Walk to School Day

I went out yesterday morning, along with Rob from Bull City Rising, to accompany these young folks on their daily walk to Club Blvd. Elementary school. I wanted to follow this route in particular because of the special significance it holds for me: 17 years ago, my then 8 year old daughter was attending Club Blvd. school, and we attempted to have her walk along this route. At the time the city and county districts had not yet completed their merger, so Club was still a neighborhood school for the Northgate Park and Duke Park neighborhoods. It took me all of about 5 minutes of walking down Washington Street to make the determination that there absolutely no pedestrian safeguards, especially to make it possible for a school age child to walk unaccompanied. It didn't take that much longer to determine that Durham Public Schools bus system was unreliable enough that i couldn't simply leave her at the bus stop, and go to work, secure in the knowledge that the bus would actually arrive*. So, i ended up joining the ranks of parents who drive their kids, barely a half mile trip in my case, to elementary school.

So, what's changed in 17 years?

Why, not a blessed thing.



So, as mentioned previously, i met up with Michelle and Tammy and their children, on Englewood Ave. just east of Washington.



Because there are no sidewalks along the east side of Washington, Michelle has gotten her neighbors' permission to cut through their yard.


There's really no need to document the litter along the non-residential portion of Washington. This is Durham, and like anyplace in Durham, people throw their trash wherever they feel like it. Including used condoms. Here, crossing the old Brookline Ave. turnout, which is now, supposedly, a pedestrian trail**, vehicles often duck in for a quick U-turn without checking for pedestrians. In the evening, judging from the detritus in the area, it's a party spot.


You can get a sense from this photo just how wide Washington Street is at this point - almost two full lanes in each direction. This unnecessary width is a major contributing factor to the speeding problem on Washington. It could have been addressed by the city of Durham using a little common sense when drawing up its sidewalk plans for Washington Street. Sidewalks on both sides of the street, into the centerline from the curb, along with striped bike lanes, could have narrowed the road to 12 foot lanes with no problems. Instead, we're going to get a sidewalk along the west side of the street only, out from the curb and into peoples' lawns further south on the street, with no bike lanes currently in the project.***


This is the first notification that anyone driving north on Washington Street has that there's a school nearby, and that there may be students walking in the area. It's about 25 yards south of the intersection. Maybe there are state and federal guidelines as to how far away you're allowed to notify drivers about schoolkids, i don't know. I'm pretty sure, though, that you get them a lot farther away from, say, George Watts school in Trinity Park neighborhood than this.

Doesn't really matter, though, if school zone speed limits are never enforced. There have been several conversations regarding speeding through the Club Blvd. school zone on the PAC2 email list this year. I didn't see any patrol cars in the area yesterday and i don't really recall seeing any enforcement of school zone speed limits during the entire public school careers of my children. Both Brogden Middle and Riverside High had law enforcement officers on foot at the actual entrances directing traffic, and traffic often backed up enough to make speeding impossible, but there are plenty of missed opportunities to remind drivers that pedestrians, especially those on their way to school, need to be respected.

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**I want to post one additional photo looking south along the east side of Washington. On the left side of the photo is the trail head for the Brookline trail. Brookline Ave. used to connect Acadia Street with Washington Street. NCDOT claimed it for use as a staging area during the I-85 widening project, and with the new sound wall ald all, it was no longer suitable for vehicle traffic. So it got turned into a trail.

Which, wonderfully, empties out onto Washington Street with no pedestrian amenities or signage indicating that the Ellerbe Creek trail, which leads all the way to downtown, is only 100 yards or so to the west. In fact, if you want to cross over to pick up the trail head at the southwest corner of Club and Washington, you can see that there's a blind curve to your left, and with the 26 foot wide lane at that point, you can be sure that no one coming around that turn is doing less than 40 mph. The other option is to turn right and walk along the east side shoulder to the corner. But since it's unsigned, how would you know to do that?

*If you go into the Herald-Sun archives for, i think, September 1995, there's a front page Section B photo of me and my two daughters sitting on the hood of my truck, taken on the first day of school around 9:30 or 9:45 am, waiting in vain for a school bus that simply never arrived.

