Shooting the Bull

Stephen Mancuso, the Transit Administrator for the Durham Area Transit Authority (DATA) joins us tonight at 7:30 on Shooting the Bull, WXDU - 88.7 FM for a conversation about the future of transit in Durham. Very timely, we hope, in light of this article in today's Herald-Sun.

Neighborhood activists, architects and environmentalists have banded together to push the idea of resurrecting the streetcar system that linked residents to downtown Durham in the early part of the 20th century.

Supporters have been meeting quietly over the past few months and are talking up the idea with officials in the city government, with Duke University and with Triangle Transit.

The next step is to see if there's enough interest to assemble an ad-hoc committee to drum up more backing for the project, said Jeff Ensminger, a southwest Durham resident who's involved in the effort.

Ensminger and another supporter, Old West Durham Neighborhood Association leader John Schelp, said the discussion so far deliberately has avoided settling on specifics such as routes and technology.

"We don't want to get locked down early on [things like] routes," Schelp said. "We want to talk about ideas and get as many people involved as possible."

But the impetus for the discussion is clearly a wish to link downtown more closely with outlying neighborhoods.

One suggestion, for example, is to establish a system that connects Duke University, the Ninth Street and Brightleaf areas, downtown and N.C. Central University.