On April 26, the IndyWeek published an article that first ran in the 9th Street Journal entitled "Reckless Roxboro May Get a Revamp if Locals Can Persuade NCDOT". I encourage you to read this article by Esmé Fox and pay attention to the quotes by NCDOT district engineer John Sandor.

While I find the quotes to be troubling, they are not entirely surprising, and I think it’s helpful that he's saying this publicly to a reporter. Now we know what mindset and arguments that we're facing. In the article, the district engineer is reported as having made the following points:

He only raises concerns for congestion, making no mention of concern for excessive speeds or safety. The community has repeatedly called for a new design intended to slow speeds and make these streets safe and comfortable for all users. Car volumes on these streets have dropped since the opening of the East End Connector (I-885).
He poses the questions, "Are they going to use smaller streets? Are they going to go through neighborhoods now?" He's referring to his own speculation that a design for two-way travel and slower speeds would cause drivers to look for other paths. What he doesn't seem to realize is that Roxboro and Mangum Streets already cut through existing neighborhoods. People live on those streets and have to cross those streets to move through the neighborhood. However, instead of being designed as connectors, the current designs divide the communities.
“Has it [two-way conversion] been done successfully? I think you’ll see a mixed bag of results. It’s not a magic pill that’s going to go in there and fix all these things for these people. It actually changes the road completely. Whereas if I’m a pedestrian on a one-way street, all I have to do is look one way, right?” First, there actually is a lot of evidence that one-lane of traffic in each direction will be slower than two lanes of traffic in one direction. The expected slower speed is the primary reason that the capacity of the streets would be lower, since there would still be a total of two lanes of traffic in each direction on Mangum and Roxboro Streets. There are also a lot of other reasons that communities make these conversions, including for economic development (look no further than Durham’s own conversion of Main Street and Chapel Hill Street from one-way to two-way travel inside the Loop). More concerning however, is that he is not being a partner with the City in solving the concerns about speeding traffic and safety. We want NCDOT’s district engineer to be a partner in redesigning streets that are safe for all users.
“We have a bigger responsibility than just those citizens that live down in that corridor.” This is the quote that burns me up. First of all, he is dismissing residents who are engaging in a public process to shape their own physical community. Second, he doesn't acknowledge that the City Council, our elected representatives, adopted the Move Durham Study in 2020 recommending converting these streets to two-way travel, nor that the City staff are the ones who have been trying to work with him on the analysis to convince him that a new two-way design will "work" for traffic flow. I read this as a statement that he and his colleagues at the NCDOT district office believe that they know better what the Durham community wants and needs in their street designs than the City Council and staff, let alone the residents.

We cannot let these comments go without response. I and several others have submitted letters to the editor at IndyWeek and are sharing them with City staff and elected officials. The text of my letter to the editor (limit 300 words) is below:

“Residents from neighborhoods across Durham, whether in northeast central Durham or southwest Durham, we all want and deserve streets that are safe for walking, biking, and driving. That means streets designed for slower speeds, with sidewalks, safe crossings, protected bike lanes, and access to transit. In the April 26th article "Reckless Roxboro May Get a Revamp if Locals Can Persuade NCDOT", Esmé Fox reports on the residents organizing for safer two-way designs of Roxboro and Mangum Streets. The City Council adopted this change in their 2020 Move Durham Study, and staff has hired an engineering consultant to analyze the impacts before developing a design. However, the district engineer dismisses this direction set by our elected and staff leadership, “We have a bigger responsibility than just those citizens that live down in that corridor.” Since these are NCDOT-maintained streets, the district engineer also needs to be convinced to become a partner in making this change.

Just last week at the NC Traffic Safety Conference, the City of Durham Transportation Department, the Southside Neighborhood Association, and Bike Durham were recognized with the 2024 Collaboration of the Year Award by the Governor's Highway Safety Program. This award was for the collective effort to engage the residents about their desires for slower speed traffic where they lived, to co-design solutions that the City evaluated, approved, and implemented.

We call on NCDOT engineers to embrace this model of collaboration so that they become full partners with the City and community residents in addressing concerns about speeding traffic that too often leads to tragedy. Our streets belong to all of us and they should be designed so that everyone can thrive whether walking, biking, riding transit, or in a car.”

We cannot achieve the changes to our streets that we need unless we convert NCDOT’s district engineer to be a partner in addressing these problems.

Composite of (unflattering) images from the awards event at the Traffic Safety Conference.

What You Can Do

Send your own letter to the editor at IndyWeek (backtalk@indyweek.com) in response to "Reckless Roxboro May Get a Revamp if Locals Can Persuade NCDOT". The limit is 300 words.
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