***I spent about 2 years as the InterNeighborhood Council representative to the advisory committee that helped steer the development of the Durham Walks! pedestrian plan back in 2005 or so. I was influential in getting the criteria for establishing priority sidewalk projects weighted in such a way that proximity to schools and parks counted more than, say, number of people in a neighborhood requesting sidewalks. My reasoning is that some neighborhoods are better able to organize requests for city services than others, but that this was a subjective factor, whereas proximity to venues used by children was a need regardless of neighborhood activism. specifically, I argued against installing sidewalks on only one side of the street on approaches to schools and parks. In the Washington/club case, putting sidewalks only on the west side of Washington now creates two additional crossings of Washington by people who live on the east side, one of which has to take place mid-block, with no pedestrian safety features at all. It is a recipe for a traffic fatality in the worst case; at best, it creates a pedestrian amenity which will simply not be used.

There are a lot of other reasons why Washington Street should have had a more extensive pedestrian and bike friendly overhaul, which i'll get into at another time. For now, though, the best you can say is that as much as some segments of our city leadership may talk the talk on bike and pedestrian friendliness, when the rubber hits the road, they sure don't walk the walk.

Continue reading Walk to School Day

Walk to school day

Today Wednesday is something called International Walk to School Day, which is, i guess, designed to get people thinking about things like childhood obesity, car culture, overprotective parents, and i don't know what all*. Can't find any mention of it on the DPS website, though, and not much on the Durham NC.gov site either, outside of a 2 year old press release.

I suppose that's a good thing, actually. Probably better to ignore the issue completely than to make a one-day wonder of it. (DurhamNC.gov does have a link to why you should vote for a $20 million bond for repaving our surface streets, though.)

I'll be walking to school with a neighborhood family later this morning, along the same route that i tried to have my kids walk 17 years ago when i first moved to Durham. We'll see what's changed in that time to make that walk safe.

UPDATE: Three DPS schools have registered events with the Walk To School website: Club, Watts, and Morehead. Curiously, all three are magnets, which means that the bulk of their population lives outside what is normally considered a walk zone, half a mile.

Here's what Club Blvd. officials have to say:

Since we are a magnet school and located next to a large park, we are having the buses drop students off (and requesting car drivers to do the same) on the other side of the park so they can get almost a 1/2 mile walk in on this day. We will have city officials and mascots to greet students as well as fresh fruit and water. This is the start of many events and changes in the school to encourage more biking and walking.

For starters, they could be pushing the city to put sidewalks on both sides of Washington Street, and use the sidewalks to reduce the 25 feet per lane width of that road, stripe some bike lanes, and urge the police to enforce the speed limit and observe the pedestrian right of way in crosswalk laws of the state.

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*Do i get bonus points for the stealth Andy Griffith reference?

Continue reading Walk to school day

Kelly Bryant

Very early on in the lifespan of this blog, i yoinked a post from Nicomachus about a pedestrian bridge that was under consideration for spanning the Durham Freeway.

Tonight, the bridge was officially dedicated to Durham treasure R. Kelly Bryant.



I guess sometimes plans really do come together. Everyone involved deserves a hug.

Continue reading Kelly Bryant

"New expenditures"

Bob Ashley over at the Herald-Sun climbs aboard the pedestrian safety train:

But until we get serious about improving the miles of roads and streets in or city that all but repel walkers and riders, we'll be stuck with pedestrian routes that are not only discouraging, but also fatal.

He also, alas, betrays his new to the area status with this:

The city has a pedestrian plan, and hearts are in the right place. Unfortunately, this is not an environment to talk about new expenditures.

Bob missed out on the 1996 bond issue. The sidewalk portion of the bond was sold to Durham voters with the promise that those funds would provide at least one sidewalk along every major thoroughfare in Durham.

Leaving aside for the moment that this barely begins to create a safe pedestrian environment, the number of major thoroughfares in Durham that still, thirteen years later, lack sidewalks is mind-boggling. This isn't a new expense. This is a commitment that the city of Durham made to its citizens thirteen years ago. Wouldn't be too late to keep it.

Continue reading "New expenditures"

Of course not

If you get hit by a car and killed crossing the street in Durham, it's always your own damn fault.

A pedestrian was struck and killed by a vehicle early this morning while trying to cross U.S. 15-501 at Mount Moriah Road, Durham police said.

Eric Franklin Simpson, 27, of Estes Drive in Carrboro, was crossing the highway toward New Hope Commons Shopping Center when he was hit by a vehicle driven by Vernon Chris Worley, 31, of Mebane. Worley was in the far left eastbound lane.

. . .

No other details were available. The investigation is continuing, but investigators said no charges were expected. Anyone who saw the accident is asked to call Investigator Larry Cox at 560-4935, extension 29409.

