Hell freezes over?

And not just in Philadelphia:

State highway officials have decided not to require the Triangle Veterinary
Emergency Clinic to add a turn lane and move a sewer line at its planned new
location on Morreene Road.

City Council member Mike Woodard said he and other city officials were informed
of the decision at 8:28 this morning, after a meeting of NCDOT engineers.

DOT's change of mind removes an unexpected cost that had jeopardized the
clinic's plan to relocate its practice to a renovated warehouse at Morreene Road
and Linden Terrace in western Durham. Clinic manager Sharon Zeigler said last
week that the lane and sewer move would add about $250,000 to the clinic's
estimated renovating and landscaping cost of $1.9 million.

My neighborhood's experience with NCDOT and turn lanes was decidedly the opposite. Don't know what's changed, but this is good news.

Continue reading Hell freezes over?

Didn't see that coming

The N.C. Department of Transportation has stopped issuing new paving contracts for street maintenance because it has barely enough money to scrape by to the end of fiscal 2008-09, agency officials say.

Deputy Division 5 Engineer Joey Hopkins relayed word of the decision to the Durham-Orange-Chatham Transportation Advisory Committee this week, as he briefed members on the agency's financial problems.

With revenue from gas and vehicle-sales taxes running far short of projections, engineers in the seven-county division that includes Durham and Wake counties have only enough construction money to pay for safety-related improvements, some bridge replacements, and bridge maintenance, Hopkins said.

But routine street resurfacing has gone by the wayside.

"All that's been delayed," Hopkins said. "If that continues, that'll be a tremendous impact to our infrastructure health."

I have no idea if our new governor has the will or the skill to fix what is obviously a broken agency. Forget about building a transportation infrastructure for the 21st century. These guys can't even get us out of the 1950s.

Continue reading Didn't see that coming

Curb cuts to nowhere - part 2

Erwin Rd and Dobbins Drive, Chapel Hill, NC. This is where NCDOT just spent a whole lot of money redesigning the Erwin Rd. - 15/501 intersection. So if you want to make a left from northbound 15/510 onto Erwin to go into Durham, you have to drive a couple of hundred yards up the road and do that u-turn thing now. But at least someone got a nice new concrete wall out of that deal. Anyway, just up the road, maybe 30-40 yards or so, a little side street called Dobbins crosses Erwin. There's a sidewalk on the west side of Erwin in front of the Marriot Suites. There's a couple of curb cuts over there, but, alas, nothing resembling a cross walk either across Dobbins or Erwin. But on the east side of Erwin, there's this beautiful brick crosswalk that goes, well, nowhere. Except into a foot deep puddle.

Proving, i guess, that NCDOT still doesn't understand the concept of pedestrian connectivity.

Meanwhile, a few blocks up 15/501, at the Scarlett Dr. intersection, we've got some more curbcuts, but no crosswalks or pedestrian signals across a very busy intersection. There's a Lowe's hardware there, and Borders Books, and fast food and the typical highway sideshow. I guess there's no need for a crosswalk or pedestrian signals because no one ever actually walks across the street there.

Oh, sorry.

Continue reading Curb cuts to nowhere - part 2

Raynor and Holloway

I stopped by the intersection of Raynor and Holloway yesterday for a first hand look at the "scene of the crime." Raynor, Holloway, and Miami Blvd converge in this area to make one rather large commercial district, with a strip mall (that has one of the few grocery stores in East Durham), a ton of fast food restaurants, a drug store, and a couple of auto parts stores. All 1.8 miles or so from City Hall.





Looking south/southwest across Holloway to Raynor. There's a painted crosswalk on Raynor, south of Holloway. It's the only crosswalk in the entire section of the map above.


Looking west across down Holloway across Raynor. There are curb cuts at all the intersections, and a sidewalk along the south side of Holloway, but no crosswalks or "Walk" signs.


South across Holloway to Raynor. Is there a stop line on westbound Holloway? If there is, that car is well past it. Again, curb cut for wheelchair access, but no crosswalk.


