On the corner of Mt. Moriah and U.S. Highway 15-501, there is an ocean. Its waves aren't made of water, though 鈥� they're made of metal.
It was the middle of a boiling hot summer day and I was looking out at a sea of cars, when I noticed this woman running towards me, crossing eight lanes of traffic, to get to my side of the road.
"This is a really busy intersection," Lisa Heusner began to tell me, interrupted by the deafening roar of a passing motorcycle. She explained that she was just crossing to visit her boyfriend on his break at Walmart. How safe does she feel? Well 鈥� She rates it a five out of ten. "Sometimes I feel like people are like, 'Well, I'm going to work and you're homeless, so I should go,'" Heusner said.
I spoke to a number of pedestrians at similar intersections. Everyone I talked to had three things in common. First, they had places to be 鈥� to get clothes or food, or meet up with someone. But second, to get there, they had to cross a highway. On foot. And third? Well, let's see if you can spot it.
Cameron, 18, talked to me on his way to Chili's. "The bus routes are okay, but if you gotta walk like right here? It ain't good at all."
An older woman, Carmen Martines, had more colorful language to describe the environment. "Es feo. Muy feo." It's ugly. Really ugly. And she told me cars are a necessity in Durham; like another set of legs.
So, that third thing they all had in common? They all felt unsafe. Our city, they all told me 鈥� it isn't built for people; it's built for cars. And while it especially hurts people like Carmen and Lisa who can't afford a car, as Allison Simpson showed me, it can affect anyone.
Allison moved here as a newlywed ten years ago with her husband Matt. During the pandemic, they bought a bike trailer. "We were like, we've got to be able to get out," she told me. "Our son was two years old at the time. He started riding a balance bike at two-and-a-half and loved it, and so we went all over the neighborhood and on 鈥he Ellerbe Creek Trail."
She emphasized to me that they weren't risk takers 鈥� they wore their helmets; waited at lights; looked both ways. But two years ago, July 10, 2022, none of it mattered.
They were biking home from the Museum of Life and Science, Simpson pulling their kids along in the bike trailer. "At the trail crossing at Guess Road 鈥� the light changed. We both looked both ways. There was a car very far in the distance. So Matt went out first, and I was starting to go, but since I had the bike trailer, it was hard for me to get started," Simpson explained. "When I looked back up, I saw that the car that had been so far away was suddenly extremely close and showed no signs of stopping, and 鈥� hit Matt like a freight train. Never tried to get out of the way, never 鈥� never stopped, just flew 鈥� flew right into him and kept on speeding."
Matt died soon after from his injuries.
Simpson remembers him as a loving father with a strong sense of justice. She honors that legacy fighting alongside local nonprofit Bike Durham for safer streets.
"The metric for success used to be the number of cars we were able to move through a road. The metric of success needs to be zero deaths and serious injuries. Full stop," she said.
That's the goal of Durham's new project Vision Zero: Fix our roads; get to zero deaths and serious injuries. They've got a few strategies to do it, with a caveat at the end.
Strategy one: Slowing cars 鈥� not just asking them nicely with a speed limit sign, but narrowing roads, adding bike lanes, and louder crosswalks. You're probably wondering, though: Well, hold on: I wanna get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible. Is this gonna slow that down? Lauren Grove, our Vision Zero coordinator, has the answer: "Waiting a couple more seconds at a traffic light 鈥� That's not what we're trying to fix. We're fixing for safety."
Grove is a former researcher. Using data, community input, and an eye for what communities have been historically ignored, left out of government projects, to see where to fix first. She's finishing the plan this year.
To fund it, Durham's Department of Transportation asked for $115 million on the ballot in this election for street and sidewalk resurfacing. The measure was approved by voters. Allison Simpson said it can make the roads safer for all users. "These are life-saving projects," she said. "They're not just nice-to-haves."
Strategy two is all about buses. That means improving popular routes, like the bus on Holloway street, and phasing out the less popular ones by replacing them with microtranist 鈥� essentially $5 off an Uber or Lyft. Also, making the stops better. Sean Egan, Durham's Director of Transportation, explained, "We get more inches of rainfall in Durham than Seattle gets, and yet 80% of the space where people wait for the bus at our terminal serving 12,000 people is not covered. In the hot blistering summer sun here in North Carolina, 80% of that waiting area is not covered."
At the end of the day, though, there鈥檚 only so much the Department of Transportation alone can do. Progress, Lauren Grove said, also looks like how and where we're developing the city; thinking about if they can "shift new development to where there's already a grocery store nearby 鈥� making sure that it's in proximity to the basic needs."
Durham's Planning Commission just exemplified that with a vote this past May. They unanimously advised against a development in Southeast Durham, concerned it would sprawl the city out; make it more car-centric. City Council, though, approved it anyway on a 4-3 vote, citing Durham's desperate need for more housing.
This year, more than 20 people will die on our roads. It could be someone you know. Whether we can get that number down to zero? For now, well have to wait and see.