Mrs D left this comment earlier:

Wow, this week I've stopped traffic, including cabs and buses, on busy multi-lane streets just by setting one foot in the crosswalk.

OH WAIT! I'm in San Francisco, not Durham. Oops.

Continue reading Of course not

Traffic enforcement

I want to thank commenter eah919 for pointing me to Tom Vanderbilt's recent article in Slate.com, In Praise of Traffic Tickets.

I've emailed copies of the article to our Police Chief, City Manager, and Council members. If you agree that the article makes some very good points, particularly the analogy of speeders and other driving violators as mobile "broken windows," (a point which Michael Bacon and i have both made on numerous occasions) please consider letting our elected and appointed officials know.

Email them at:
Tom.Bonfield@DurhamNC.Gov; Jose.Lopez@DurhamNC.Gov; Council@DurhamNC.Gov.

Some excerpts from the article:

The consequences of not issuing tickets were shown in a recent study of traffic violations in New York City. From 2001 to 2006, the number of fatalities in which speeding was implicated rose 11 percent. During the same period, the number of speeding summons issued by the NYPD dropped 11 percent. Similarly, summonses for red-light-running violations dropped 13 percent between 2006 and 2008, even as the number of crashes increased. As an alternative approach, consider France, where the dangerous driver is as storied a cliché as a beret on the head and a baguette under the arm. As the ITE Journal notes, since 2000, France has reduced its road fatality rate by an incredible 43 percent. Instrumental in that reduction has been a roll-out of automated speed cameras and a toughening of penalties. For example, negligent driving resulting in a death, which often results in little punishment in the United States, carries a penalty of five years in prison and a 75,000-euro fine.

The "folk crime" belief helps thwart increased traffic enforcement: Why should the NYPD, whose resources and manpower are already stretched, bust people for dangerous driving when they could be going after murderers? Well, apart from the fact that more people are killed in traffic fatalities in New York City every year than they are in "stranger homicides," there is the idea, related to the link between on-and-off-road criminality, that targeting traffic violators might be an effective way to combat other crimes. Which brings us to the third benefit of traffic tickets: increased public safety. Hence the new Department of Justice initiative called DDACTS, or Data Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety, which has found that there is often a geographic link between traffic crashes and crime. By putting "high-visibility enforcement" in hot spots of both crime and traffic crashes, cities like Baltimore have seen reductions in both.

The program recalls the "broken windows" theory, made famous by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, which argued, using the metaphor of one broken window on a building inexorably leading to more, that not enforcing smaller, "quality-of-life" issues encourages larger transgressions:

Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.

Both broken windows and data-driven policing have offered as at least partial explanations for New York City's declining crime rate, and it would seem logical that a similar program would help reduce the level of traffic deaths and injury. One person driving fast, or going through a red light, or even failing to signal, is essentially a broken window—a sign that no one cares. But again we come up against social resistance in equating aggressive driving with crime. This was nowhere more evident than in a review of my book Traffic by James Q. Wilson himself, who opened with the statement: "I drive my car very fast." Now, I have no way of knowing how fast "very fast" is or where he does this fast driving. And even though the review is a nice one, I couldn't help but notice the irony that this behavior is presumably against the law, and the fact that he does it without reprimand contributes to a lessened respect for traffic law and perhaps the law itself. ("We suggest," as it was put in the broken-windows article, "that 'untended' behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls.")

Continue reading Traffic enforcement

No wonder

Watching whoever was driving police cruiser H-271 blow through the Roxboro/Knox intersection around 8 this morning, while a pedestrian was crossing the street in the crosswalk, i realized why Durham doesn't enforce pedestrian right-of-way laws. It's because the cops don't know they exist.

I'm sure Chief Lopez will be addressing this shortcoming in the immediate future, right after he gets around to jumpstarting the PACE Car program, which has languished since Eric Hester's retirement.

Right?

Continue reading No wonder

So that's what it takes

To get municipal and NCDOT officials on the same page to improve conditions on our surface streets.

Damn shame, if you ask me.

Two weeks after the death of a 16-year-old girl at an intersection near Cary Park, town officials and the state Department of Transportation have agreed on plans to try to make the crossing safer for pedestrians and drivers alike.

A traffic signal and pedestrian crossing lights with countdown timers will be installed at the intersection at Green Level to Durham Road and Cary Glen Boulevard within 60 days, the town announced Thursday. Such a project usually takes up to six months, but city and state officials said they hope to expedite the process.

