Leadership

My friend Mike Woodard, who serves on Durham City Council, took issue last week with a post i wrote suggesting that it was a failure on the part of "Durham leaders" to allow the NCDOT's plan for widening Alston Ave. to be approved. Mike ably documented the work done by himself, some other members of Council, and city staffers to mitigate the impacts on the community of NCDOT's design for this road, which will pretty much eliminate the possibility of a pedestrian-friendly, mixed use corridor emerging along Alston Ave. He also mentioned that NCDOT "finally checked into possible economic justice issues related to Los Primos. And DOT reported at the meeting that the Feds are likely to grant some relief for the store, which will likely mean that the store moves nearby but does not disappear."

Fair enough.

I should have probably been clearer that my reference to "Durham leaders" was not necessarily in this case directed at elected officials or staff, but at other community leaders who have been on the wrong side of this issue, particularly folks in the NECD (North East Central Durham) and PAC1 organizations.

But the leadership question on pedestrian issues specifically, transportation issues in general, and the overall vision (or lack of vision) of Durham in the 21st Century remains.

Durham's UDO, for instance describes Residential Compact neighborhoods as:

"The RC District is established to promote well-integrated new residential and civic development close to designated and future regional transit stations. The district is intended to ensure that new development takes advantage of compatible, higher density, transit-friendly design opportunities in close proximity to transit systems. New development in this district requires both pedestrian orientation and human scale in architecture at the street level."

It further describes the Compact Neighborhood Tier as:

The Compact Neighborhood Tier -- That area within � mile of the identified sites of transit stations that is covered by Station Areas Plans, within which development is intended to be transit-, bicycle- and pedestrian-oriented to enhance the street level experience and provide a mixture of goods and services near transit stations. Auto-oriented and low intensity uses shall be discouraged.

As far as i can tell from reading the Zoning Atlas maps, most of the area in question falls within the CN tier. It should be abundantly clear that if the vision requires discouraging auto-oriented uses in the CN tier, we're not doing a good job in providing the kind of leadership needed to implement this vision.

Here's a few simple questions. The answers to these will, i think, tell us a lot about whether the kind of leadership needed to make Durham a desirable place to live in the 21st century exists.

Within the Urban Tier, how many signalized intersections still lack basic pedestrian features such as "Walk" lights and crosswalks? How many non-signalized intersections lack crosswalks? What's the plan for remediating this situation.

Pedestrian activity goes hand in hand with decent transit options. How many bus stops in the Urban Tier still lack basic amenities such as benches, concrete pads (so you're not standing in mud puddles waiting for the bus), trash cans, or shelters? What's the plan to address this lack? Buses currently are on a half hour schedule, even during peak work commute hours. Is there a plan to increase the frequency of buses to a 12-15 minute schedule during peak commute hours? Currently, all buses in Durham have the same destination, the downtown bus station. Is there a plan to develop a new bus map that better moves people from one part of town to another, especially if they don't need to be at the downtown bus station?

Many cities around the country are doing away with, or at least reducing, minimum parking requirements in their zoning codes, especially in downtown and urban zones. Where's Durham at with this?

Anyone who walks with any frequency in Durham knows that most drivers either ignore or are unaware of the law that gives pedestrians in crosswalks the right of way. (In fact, state law gives pedestrians the right of way in some circumstances where there are no crosswalks, as well.) What is Durham's policy on enforcing this code? How many citations have been issued in the past 12 months for failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, or for encroaching a crosswalk when stopped? How many of those citations were issued in cases in which no injury actually occurred?

Council approved the Durham Walks! comprehensive pedestrian plan a little over two years ago. I'll be honest. I can't make heads or tales out of this status report. It appears that very little work has been done implementing the plan. Around this time last year i was asked to be on a citizens committee that would both publish a scorecard and advocate on behalf of implementing the plan, but after only a couple of meetings, the city employee who was heading up the effort was transferred (or took a new job somewhere else, i really can't recall) and the group stopped meeting. So, what's the status of implementing even the most basic pedestrian amenities as called for in the plan? How are we doing? Do we have any regularly scheduled updates being put out so that people can see progress being made on this front? (And on a more personal note, how many times do i have to ask Council to put some goddamn sidewalks on Avondale Drive? I know that no one on Council ever actually walks on that street, but Jesus H. Christ, it's one of the main gateways into Durham. Or funding a permanent solution to the mess that is Roxboro, Markham, and Mangum? The DPAC is going to open Real Soon Now, and plenty of people from out of town are going to be getting off I-85 to make their way to our new theater. Do they really need to be getting their first impression of Durham as a set of decrepit water filled plastic Rhino walls at an impossible to comprehend intersection?)

for those of us who are modestly invested in goings on around town, it feels like everything that happens here happens on an ad hoc basis. Put out this fire, and then deal with the next one. Not a good way, if you ask me, to run a city.

UPDATE: I rewrote this post 4 or 5 times in the past 4 days, which i usually hate to do. Part of my impetus for publishing this blog is the immediacy it offers to catprue my thoughts at the moment.

But rewrites are sometimes necessary, although one paragraph that i really wanted to include got left off inadvertently.

Back in 2005, when i was on the committee overseeing the work of the Louis Berger Group, the consultants who wrote the Durham Walks! pedestrian plan, we came across a document from the city of Durham, from sometime in the mid 90s. It was perhaps associated with the 1996 bond issue, which some of you may still remember. What i recall of this document is that it set a goal of constructing or completing sidewalks on at least one side of every major thoroughfare in the city of Durham. That was twelve years or so ago. One of the reasons i get so pissed off when i look at Avondale Drive is that it, you know, doesn't have a lot of people advocating for it. Many of the houses are rentals, owned by landlords whose disdain for investment in their properties is obvious. The folks who do own their own homes are, for the most part, hard working people who really don't have the time or energy to attend City Council meetings, or the money to self-assess for a sidewalk. They count on the city to show leadership when it comes to providing the kinds of services that folks who live along, say, Club Boulevard and Oval Drive, take for granted. Alas, they don't see that too often. And as a result, their property taxes are regularly invested in other parts of the city, making other people's lives more pleasant, and increasing other people's return on their investment. And Avondale Drive isn't the only corridor in the city for which this is true. It just happens to be the one i spend the most time on.

Yeah, i know. That's what local politics is all about, isn't it?

UPDATE II: From Bull City Rising:

The City Council today is expected to kick off the upset bid process for a structure in this targeted neighborhood commercial area, with the Bill Bell-linked nonprofit UDI placing a bid of $30,000 for the structures at 727 N. Mangum St.

Preservationists, neighborhood activists and some nearby developers have expressed concern that UDI may want to demolish the neglected structures and replace them with more suburban-oriented development, hurting the chance for urban infill development and revitalization. (Reportedly, a gas station was one of the uses UDI had in mind in their initial application for $190,000 in City funding to build a "gateway" to the city in this area.)

Leadership.