Do you currently walk, bike, and/or ride transit in Durham County? If you do not use one or more of these ways to travel, what prevents you from doing so?
I currently walk and bike frequently, as both a means of recreation and as a way to travel. I am very fortunate to live close to the American Tobacco Trail and have a safe route to bike downtown for work, meetings and events. I recognize what a tremendous privilege it is to live near a connected route of safe lanes for travel by bike or by foot, and I believe it is important to increase the number of connected lanes where all people will be and feel safe to bike, walk and roll.
I occasionally take a Go Durham bus, but I would like to ride the bus much more often as a way to decrease traffic congestion and harmful carbon emissions from single occupancy vehicle travel. If the bus schedule was more frequent and reliable, it would be more convenient for me to make the switch from driving to taking public transit. Once again, I recognize that I am privileged to have the choice of how I travel. Most of the riders of Go Durham do not own a car and have no other option. We must invest in public transit so that those who rely on the bus can get to their jobs and the services they need on time every day every time and so that more residents will start riding the bus to replace their car trips.
If you walk, bike, and/or ride transit, do you feel safe? Can you get where you need to go?
I feel relatively safe when I bike, but I stick to biking on the ATT or on the bike lanes we have in Durham. I do not feel nearly as safe when I ride on a street without bike lanes, and I would feel much safer if all our bike lanes were physically protected from vehicular traffic.
I live in a relatively walkable community and am so lucky that I can safely bike or walk to grocery stores, the mall, the bank, the gym, and much more. It is important that as Durham continues to grow that we do so in ways that promote more equitable access to safe infrastructure for biking and walking, as well as significantly improved local bus and regional transit service.
I also am very fortunate to live in an area where rates of crime are low. I do not worry about being a victim of crime when I walk, bike or run in my neighborhood. There have been acts of crime along the American Tobacco Trail over the years, but for the most part, I feel safe using this trail during daylight hours. I consider the ATT to be one of the top amenities in Durham and love living nearby and using it regularly. My vision for Durham includes more equitable access to greenways and safe pathways for recreation and travel.
According to data for Durham County from the NCDOT Pedestrian and Bicyclist Crash Data Tool, in the five-year period between 2014 and 2018, there were 1,094 crashes between cars and people walking (855) or biking (239), resulting in 30 deaths and 53 suspected serious injuries. More than half of the people injured or killed were people of color. Bike Durham is presently finalizing a proposal for rapid deployment of a “Low-Stress Network” in Durham that would enable people to travel safely and comfortably throughout most of the city, whether walking, biking, riding a scooter, using an electric wheelchair, or any other “light individual transportation” (LIT) device. We’re calling for 125 miles of this connected set of protected LIT lanes, greenways, and slow streets to be completed by 2025.
On the following scale, indicate how much you agree to support funding this network as part of the Durham County Transit Plan. Below the scale, justify your response.
(Disagree/Somewhat Disagree/Neutral/Somewhat Agree/Agree)
A public engagement process to develop a new County transit plan has just begun, and I am eager to learn more about the community's priorities and suggestions, but I fully agree that it makes good sense to support funding this network as part of the Durham County Transit Plan.
Protected lanes for light individual transportation can be less expensive and constructed more quickly, if government officials in the County and the City commit to making it happen. I look forward to learning more about the projected costs, but I expect the investment will have a good rate of financial and social return. Compared to light rail or commuter rail, investment in a low stress network of protected lanes will be dramatically less expensive, and the construction of such will be much, much faster.
While I certainly support a strong regional transit system with commuter rail and bus rapid transit along high-travel corridors, we cannot wait for a decade or more to complete these projects to start to improve our local transit options, including a low stress network of projects we can rapidly deploy. This is also an issue of racial equity, as our local data shows. We must make it safer for people of color to move by bike and by foot, so we can eliminate disparities in safety and health outcomes related to transit.
Too many people with low incomes, predominantly people of color, but also many people living with disabilities, have inadequate access to jobs, healthcare, groceries and services because, for decades, our transportation system and land use has been designed around the use of private cars.
With the updates to the County Transit Plan and the Comprehensive Plan, will you agree to establish as a first priority increasing the number of jobs that people with low incomes, people of color, and people living with disabilities can access with sustainable transportation within 30 and 60 minutes? Why or why not?