In addition, Cary officials will conduct a long-term study of traffic along Green Level to Durham Road between Morrisville Parkway and McCrimmon Parkway in hopes of relieving other driver and pedestrian concerns, said Director of Engineering Tim Bailey.

"We did receive a lot of feedback from citizens in the area about travel patterns along that corridor, complaints about things like people speeding or pedestrian travel paths, that aren't completely addressed with the installation of a traffic signal," Bailey said. "We want to help deal more broadly with the citizen concerns that we saw and create a better opportunity for more citizen feedback."

I don't think we have enough 16 year olds to sacrifice to the traffic gods in order to improve all the unsafe roads and bad driving habits in the Triangle. Maybe some of our officials could be proactive in this, and not wait for more deaths to act.

Continue reading So that's what it takes

Pedestrian crossings

Commenter and friend PM makes the suggestion: "And for PR, if nothing else, push people to use the pedestrian crossings instead of darting across streets wherever. Even if darting across the street is legal, we'll all be better off if people get into the habit of using the ped crossings."

Good point.

Here's the intersection of Trinity and Avondale.

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Avondale and Markham.

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Avondale and Alston.

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Alston and Geer.

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Avondale and Geer.

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Alston and Drew.

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Geer, Miami, and Drew.

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That's a total of 1 crosswalk in these 7 fairly active East Durham pedestrian crossings.

Continue reading Pedestrian crossings

Small steps

I guess this got reprinted in yesterday's print Herald-Sun, though it's originally from the Jacksonville (NC) Daily News:

As the city increases efforts toward pedestrian safety, the Jacksonville Police Department is as well.

The traffic and patrol divisions of the police department have started enforcing pedestrian safety in recent weeks, said JPD Lt. Tony Campbell, with the traffic division.

Traffic officers and community officers pose as pedestrians and bicyclists and cross at various intersections and crosswalks throughout the city as unmarked patrol cars watch from nearby. When drivers don't yield the right of way to the officers posing as pedestrians they are stopped and enforcement action is taken, Campbell said.

The infraction entails a fine and court costs. The fine is at the discretion of the judge, Campbell said.

"We feel that we're trying to educate people on pedestrian crossing and we're trying to make more people aware of what the laws are and what they're responsible to do when a pedestrian is crossing to try to reduce these fatalities and injuries," he said.

As always, the commenters will provide your best entertainment value.

We've talked in the past about the "Three E's" that are necessary for walkable communities - education, engineering, enforcement. In a lot of ways, our engineering hands are tied. Many of Durham's streets are state maintained and designed primarily to move the maximum number of vehicles from point A to point B. That leaves education and enforcement, which go hand in hand. The best way to learn the lesson that pedestrians are part of the transportation mix and have certain rights is with a financial hit when people violate those rights.

Let's hope Chief Lopez is paying attention.

Continue reading Small steps

Cars

I'm too busy at the day job to post much this week.

But this is worth the read:

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.

As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. “When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.

Vauban, completed in 2006, is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to separate suburban life from auto use, as a component of a movement called “smart planning.”

Automobiles are the linchpin of suburbs, where middle-class families from Chicago to Shanghai tend to make their homes. And that, experts say, is a huge impediment to current efforts to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes, and thus to reduce global warming. Passenger cars are responsible for 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe — a proportion that is growing, according to the European Environment Agency — and up to 50 percent in some car-intensive areas in the United States.

Durham remains on the wrong end of the trend, requiring huge parking garages for every new or redeveloped building downtown, and giving virtually no thought to integrating pedestrian friendly features into road construction anywhere but the very heart of downtown.

Oh well.

Continue reading Cars

Noted with interest

NYTimes:

The idea seems to cut against the very grain of New York: to transform much of the city’s most storied avenue, Broadway, from a river of blaring cars, trucks and taxis into a planter-lined oasis for pedestrians, bicyclists and picnickers.

But on Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled a plan to do just that: Vehicles would be barred entirely from Broadway at public plazas in Times Square and Herald Square, and would share the thoroughfare with a bike lane and a promenade along the rest of the stretch from 59th Street to a new plaza at 23rd Street.

The city plans to start making the changes in late May, and more alterations are possible in the future.

Mr. Bloomberg said the plan would relieve traffic congestion and make more room for pedestrians, enhancing some of the city’s most popular public spaces. But it could also change the very nature of some of Manhattan’s busiest and most famous areas, including the theater district, Times Square, the fashion district and Macy’s front stoop.