South/southeast down Miami across Holloway. Sidewalks and curb cuts, but no crosswalks or pedestrian signals.


South across Miami and Holloway to Gary St., where the bus is coming up. That's a pretty vast sea of asphalt to get across, isn't it? Again, curb cuts for wheelchair access, but no crosswalks or indication that a pedestrian or someone in a wheelchair has any business being on this street.


Looking west on Holloway across Miami. I have no idea where you would cross this street.


A few steps further north on Miami than the last picture. Again, no way to get across Miami on foot or wheelchair over here.

Take a look at that map again. There's a lot of people living, working, and shopping in this commercial and residential district. There should be a whole lot more foot traffic around here. (There should be more people shopping at the grocery store than grabbing a delayed heart attack at the McDonald's as well, but that's a different, although related, problem.) Holloway Street is also known as NC 98, so i'd assume it's a state maintained road. I'm guessing that Miami Blvd, which turns into US 70 about a mile or so to the south, is also a state maintained road. NCDOT has demonstrated time and again that it's main concern is moving as many vehicles from point A to point B in the least amount of time as possible. I've spoken with some engineers and planners at NCDOT who would dispute this, and who seem to know the vocabulary, at least, of pedestrian safety issues and planning for walkable communities. But when the rubber hits the road, this is what we always end up with. Large swaths of asphalt, and people in the hospital, or the funeral home.

Some folks in the city's transportation department have a better understanding of how to do this right. Unfortunately, when it comes to places like this, they've got virtually no say.

Continue reading Raynor and Holloway

Words of wisdom

This is from an unlikely source, an anonymous commenter over at Kevin's place, in a post about Scott Howell's new pizzeria, opening soon between Nana's and Q Shack:

Every neighborhood should have a little collection of unique shops and restaurants within walking distance the way Rockwood does. It is not quite "urban" in the sense that the buildings do not hug the street, yet it still has a very human friendly, pedestrian scale about it with simple, but eclectic architecture.

Umm, yes. Exactly. And if the city keeps allowing NCDOT to build monstrosities like Guess Rd., N. Duke, and soon, Alston Ave., you can kiss that pipe dream goodbye.

Continue reading Words of wisdom

Picking nits

Yeah, yeah, i'm on vacation. I'm destressing. But stuff still happens. I'm not talking about Afghanistan, where things seem to be escalating to Iraq 2006 levels. (Not even mentioning that violence in Iraq has been ticking back upward in recent weeks.) I'm not talking about more guys with guns opening fire in classrooms.

What i'm going off on today is two completely unrelated items that crossed my path. I don't have a dog in either fight, as it were. But still.

Up in Maryland, 8 people died while watching a drag race on a public road at 3 in the morning over the weekend. This kind of thing is apparently quite common up there.

Despite complaints, illegal street racers have roared for more than 20 years down the flat, straight stretch of Maryland highway where eight fans were killed this weekend, a community leader said Sunday.

Stan Fetter, president of the Indian Head Highway Area Action Council, blamed a thin police presence in the suburban Washington area for the ongoing problem.

"The police tend to get distracted by things closer to D.C., so no one's ever there," Fetter said. "They tend to forget about it."

Because it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Here's what pisses me off.

Police hope to interview more witnesses and are urging anyone at the scene to come forward. But they are not actively looking for the drivers who were taking part in the illegal race because they were not directly involved in the crash, Prince George's County police Cpl. Arvel Lewis said.

Now that's going to send a message that this kind of thing is not going to be tolerated, right?

Actually, i can think of a couple of reasons why the police might not be "actively looking" for the guys who were behind the wheels, and none of the are flattering.

Meanwhile, down where i'm staying, there's some local controversy involving, of all things, NCDOT and local authorities over the design of a new bridge. The old b ridge is a drawbridge, and there's some controversy over whether it needs to be replaced with a permanent, taller span that would allow boats to pass unimpeded, or if the opening schedule needs to be changed, or perhaps there are even more options on the table.

