INC NEWS - recent accident on Mangum Street

[Barry Ragin]

Hi all,

I'm sure by now that many of you have seen the results of the latest 
accident
on the Markham/Mangum crossover. If you haven't go take a walk up 
Mangum St.
just south of Markham Ave. (right past the water-filled plastic rhino 
barrier) and
marvel at the size of the hole in the brick wall at 1307 N. Mangum.

Now, i want to warn you, that i'm getting ready to go on a pretty long 
rant
here, so if you don't want to spend a lot of time with me as i vent my 
frustration
and anger, now is probably a pretty good time to head over there and 
stand on
the sidewalk and try to figure out just how fast that truck was 
travelling to do
that to a brick wall.

And while you're standing there on the sidewalk, maybe you could spend 
a little
time thinking about what might have happened to you had you been 
walking along
that sidewalk when that out-of-control vehicle crashed through the 
brick wall. Or to someone pushing a stroller with a two year old, and 
holding a five year old by the hand while walking down to Duke Park.

If by chance Mr. Tempest has gotten someone out to repair the wall 
before you get a chance to look at it, go to the DPNA website at 
http://rtpnet.org/dukepark, and take a look at the pictures there. 
(They will be up before the end of the weekend.)

Here's why i'm ranting. DPNA has been working with the city for the 
past 3
years to get that intersection modified. The city's traffic engineers 
are working hard to come up
with a solution. But twice within the past year someone has gone 
careening
through the wall in front of Mr. Tempest's house.

Actually, no, that's not why i'm angry and frustrated. Thursday, i 
called the
records department of the Durham Police Department, asking if i could 
get some
information about the accident. I was on the phone with a very nice 
woman named
Claudette for about 15 or 20 minutes. She was unable to find any 
information
about a traffic accident at that corner within the past 7 days.

Nothing.

I couldn't imagine that a wreck like that would have gone unreported, 
so i
emailed Sgt. Gunter and asked him to look into it for me.

Sgt. Gunter responded back that he was able to locate the report rather
quickly. However, it had been filed as a vandalism report, and not as a 
vehicular
accident. In fact, Sgt. Gunter said it should have been filed as a hit 
and run,
since the vehicle was gone by the time police responded.

Also Thursday, i spoke with Phil Loziuk, who is the traffic engineer 
who has
been working on the redesign of the intersection. He had just been 
informed of
the accident, but only through private conversation, not any official
notification from any city department.

A few weeks ago, Phil was gracious enough to attend a Duke Park 
Neighborhood
Association meeting on his own time to discuss with us the various 
options for
traffic calming, both at that intersection, and the Glendale/Markham 
intersection where so many of our neighbors have complained about the 
excessive speeds. Phil indicated that he had checked through the 
records, and that very few accident reports had been filed at that 
intersection over the past three years. Several neighbors who live at 
that intersection were shocked to hear this, as they had witnessed 
numerous accidents, some within the past several months, that had been 
responded to by the police.

Throughout the city, there have been several fatal accidents involving 
pedestrians over the past year or so. These have occurred on Club 
Blvd., near Northgate Mall, and on Markham Ave., between Broad and 
Ninth Streets. There may be others that i don't know about. Following 
reports of these accidents, the city is attempting to make these areas 
safer for pedestrians.

But if the city traffic engineers are not getting accurate information 
about problems that already exist, how can they possibly be creating 
solutions to those problems. Do more pedestrians need to be killed or 
seriously injured before the information is passed on to the traffic 
engineers that an unsafe situation exists? Where is the logic in that?

The city's comprehensive plan calls for getting more people out of 
there cars and on foot or bicycle, especially within the urban overlay. 
At the same time, NCDOT is building roads leading into the urban areas 
that are wider than previous (see Guess Road and Duke Street, not to 
mention the interchanges at Roxboro St. and Avondale Dr., for examples) 
and are designed to move a higher volume of vehicles more rapidly into 
the urban parts of the city. We can virtually guarantee that these two 
distinct models will come into conflict over the next few years, and 
that the result will be seriously injured or dead pedestrians and 
bicyclists.

Finally, every conversation i have had with people in Durham about 
traffic calming over the past few years, and believe me, i have had 
many such conversations, has gotten into the question of enforcement. 
If you spend time walking or driving through Durham, i guarantee you 
have experienced someone driving 20 or 30 miles over the speed limit on 
a neighborhood street. Every traffic study with which i am familiar 
documents this. I was told recently that a traffic study on Glendale 
Ave, through Old North Durham neighborhood, registered speeds as high 
as 65 mph, in a 25 mph zone. People feel comfortable driving at 
excessive, and even life threatening speeds in Durham, because they 
know there are no consequences to their actions.

This has simply got to change. There must be better communication 
between the enforcement departments and the design departments, so that 
our traffic engineers have good information about where the trouble 
spots are and what needs to be done to alleviate them. Our enforcement 
departments need to take seriously the problems of excessive speeding 
on our surface streets in order to make changes to the cultural 
perception that speeding is not a problem, especially as we attempt to 
get more of our citizens out of their cars and onto the sidewalks and 
bike lanes. And finally, decisions about how our streets are designed 
and built need to be made by the people who live and work here, and not 
some engineers in Raleigh whose only criteria is how many vehicles can 
a road carry.

Barry Ragin
1706 Shawnee St.
DPNA president

http://rtpnet.org/dukepark
http://www.cafepress.com/dukepark