“People avoid Times Square because the traffic is so terrible and people are getting pushed out into the streets — the sidewalks can’t handle it,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference in a restaurant at the Marriott Marquis, a hotel overlooking Times Square, where a giant image of the rock star Ozzy Osbourne flashed behind him on an electronic billboard.

“People don’t come to look at cars stuck in traffic,” the mayor said. “They come to look at the lights, the buildings and the excitement, and this is going to have a lot more of it.”

I can only assume that having had his plan for congestion pricing in Manhattan thwarted, the Mayor has decided to make driving on the avenues such a challenge that nobody will want to do it anymore. Good luck to him.

Continue reading Noted with interest

Why we love the NCDOT

The city is limited in what calming measures it can install on Roxboro and Mangum streets because they are part of U.S. 15-501 Business and are a designated truck route.

Loziuk has asked the state Department of Transportation about lowering the speed limit on Roxboro and Mangum, but "They're just flat out saying they wouldn't even consider it," he said.

Here's a thought. Have Durham PD conduct a zero tolerance program on Roxboro, Trinity, and Mangum for a month. Everyone exceeding the speed limit gets a ticket. Every out of date registration gets a ticket. Every lane change without a signal gets a ticket. Every failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk gets a ticket.

Betcha that NCDOT will come to the table and work with the city on some sane traffic calming measures then.

Continue reading Why we love the NCDOT

Speaking of pedestrian safety

Here's another article in the Herald Sun talking about crosswalk signals at Durham Tech:

The traffic signals, which city officials say will be fully functional in about two weeks, will come too late for the three people who have been struck and injured since 1999 by cars while crossing the street.

The traffic signals themselves have been in place for several weeks now. On Tuesday, city workers were busy putting the finishing touches on the traffic signals' electrical work. One worker said the signals must first be inspected before becoming fully operational.

Phil Loziuk, a traffic operations engineer for the City of Durham, said the decision was made in the fall to install the traffic signals after a study showed the crosswalk met minimal federal guidelines for a signalized crosswalk. Before, Loziuk said installing traffic signals at the crosswalk was "not warranted or needed."

The guidelines for installing traffic signals at pedestrian crosswalks are 190 pedestrians for one hour or four consecutive hours with 100 people or more using the crosswalk each hour.

Wanda Maggert, senior vice president for institutional advancement at Durham Tech, said the sooner the traffic signals are functioning the better.

"We've had people who been hit and we've had so many near misses that it's not even funny," Maggert said.

Two key pieces of information are missing from the article as far as i can tell. First - State law requires that drivers yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk, and under some conditions requires that drivers yield to pedestrians even if they aren't in a crosswalk. The second thing i'd like to know is, how many citations have been written by Durham police officers and sheriff's deputies for violating pedestrian's right of way at this location over the past ten years?

I'll bet it's not too many.

Continue reading Speaking of pedestrian safety

Pedestrian safety

Remember how quickly the city and state got their act together after a couple of serious pedestrian accidents on Broad Street near Perry? That's where Duke students and staff cross to get from East Campus to Ninth Street and Whole Foods. Guidelines were bent to put a traffic signal there, even though it's fairly close to the signal at Broad and Main, and the signal itself is activated by pedestrians. There's also enough signage that you couldn't miss it if you tried.

Up on Guess Road near Horton, meanwhile, a pedestrian fatality (a high school student who had missed her bus and was walking to Riverside) a few years ago didn't inspire anything more than sticking the radar wagon on the roadway for a couple of days. There've been one or two more serious injuries in the past couple of years there, too. Here's details on the latest:

Allison Lauren Winokur, 22, remained in critical condition Tuesday night at Duke University Hospital after being struck and seriously injured by an SUV driven by Christopher Scott Taylor, also 22, on Monday, according to police.

Winokur, who lives on Guess Road, was struck while trying to cross Guess Road near Horton Road, police said. She was transported to Duke Hospital with what police called "life threatening injuries."

Taylor, who lives on Newcastle Road, was driving a 1996 Chevrolet Blazer, police said. No charges had been filed as of Tuesday, but the accident remains under investigation.

Want to bet nothing happens to make that stretch of road safer for pedestrians?

Continue reading Pedestrian safety

Sidewalks

Herald-Sun:

City bus system managers are catching a little heat over their decision to drop a spur that linked Merrick-Moore Elementary School to the Durham Area Transit Authority's Route 3.

