[Durham INC] FW: What are we doing to slow traffic on Duke and Gregson and ensure that children walking to school throughout Durham are safe?

[Philip Azar]

Hi all, Tried to send this out last night, apparently it went to council and
commissioners, but not to the listservs, which was in many ways the main
point of this.

 

We need to not just have internal discussions, but also be consistently
focused and a little hot on it.  I understand that there are some
collective, more organized approaches underway, and that's great, but I
think we also should go on record with demands for attention and action on
this matter.  We were all lucky that the last accident was not worse.

 

Thanks, Philip

 

P.S.  I changed one word in the title line from "you" to "we" because this
is not all on elected officials and staff.  I think we all need to step up
and stay stepped up.  I've also tried to change the font to something more
reasonable and consistent.  (Not used to the Mac and its inferior mail
management program.)  

 

From: Philip Azar [mailto:philip917azar at gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2012 10:46 PM
To: council at durhamnc.gov; commissioners at durhamcountync.gov
Cc: trinitypark at yahoogroups.com; interneighborhoodcouncil at gmail.com;
durhambikeandped at yahoogroups.com
Subject: What are you doing to slow traffic on Duke and Gregson and ensure
that children walking to school throughout Durham are safe?

 

Good People, We recently experienced another car/pedestrian accident in
Trinity Park.

 

Traffic in and through our neighborhood has been an issue for quite some
time and I, among others, am impatient, indeed angry.  This is an issue that
has been festering for a long time.  It festered on my watch when I was
association president, and I should have helped to address it sooner, before
the last accident happened.  You can imagine my relief and gratitude that
the last accident was not more serious.  The issue is now also on your
watch.  Perhaps you've been aware and been working it.  If so, thank you,
but we need to work it more effectively before the next accident.  The next
accident may be way more serious than the last one.  Actions and solutions
needed.  Not blaming NC DOT.  Not complaining about the distribution of
speeding ticket revenue.  Not sloughing off to individual driver, pedestrian
and cyclist responsibility.  Individual drivers, walkers and bikers are
responsible for their actions, but we are collectively responsible for the
current, unsafe traffic, walk, biking patterns that make this statistically
toxic.  Let's get it done!

 

No one needs be silent when:

 

-- Speed limits in our neighborhood are ignored, not enforced and too high
to begin with.

 

-- Walk zones to schools are not matched with cross walks, markings, lights,
etc. along major walk routes to the schools in our walk zones.  For example,
The George Watts Montessori School, which has a walk zone, does not have
properly marked crossings on Duke St, comparable to those on Gregson, even
though students walk across Duke just as students walk across Gregson.

 

-- Informal walk and bikeways to schools, places of worship or employment
and volunteer areas are not acknowledged and protected.  As you know, it is
the act of walking or biking, and not the drawing of lines on a map in an
office downtown or in Raleigh that creates a need for safety.  The formal
walk zones for schools are just an obvious starting point and clearly call
for greater protection.  There is a lot of walking and cycling that goes on
in totally predictable places that is not designed on maps. Although DSA
does not have a walk zone, DSA students walk to and from there in mornings
and afternoon and to and from volunteer opportunities in the neighborhood
during the day.  These activities also need protection. 

 

-- Resignation grows that designation of some streets as state roads somehow
magically levitates them out of the neighborhood and out of the City and
County's scope of responsibility.  The state may pay for the roads'
maintenance and may have some level of control over them, but these are
neighborhood roads -- they go through our neighborhoods -- and people hit on
them are still our neighbors and friends or their children.  If you need
help crowding a conference room or two or three in Raleigh, chewing out
friends and colleagues in the capital, changing a regulation, or asking the
Durham delegation to work with others to get new laws passed, we'll help.
Explaining that you do not control state roads is not acceptable.  It is
similarly unacceptable to ask staff to do another study.  It's solution and
action time.  Please take action and be part of the solution.

