East End Connector
I haven't blogged much about Durham, local politics, or specific North Carolina issues. Maybe it's time to start.
The backstory:
In 1959, North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) first proposed the Durham Freeway (NC 147) and the East End Connector. The EEC would run from US 70 east of Durham to NC 147 right where it makes its south turn to hook up with I-40, which runs between Chapel Hill and Raleigh. When NC 147 was constructed in the mid-to-late 60s, the Briggs Ave. interchange was designed to handle the EEC. We'll leave aside for the moment discussion of the wisdom of the Durham Freeway, which did irreparable damage to thriving communities. That's a done deal right now, and the best we can do is figure out how to thrive despite its construction.
Fifty seven years later, the EEC is still on the drawing boards, Durham's population, along with the rest of the Triangle, has more than tripled, and thousands of vehicles per day are making the trip between I-85 and NC 147, to I-40, along Durham's surface streets, through some of its most densely populated neighborhoods.
One of them is the neighborhood i live in: Duke Park. It's a great place to live. One of the great things about it is the new playground that our Parks and Rec department installed last year. (We'll leave aside discussion of how long it took to build, and how little it resembles what DPR originally talked about following the passage of the bond issue to fund it in 1996.) On a given Saturday afternoon when the weather is mild, scores if not hundreds of kids, from all over the city, are in the park playing on the new toys. We love to see this.
What we don't like is that a lot of the kids in our own neighborhood can't use the playground, because traffic is so heavy they can't get across the street safely. When NCDOT proposed widening Roxboro St. from 2 lanes to 5 as part of the I-85 project, we asked for a traffic count along Roxboro St., which runs along the east end of the park. We never got one. "The computer broke," was the excuse we got from Jon Nance, NCDOT District 5 engineer. So, i did a manual traffic count during morning and evening rush hours, back in 2001. I counted right around 1600 vehicles per peak hour, in one direction (southbound in the morning, and northbound in the afternoon), which we translated to about 12000 vehicles per day in each direction. During a meeting with NC Transportation Secretary Lyndo Tippett, Mr. Nance accepted our numbers as being reasonably accurate.
Our neighborhood is not the only neighborhood so affected by traffic: Duke and Gregson Streets in the Trinity Park neighborhood carry equal amounts of traffic.
What we'd really like to know is how many of these cars are simply looking for the fastest and best way to get on or off the Durham Freeway from i-85 and points north.
Our guess is that it's 50% or better, but we really don't know. We have an idea of how many people work in downtown Durham, and how many people live in downtown Durham, but we really have never gotten an answer about how much of our surface street traffic is headed to downtown, and how much is headed for the freeway.
This is a problem because our streets are too busy and too dangerous to let our kids cross them to use our neighborhood park, among other reasons.
Now, here's the rub. All of Durham's elected officals (City Council, Mayor, and County Commission) support the East End Connector. It gives vehicles headed to NC 147 from points north a faster, safer, more convenient alternative than the surface streets through our inner city neighborhoods and downtown. The Durham MPO has made it our highest transportation priority. NCDOT agreed to fund its construction back in 2003, but, when the 2005 funding plan was released, the EEC mysteriously disappeared.
Now, it's time for NCDOT to release the next plan for funding transportation priorities for the next 6 years. Which means it's time to lobby once again for the East End Connector. I'm getting tired of doing this, but there it is.
Governor Easley, Secretary Tippett, if you're listening, here's the deal. Build the damn road already, OK? Fifty seven years is long enough. My kids have already grown up, and the last one will be off to college soon. I'd like to able to walk my grandchildren across the street to my neighborhood park.
Want to read more about the EEC? Durhamloop.org is the place.
Want to write to the governor or the secretary? ltippett@dot.state.nc.us and governor@ncmail.net.
thanks!
The backstory:
In 1959, North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) first proposed the Durham Freeway (NC 147) and the East End Connector. The EEC would run from US 70 east of Durham to NC 147 right where it makes its south turn to hook up with I-40, which runs between Chapel Hill and Raleigh. When NC 147 was constructed in the mid-to-late 60s, the Briggs Ave. interchange was designed to handle the EEC. We'll leave aside for the moment discussion of the wisdom of the Durham Freeway, which did irreparable damage to thriving communities. That's a done deal right now, and the best we can do is figure out how to thrive despite its construction.
Fifty seven years later, the EEC is still on the drawing boards, Durham's population, along with the rest of the Triangle, has more than tripled, and thousands of vehicles per day are making the trip between I-85 and NC 147, to I-40, along Durham's surface streets, through some of its most densely populated neighborhoods.
One of them is the neighborhood i live in: Duke Park. It's a great place to live. One of the great things about it is the new playground that our Parks and Rec department installed last year. (We'll leave aside discussion of how long it took to build, and how little it resembles what DPR originally talked about following the passage of the bond issue to fund it in 1996.) On a given Saturday afternoon when the weather is mild, scores if not hundreds of kids, from all over the city, are in the park playing on the new toys. We love to see this.
What we don't like is that a lot of the kids in our own neighborhood can't use the playground, because traffic is so heavy they can't get across the street safely. When NCDOT proposed widening Roxboro St. from 2 lanes to 5 as part of the I-85 project, we asked for a traffic count along Roxboro St., which runs along the east end of the park. We never got one. "The computer broke," was the excuse we got from Jon Nance, NCDOT District 5 engineer. So, i did a manual traffic count during morning and evening rush hours, back in 2001. I counted right around 1600 vehicles per peak hour, in one direction (southbound in the morning, and northbound in the afternoon), which we translated to about 12000 vehicles per day in each direction. During a meeting with NC Transportation Secretary Lyndo Tippett, Mr. Nance accepted our numbers as being reasonably accurate.
Our neighborhood is not the only neighborhood so affected by traffic: Duke and Gregson Streets in the Trinity Park neighborhood carry equal amounts of traffic.
What we'd really like to know is how many of these cars are simply looking for the fastest and best way to get on or off the Durham Freeway from i-85 and points north.
Our guess is that it's 50% or better, but we really don't know. We have an idea of how many people work in downtown Durham, and how many people live in downtown Durham, but we really have never gotten an answer about how much of our surface street traffic is headed to downtown, and how much is headed for the freeway.
This is a problem because our streets are too busy and too dangerous to let our kids cross them to use our neighborhood park, among other reasons.
Now, here's the rub. All of Durham's elected officals (City Council, Mayor, and County Commission) support the East End Connector. It gives vehicles headed to NC 147 from points north a faster, safer, more convenient alternative than the surface streets through our inner city neighborhoods and downtown. The Durham MPO has made it our highest transportation priority. NCDOT agreed to fund its construction back in 2003, but, when the 2005 funding plan was released, the EEC mysteriously disappeared.
Now, it's time for NCDOT to release the next plan for funding transportation priorities for the next 6 years. Which means it's time to lobby once again for the East End Connector. I'm getting tired of doing this, but there it is.
Governor Easley, Secretary Tippett, if you're listening, here's the deal. Build the damn road already, OK? Fifty seven years is long enough. My kids have already grown up, and the last one will be off to college soon. I'd like to able to walk my grandchildren across the street to my neighborhood park.
Want to read more about the EEC? Durhamloop.org is the place.
Want to write to the governor or the secretary? ltippett@dot.state.nc.us and governor@ncmail.net.
thanks!
Since 1949, Durhamites have slept soundly, secure in the knowledge that, in our town, erection can be depended upon. Now, thanks to the power of the internets, we can spread that security all over the world.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home