What are safe streets and why are they important?
Safe streets are designed for all ages, all abilities, and all ways of moving around, including walking, rolling, cycling, driving, and using the bus. Safe streets allow everyone in Durham the ability to participate in the social and economic life of the city without fear of being involved in a traffic crash. The most important factor to reduce serious injuries and deaths is slowing motorized traffic. The following image1 shows how critical speed is to surviving crashes.
What is Vision Zero?
Vision Zero2 is a commitment and strategy to end traffic deaths and serious injuries. North Carolina became a Vision Zero state in 2016 and the City of Durham adopted the Vision Zero program in 2017. Having a zero-tolerance approach to traffic fatalities is important because the most likely victims of traffic crashes are the most vulnerable in our community3.
Why are two-way streets safer than one-way streets?
Single-lane, two-way streets slow traffic by eliminating the ability to pass other drivers at high speed and creating the “friction” of vehicles in the other lanes driving towards you, which causes drivers to slow down. They have been shown to increase livability, property values, and pedestrian and bicycle traffic compared with one-way streets, while decreasing vehicle speed, vehicle travel distance4, crime, and all types of crashes5.
What are the barriers to safe streets?
Most major streets in Durham are owned and maintained by the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), which often prioritizes the speed of auto traffic over safety and people walking, biking, and using transit. The metric NCDOT uses most often to determine whether changes can be made to the roadway is LOS (Level Of Service), a measure of vehicle delay at intersections.
Other barriers to safer streets include a lack of political will and funding. Redesigning streets can be costly for cities, it can be challenging to develop consensus about what the street should look like, and other priorities may get more attention.
What is the Move Durham plan?
The Move Durham plan was adopted by the City in 2020. The plan focuses on central Durham’s transportation needs like more sidewalks, bike lanes, and bus shelters. Part of the plan includes converting one-way “mini-freeways” to two-way streets, specifically Roxboro, Mangum, Duke, Gregson, and the Downtown Loop. One of the goals of this effort is to ensure this plan gets implemented.
What is the current opportunity on Mangum Street and Roxboro Street?
Mangum Street and Roxboro Street are scheduled to be repaved by NCDOT in 2024. When a street gets repaved there is an opportunity to redesign elements of it. The City of Durham has hired a contractor, Stantec, to develop a proposal for how to make the streets safer and more inviting for all road users after the repaving is completed. NCDOT will need to approve any changes to the roadway. The period for public engagement goes until May 2024, when the design will be finalized. Here is the City’s website with more information on all of the 2024 street repavings.
How many traffic crashes occur along Mangum Street and Roxboro Street?
There are about 100 crashes on Mangum and Roxboro Streets on average per year6. The crash map shows how concentrated crashes are on the one-way streets in Durham.
Did traffic on the north-south streets through downtown Durham decrease after the opening of the East End Connector (I-885)?
Yes. According to data from the City, there were measurable traffic decreases on several streets after the East End Connector opened. Traffic decreased on Duke Street (-16%), South Mangum Street (-20%), North Roxboro St. (-26.4%), and South Alston Avenue (-32%). Find more information in an Axios article here.
What could be done to Mangum Street and Roxboro Street to make them safer and more inviting?
The most important thing is to design both streets so that drivers slow down (remember, speed kills) and create more space for people walking, biking, and using the bus. We have developed visions of what these streets could look like at two key locations on Mangum Street and Roxboro Street, but the City and NCDOT need to hear from you about what you want these streets to look like!
Does the City of Durham need to take over maintenance of these roads from NCDOT to make them safer?
If NCDOT does not approve changes to streets in Durham that make them safer, the City will need to explore whether transferring ownership of some of these streets from the State to the City is feasible and affordable. However, even if that occurs, some streets in Durham will almost certainly stay in NCDOT control, so a better partnership between the City and State is necessary.
What about streets other than Mangum Street and Roxboro Street?
Safe Streets Durham wants all streets in Durham to be safe for everyone. The initial focus is on the implementation of the Move Durham plan, which includes a recommendation to convert all of the one-way streets in central Durham to two-way streets, including Duke, Gregson, and the Downtown Loop. Bike Durham has called for design money in the City’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget for design of these two-way conversions. It is important that the Roxboro Street and Mangum Street redesigns establish a great baseline for future street improvements in Durham.
What can I do to help?
Sign up for our campaign mailing list and see our Take Action section about upcoming public meetings!
- https://www.ite.org/technical-resources/topics/speed-management-for-safety/speed-as-a-safety-problem/ ↩︎
- https://visionzeronetwork.org/about/what-is-vision-zero/ ↩︎
- https://highways.dot.gov/safety/zero-deaths/equity-roadway-safety ↩︎
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-01-31/the-case-against-one-way-streets ↩︎
- https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2019/07/09/cities-benefit-one-way-two-way-conversions ↩︎
- https://ncdot.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=dc944f1c834f49a18479c17df1f783b9 ↩︎