 

What the perfect, long term solution is, I don't know and don't think it's
my job to figure the specifics out. That said, I think common sense and
reason support the idea that within a month, we'd see, as a start, something
like this:

 

--  Regular speed traps and ticketing with a commitment to keep it up.  I
have frequently heard (sometimes from City and police representatives) that
the City, County, and police don't think this is an effective tool because
traffic ticket revenue is shared with schools state wide.  The revenue issue
is immaterial and irrelevant to the safety issue.  Moreover, the fines for
speeding in a school district have gone up, so this excuse for not ticketing
is more lame than it ever was.

 

--  Striping of cross walks (with signage as at Brightleaf about stopping
being the law) throughout formally designated walk zones.

 

--  Striping of cross walks (with signage as at Brightleaf about stopping
being the law) wherever there are regular, predictable foot traffic
patterns, regardless of whether they are in a formally recognized walk-zone.


 

-- Ped Safety Flags.  Please Google Ped Safety Flags and look at the images
and articles that you find there.  It's a relatively cheap system and it can
be installed quickly.  The more neighborhoods use it, the faster pedestrians
will learn how to use it and the faster drivers will recognize and react to
the system.

 

-- Sufficient government (police, police cars, public works trucks --
whatever draws attention) presence around those items for a period of time
to help change the bad habits that we've accepted too long so that
pedestrians to not have a false sense of security.

 

-- Absolute, positive, public rejection of the premise that state roads
absolve local responsibility, that pedestrian solutions must be at the
expense of cyclists (because otherwise they are inconvenient to cars), and
that ticketing of speeders is not a worthy use of police resources.  Cars
kill.  Walkers and bikers . . . not so much.  Cars are the lowest priority.
They have less claim to personhood than corporations.   The urban
neighborhoods pre-date the traffic and take priority.  If that's a framing
of the issue that the experts have problems with, I urge you to get new
experts.  

 

-- A public commitment to lowering speed limits (and increased commitment to
their enforcement) in the city and county in proximity to schools --
regardless of whether it's a state or local road -- and to protecting
children walking to any school at any age anywhere in Durham.  If changing
or enforcing speed limits requires state-wide action, please lead it!

 

I am sure that the issues outlined above are not unique to Trinity Park, but
are true of most if not all of the urban neighborhoods and at least some of
the suburban ones, each of which have schools, churches and places to go to,
are home to people who walk and cycle, and are inhabited by voters who
believe that walking and cycling are activities that we want to encourage
over the consumption of gas (and the belching of exhaust), the acquisition
of status symbols and the constant quest for ever larger, ever "safer"
vehicles that are more and more likely to be a weapon than a shield when
crushing a pedestrian or cyclist.  The only person possibly more grateful
for the accident averted than the victim and family is the driver who
avoided the guilt, the responsibility and the criminal charges that
typically go with a fatality.

 

Thanking you in advance for taking the Bull by the horn on this one,
resolving to track this issue closely to make sure that you do, and
encouraging others to do the same, 

 

Philip "Increasingly a Whack Job and Wing Nut for Pedestrian and Cyclist
Safety, especially for Students in and around School Zones" Azar

 

P.S.  All -- If deemed worthy for a cross post, go for it.  This discussion
has been too internal, too local for too long.  Don't back off!  If you've
already expressed a concern on a listserv or dug out a little history,
please forward it to the addresses above with cc:s to the listservs unless
there is a really good reason not to.  (Always a good idea to encourage some
action and find something to be positive about.)   

 

P.P.S.  If you are in a neighborhood that has lots of drivers that go
through Trinity Park and other neighborhoods during morning and afternoon
"is the rush worth it" periods, please be sure to post.  Please don't kill
our children (or our adults).  Awareness is the first step.  Ditto for us
Trinity Parkers, just because people from other areas speed in our
neighborhood, doesn't mean we don't ever speed here or in other
neighborhoods.  Let's not kill anyone's children (or adults).

 

 

 

 

  _____  

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