Merrick-Moore principal Gregory McKnight recently asked DATA trustees to reinstate the connection so parents without cars could more easily reach the school to meet with teachers.

System managers, with the trustees' support, dropped the spur this fall because few people were using it and it was causing Route 3 buses to run late.

But its abandonment left the closest bus stop seven-tenths of a mile away from Merrick-Moore, McKnight said. People getting off there have to walk along Cheek Road, which lacks sidewalks along a key stretch.

Durham sold the 1996 bond issue to us by promising to build sidewalks with the money along at least one side of every major thoroughfare in town. That's almost 13 years ago.

How's that working out?

Continue reading Sidewalks

Pedestrian fatality

Missed this while i was away:

A vehicle turning into a convenience store struck and killed a man in the parking lot Saturday evening.

The death occurred at the Family Food Mart at 1204 Worth St., and the vehicle fled south on Alston Avenue. Durham Police have not identified the driver.

When i served on the city's pedestrian plan oversight committee, we learned that that part of town has the highest rate of pedestrian injuries and deaths.

Remember a couple of years back when someone got hit by a car crossing Broad Street by the Whole Foods market from Duke East Campus? Remember how the city and state worked together in record time to get a new traffic signal, crosswalks, and enforcement policies in place to prevent any future occurrences?

Don't hold your breath waiting for a response like that in East Durham.

Continue reading Pedestrian fatality

That's what I'm talking about

Washington D.C

Continue reading That's what I'm talking about

Third world

Mrs D forwards this story to me of a California journalist returning back home after spending much of the past 7 years reporting from Latin America. Although the gist of the article is mostly political ("In Argentina, Mexico and other places I lived and visited as a foreign correspondent, people asked me if my country had gone crazy."), Mrs D (and i) found this passage telling:

Once a week or so, I am reminded that I am not in Mexico City by a small, everyday miracle of life here. A siren sounds in the distance. As it gets closer, all the cars around me part ways, in a synchronized dance. An ambulance or a fire truck speeds past, and seconds later, all the cars dance back into traffic.

What happens when an ambulance hits crowded traffic in Mexico City? Few if any drivers move. The ambulance driver's strategy is to pull up to the bumper of the vehicle blocking his path and emit an ear-shattering siren blast.

Every time I see an L.A. car stop for a pedestrian at a crosswalk, or when I see an L.A. commuter use her turn signal before switching lanes, I think: Ah, it's good to be home.

Also found on the LA Times website is this wonderful story of how chickens can give a town an added dose of quaintness. Good stuff.

Continue reading Third world

Curb cuts to nowhere - part 3

The southwest corner of Markham Ave. and Washington St. has relatively recent sidewalk construction, with ADA compliant curb cuts for wheelchair accessibility. So if you're rolling south towards town, or west towards Duke St. and campus, you're OK.

But what happens if you're heading the other direction?


Looking north on Washington from the only sidewalk at the intersection of Markham and Washington.

Basically, there's nowhere to go if you're coming back from town, and no way to get to this intersection if you want to go to town. Just look at that sea of asphalt.

This is the block of Markham just east of Washington. Pushing a stroller or rolling a wheelchair? You're in the road.


When the city came to the voters and taxpayers back in 1996 and asked for approval of a couple of million dollars for sidewalks, the stated goal was to put a sidewalk on at least one side of each thoroughfare in the urban zone. This intersection is one mile from the Carolina Theatre, half a mile from Durham Central Park and the Farmers' Market. I kinda think it qualifies for needing sidewalks coming to it from all directions.

I don't know how many of you read blogs from other urban areas that talk about walkable communities. In this DC blog post, for example, the issue is whether zoning codes should encourage townhouse construction without street level garages, for instance. Durham, clearly, is not at that stage yet. Our city and county governments are still at the point where every new building in town gets a publicly funded parking deck. But the very first step toward creating walkable communities is, you guessed it, sidewalks and crosswalks and the infrastructure that makes walking (and rolling) practical and safe.

I don't want to say that not having the basic amenities for walkable streets leads to urban decay. It may be coincidence that this house, which was condemned earlier this year but has somehow, without any visible improvements being made, become habitable again, is located at the Markham/Washington corner.


Or this beauty, which is two doors down from the Markham/Washington intersection. Who knows, maybe it's actually a used appliance outlet.


Less than a mile from downtown. A major gateway to our city. Gotta love it.

Continue reading Curb cuts to nowhere - part 3