Again, i don't have sufficient information to have an opinion one way or another. the 10 minutes or so i've had to wait for the drawbridge on this trip hasn't seemed like a big deal, although if i got stuck twice a day i might feel differently. But this passage in a local paper, The Gam, had an eerie sense of familiarity.

Yes, there is an influx of traffic to the courthouse and from people who live in Morehead and other places but work in Beaufort, but certainly not the thousands of cars DOT is trying to portray using the drawbridge on a daily basis. The math was simple enough that this editor had it done before McCune's three minutes were up. . . .

The Gam has requested a number of traffic studies from DOT in an attempt to confirm the 21,000 figure, however DOT is dragging its feet fulfilling the request.

Yeah, that rings a bell. Back in 2001, our neighborhood decided to challenge DOT's plan for a right hand turn lane on Roxboro St. southbound from I-85, that would lead onto Knox St. Highway engineers have lots of Uniform Manuals and guides as to when specific traffic functions are warranted, and we wanted to know whether or not this particular lane was. As it turned out, for the approximate amount of traffic on Roxboro (1600 vehicles during peak hour, as i recall, but how i got that figure will be revealed shortly), about 5%, or 80 vehicles per hour, needed to making a right turn to warrant a dedicated lane. When we asked for NCDOT to show their traffic counts, would you believe that the computer which was keeping track of the data malfunctioned, and they had no hard numbers? My own manual count of traffic, made by sitting at the corner for a couple of hours on consecutive weekday mornings, showed fewer than 20 cars out of the 1600 turning right, or about 1/4 of the number needed to warrant a turn lane.

Turns out it does't matter. NCDOT can do what it wants to on local roads that it has control over, regardless of what the numbers show. But it's curious how that works, isn't it? Engineers who live by the manuals and the numbers suddenly unable to come up with that data when it might be a problem.

Oh, well.

Continue reading Picking nits

Keep an eye on this

I've heard, through my participation on the East End Connector ad hoc committee, that negotiations between the city and the state DOT over the proposed Alston Ave. widening had stalled.

Gary's written on more than one occasion about the sheer awfulness of NCDOTs designs for Alston, and he's got an update this weekend. I've casually mentioned how bad the design is once or twice myself.

Ray Gronberg's piece in yesterday's Herald Sun fleshes out the details of the city's opposition. And it's mostly pretty good news, based on concerns over pedestrian safety along a corridor with a high number of pedestrians and pretty poor safety record already, as well as concerns over disruption of the community, primarily over the loss of the only grocery store in the area. Mayor Bell's comments were also, i think, unhelpful. If there's a "public relations" problem over the staff's position, that's precisely where the mayor's office should be the most helpful.

Here's why this needs watching.

Nobody disputes that the numbers show that Alston Ave. is already carrying more traffic than it's rated for. And the projections, even taking into into account the beneficial effects of the East End Connector in reducing traffic volumes on surface streets, show traffic is going to be 40% or so higher over the next decade and a half.

The state usually gets its way when the numbers look like that. The city's history of getting pedestrian safety a priority in dealing with state maintained roads is also pretty poor. Add in the fact that we're dealing with one of the poorest and least well organized communities in Durham, and the potential to have the state implement its project anyway is pretty great.

Stay tuned.

Continue reading Keep an eye on this

East End Connector pushed back another two years

The N&O is reporting that the latest Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) from the NCDOT has pushed the anticipated start date for construction of the long planned for East End Connector back to 2014. The TIP does not indicate how much additional money the delay is expected to add to the cost of the project.

My guess? $50 million, at least, bringing the cost well above $200 million.

Meanwhile, projects in Wake and Orange counties are being accelerated.

And I-40 is being widened yet again, ostensibly to reduce congestion.

