[Durham INC] Pedestrian Safety
Kelly J
kjj1bg at yahoo.com
Fri Oct 5 08:46:50 EDT 2012
Philip, Wendy et al,
I've forwarded this conversation to OWDNA list as we have many similar concerns. Our neighborhood residents confront Erwin Road, Hillandale and the Durham Freeway between us and Duke, where many of us work or study.
I've posted and written local officials and Duke administrators about pedestrians hit trying to cross Erwin Road at Trent. The NC DOT issue is a serious problem that needs coordinated action.
Likewise bike lanes. There are no bike lanes on Erwin east of Anderson-where all the workplaces are. There are no bike lanes along main street. There are no bike lanes on the bridge on Anderson that crosses Durham Freeway. Are we waiting for a death before we do this?
I hope our elected officials will work with colleagues in other cities to make changes on rules that turn NC DOT roads through residential neighborhoods into raceways.
Sent from my iPhone. Take typos and autocorrect errors lightly please.
On Oct 4, 2012, at 9:45 PM, Philip Azar <philip917azar at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wendy, Thank you for your note. Have followed up with at least some of the folk / organizations that you have mentioned, including Dale, and am staying focused.
>
> Again, thanks for caring and for your suggestions. We'll try to leave no stone unturned, Philip
>
>
> On Oct 1, 2012, at 11:28 PM, wendy jacobs <geewen at nc.rr.com> wrote:
>
>> Some great suggestions here, Philip. I also suggest that you bring this
>> initiative/these concerns to the Durham Bike and Pedestrian Commission.
>> Some really knowledgeable, hardworking citizens serve on DBAC as well as
>> excellent transportation staff person Dale McKeel.
>>
>> Wendy Jacobs
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: inc-list-bounces at rtpnet.org [mailto:inc-list-bounces at rtpnet.org] On
>> Behalf Of inc-list-request at rtpnet.org
>> Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2012 12:00 PM
>> To: inc-list at rtpnet.org
>> Subject: INC-list Digest, Vol 93, Issue 36
>>
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. 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)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2012 11:26:33 -0400
>> From: "Philip Azar" <pazar at nc.rr.com>
>> To: <TrinityPark at yahoogroups.com>, <inc-list at durhaminc.org>
>> Cc: council at durhamnc.gov, commissioners at durhamcountync.gov
>> Subject: [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?
>> Message-ID: <038101cd9f1f$f92f4680$eb8dd380$@rr.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>>
>> 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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