[Durham INC] U-3308: Please support 3 lane option from NCDOT

[chloe palenchar]

Dear City Council:

Great leaders set in process actions that will have profound positive benefits for years down the road. Staying the course, and getting DOT to pour $30 million onto Alston Ave, won't achieve those profound long term benefits. If DOT builds the Alston Ave they have shown us, it will become a wall between Downtown and East Durham, putting all the investment in revitalizing NECD at risk. You can see the dead zones projects like this create many places you look in Durham: 147, Elizabeth St., etc. If 19 homes, four businesses, a nonprofit and two apartments buildings are bulldozed to make way for this road, what will be left to bring people (not just cars) to Alston Ave? At 90 feet wide, Alston Ave will be the size of Fayetteville St at the Streets at Southpoint. That's a great street for Southpoint, but it doesn't fit this context, which is small scale commercial and residential.

Fact: Since 1997, traffic on Alston Ave has been decreasing (http://www.ncdot.org/travel/statemapping/trafficvolumemaps/). How can the DOT justify that the traffic will increase by 60% in the next 20 years? The question is even more concerning when you consider that East End Connector will presumably remove 147<->I85 through traffic from Alston, which may be 25-50% of its current traffic volume.

Look around you as you drive. Pay attention to your surroundings when you're on any 4 lane, median divided road. Nothing you see will look like what surrounds Alston Ave. Ask DOT for the 3 lane option; it's the only option that makes sense. Save $10 million and save East Durham*!

Please make right choice to make for my neighborhood, East Durham; ask DOT to fix Alston Ave, not widen the road.

Thank you,
Chloe Palenchar
2111 E Main St.


*From the DOT attachment to the City Council's 3/10 work session which gave the budget numbers for the three lane option of  $18,300,000 and the four lane option was $28,370,000
 		 	   		  
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