INC NEWS - Editorial: Transportation has driven history (Herald-Sun)

[John Schelp]

Editorial: Transportation has driven history
Herald-Sun, 28 Sept 2008 

The place now known as Durham was located along a Native American trading path. Much later, Interstate 85 followed the general route of the same path. 

Downtown Durham is where it is because Bartlett Durham provided land to the North Carolina railroad for a train station in 1849. Fast forward a century and a half, and planners were sketching out areas for development near the rail stops of a commuter train connecting Durham and Raleigh through Research Triangle Park. 

The commuter train didn't happen -- not yet at least. But the arc of history is long, and its course is often shaped by transportation. That was the lesson at a Wednesday luncheon last week hosted by Preservation Durham. 

Titled "Trains, Trolleys and Cars: How Transportation Affected Durham's Neighborhoods," it was the first in the 2008 to 2009 "Lunch and Learn" series. If it was any indication, the other installments should be well worth the time. 

One of the themes was that people want to live a little apart from work, but not too far. So Trinity Park was first built a few blocks away -- within an easy walk or ride on horseback -- from the railroads and factories of Durham. Then, as streetcars came on the scene, neighborhoods formed in Watts Hospital-Hillandale and Lakewood, where the trolley also went to a popular park. 

But the advent of the automobile made commuting even easier, and so suburbs grew up farther away, in places like Forest Hills and Hope Valley. The success of those developments and a growing economy led to the postwar boom in suburbia we still see today. 

As some planners pointed out, we are in the midst of another change in which the distances between home and work are decreasing again, driven by factors such as high gas prices, global warming and the return to urban neighborhoods. 

It's unlikely that many of us will commute to work by horse -- bicycles fill that role and require less upkeep. Likewise, buses will take the place of trolleys. And we imagine many of us will return to riding trains as they did in the good old days. 

For a schedule of other "Lunch and Learn" events, go to www.preservationdurham.org/