Yes, I agree to keep this as a top priority. Sustainable, reliable transportation to jobs and services is one of the major social determinants of health, education and economic outcomes for people. To reduce disparities in each of these interlocked areas that are central for shared prosperity, we must also reduce inequities in access to transportation.
There is sound research that correlates economic mobility and transit access. For example, studies from Harvard and NYU show that geographic mobility (including availability of jobs within a 30 minute commute) is linked to economic mobility: by providing better transit access to reach more jobs within a shorter amount of time, we can help residents with fewer resources to increase their incomes.
“Stranded: How America's Failing Public Transportation Increases Inequality” from The Atlantic
And finally, an efficient and effective public transit system can save people a lot of money! If families can get by with 1 car instead of 2, or no cars instead of 1, they can save substantial funds that can be used for groceries, healthcare, tuition or other priorities. For example, Indianapolis calculated that many local families could save $1900 a year on decreased transportation costs, which could cover tuition at the local community college.
“Fighting Poverty through Access to Transportation” from Spotlight
There is no denying that we are in a climate crisis. With the updates to the County Transit Plan, the Comprehensive Plan, and the region’s long-range transportation plan, will you agree to establish a goal of a zero emission public transit system in Durham by 2035, and a complete net-zero transportation system in Durham by 2050?
On the following scale, indicate how much you agree with this idea. Below the scale, explain the first step you would take toward zero emissions or justify why zero emissions is not a first priority for you.
(Disagree/Somewhat Disagree/Neutral/Somewhat Agree/Agree)
Thank you for asking about the climate crisis and noting the important connection to transportation. I strongly agree that we must both shift our public transit system to zero carbon emissions and that we can and must reduce our community-wide transportation emissions to net zero.
To choose a single first step is difficult, because it will take dramatic changes to much of our transportation and planning systems to reach these necessary carbon emissions reduction goals.
First, we should use county transit funds for a network of protected lanes for active transportation. These protected lanes can use quick-build strategies to most rapidly get more people walking, biking and riding scooters instead of driving, and other cities have seen those measures as transformational. Increasing funding for public transit in both capital and operating expenditures can make buses more frequent and more reliable so that more commuters will depend on them, and we should pursue aggressive and innovative transportation demand management programs to make transit more convenient and accessible than driving alone. We must also think about changes that have a slower but longer-term effect: enabling transit-oriented development (as opposed to increased sprawl at the urban fringe) will make it more feasible and more economical for residents to use buses, bikes and scooters to get to school, work and services.
For county operations in particular, we must do much better to reduce emissions from our fleet of vehicles, which have increased over the past decade. One strategy is to begin a “shared fleet” approach where staff members share vehicles rather than having one per person who drives as part of their job. We will also need to shift more of our vehicles — both buses and County operations vehicles — to running on electricity rather than fossil fuel, so we can then take advantage of shifts to renewable sources for electricity generation. Migrating our buses to running on electricity by 2035 is a feasible and important goal. It will save us money that we currently spend on fossil fuel and the public health impacts of air pollution on residents. But our highest priority needs to be a shift in “mode share”: we need to get ourselves and our neighbors out of our cars and onto buses and trains, as well as walking, biking and rolling.
What else can you tell us about your commitment to safe, affordable, and clean transportation in Durham?
I really appreciate that Bike Durham is explicitly noting the privileges (racial, economic or otherwise) of its board members and identifying distinct goals about access, safety and emissions reduction. I have emphasized throughout this campaign that my guiding principles are racial equity and environmental sustainability, and it’s particularly important to identify cases where those principles can work in harmony, as they often do. As you’ve noted throughout your questions here, transportation is a key issue of racial justice: because low-income residents and people of color disproportionately rely on our public transit system for access to jobs and services, because traffic violence impacts everyone but most often those people who are poor or live in black and brown neighborhoods and because climate change will have the greatest effects on our most vulnerable during floods, hurricanes and heat waves. My family and I are proud members of Bike Durham, and I applaud this statement of your three goals.
If re-elected, my commitment will be to bike or ride the bus to work one day every week in my next term as County Commissioner, to make sure these issues of access and equity remain front and center in my mind. I encourage you all to join me on the bus!