Surely i cannot be the only one to have noticed that no matter how wide I-40 gets, there's no difference in the amount of congestion? That's because the problem is development patterns, land use, and lack of transportation alternatives, not a lack of lanes.

I guess the remaining question now is, will we be satisfied when we turn the Triangle into Atlanta, or will we go for the whole enchilada and aim to emulate Los Angeles?

UPDATE: Download a copy of the TIP here. And read more about NCDOT's structural deficiencies here.

Continue reading East End Connector pushed back another two years

NCDOT follies

Lord knows the North Carolina Department of Transportation causes me enough grief, whether it's their inability to pave a major interstate highway properly, road widening projects that lead to pedestrian fatalities, or just the resistance put up by NCDOT bureaucrats to installing proper signage at a crosswalk in front of a park.

But what one of my co-workers is dealing with really fills out the ridiculous end of the road that starts with the sublime.

Seems his house in Guilford County is on a road that's maintained by NCDOT. Here's what his mailbox looked like earlier this week.


Seems the contractor who NCDOT hired to mow the right of way dropped the blades a little too soon passing the mailbox.


And now, of course, he's having a hard time getting anyone at NCDOT or the contractor to own up to the deal and replace it. I figure 2 months till they reimburse him.

He's just hoping that Publisher's Clearing House check wasn't in the mail the other day.

Continue reading NCDOT follies

Pedestrian safety at Duke Park

Had a very good meeting this week with NCDOT and city traffic folks about making the Knox St. and Roxboro St. intersection a little safer for pedestrians.

Some background. NCDOT widened Roxboro St. north of Knox from 3 lanes to 6 lanes, as part of the I-85 project. They also proposed having folks walk 300 yards down the hill and back up to cross Roxboro at the signalized collector/distributor. Of course, just south of the intersection, Roxboro is only 35 feet or so wide. So naturally, anybody wanting to use Duke Park will cross at Knox, rather than spend nearly 10 minutes to cross a couple of freeway ramps.

Getting NCDOT to understand this and put a crosswalk and some other safety features in has been a project almost as difficult as renovating our bathhouse. But, in this case at least, we're getting results. And for all the kids who live on one side of Roxboro and have friends on the other, life is going to be a little bit safer.

Continue reading Pedestrian safety at Duke Park

From the folks who brought you I-40 and other highway fiascos

The North Carolina Department of Transportation is unable to produce documentation showing that the materials it uses to build highways have been adequately tested, according to a financial audit conducted by State Auditor Les Merritt's office.

The report, released Thursday afternoon by the state auditor's office, recommended that the DOT enhance internal controls and monitor compliance with state regulations to ensure that testing information is accurately documented and that the required number of tests is conducted.

The auditor's findings come on the heels of a report detailing errors that contributed to a concrete failure on Interstate 40 in Durham that cost millions to repair. State Highway Administrator Len Sanderson resigned in November following the report.

The article, in this week's Triangle Business Journal, does go on to note that DOT "performed the required Roadway Quality Assurance tests on all but two of the 15 contracts reviewed." Which is somewhat at odds with the earlier paragraphs, which, to me at least, suggest that DOT was unable to show in writing that the RQAs had in fact been completed. Maybe the auditor's office took them at their word?

See, the problem (well, one of the problems) with the NCDOT is that their engineering staff is under the impression that they are the only folks in North Carolina capable of making decisions regarding traffic flow and other transportation needs. When any of the rabble has some ideas about how things might be safer or more environmentally benign, and has the temerity to make such a suggestion in public, NCDOT's response is always to point out that they have the expertise, and their decisions are in accord with some higher Transportation God standard that the little folk simply cannot comprehend.

That, of course, has been bullshit since day one.

Unfortunately, as Durham has learned over the past couple of years, until someone actually gets killed as a result of NCDOT's expertise, their decisions will stand.

Now we learn that they can't even follow their own documented procedures for building the kind of massive highway projects that they claim to be the best at.

I wish i were surprised.

Continue reading From the folks who brought you I-40 and other highway fiascos