Chapel Hill to New Bern Ave. in downtown Raleigh, from Duke to Garner.

Since DATA, Chapel Hill Transit, and CAT also have bike racks on the fronts of their buses, you can use TTA to travel between towns and the municipal systems to travel within them.

But most of the time, the greatest help to a cyclist isn't a lift in an automobile, it's camaraderie.

If you're looking for someone to ride with on those cold mornings, TTA has partnered with Share the Ride NC to help you find other cyclists who share a similar route and destination.

Linking from TTA's website, you can access Share the Ride NC's database of bicycle commuters interested in sharing their morning or evening commute with other two-wheeled companions.

Commuters enter basic information like starting point, destination, and approximate time you leave or arrive at work. The program matches you with other cyclists in your area.

Besides, a good riding buddy will carry spare tubes and pumps even when you forget yours.

Route maps, fare information, and registration forms are all available on TTA's website. You can also request registration forms by calling 919-549-9999.

Posted by nicomachus at 9:27 AM | Permalink