Duke Park spur trail gets bollards, beats print deadlines

Good work by the N&O's Triangle Troubleshooter in Saturday's paper for at minimum highlighting, and at most, one must wonder, helping to galvanize a response to, the lack of bollards at the new Duke Park Spur trail that connects Acadia St. with... well, with nothing more than a pedestrian incursion onto Washington St. But, hey, it's a start.

Barry talked about this issue this summer -- the NCDOT widening of I-85 led to the transformation of an old local road into a bike/ped trail that's actually a nice little place to walk. (Personally, I now prefer to walk to Duke Park by taking W. Knox to the greenway, the greenway north to Washington, and then the spur trail over to Acadia; it's much more scenic that way, if less direct.)

Only problem is, it still made for a nice place to drive, too, given the rather ineffective use of orange plastic barrels to block access to the trail. Such lightweight devices are rather ineffective in keeping vehicles off of greenways, since they serve more to suggest rather than enforce the removal of cars from pedestrian areas.

Beth Timson from Durham's Parks & Rec department noted in September that permanent bollards would be installed after the trail was turned over to the City for management. All the way up through this Thursday afternoon, however, such structures hadn't been installed.

Miraculously enough, though, they did get installed on Friday -- the day before the Troubleshooter piece ran in the N&O. According to the N&O's story:

 

Timson ... said Thursday that poles that can be pushed down by emergency vehicles had been ordered and were due any day. Concrete barriers already blocked the Washington Street entrance....

 

By Friday, the wait was over.

 

"We had it as a high priority and we wanted to do the work the minute they came in," Timson said Friday.

Quite the coincidence, no? Good thing the bollards arrived when they did.

Only thing I don't get, though, is -- if the City was waiting on bollards 'on order' to arrive, why does the N&O's picture of the bollard show it with the same worn, rusty appearance common on much older devices on the North-South Greenway?

Did we order this bollard from eBay? Leftovers from Raleigh's much larger and older trail and greenway program, perhaps? Scrap metal from the West Village renovations? (I just knew we'd find a use for the old W. Main Street factory bridge!)

Inquiring minds would love to know. (Note: In the interests of full disclosure, I'm over in Raleigh today and haven't been by to see the bollards, so it could just be a trick of the eye -- though I doubt it. Any Duke Parkers in walking distance care to comment?)

Of course, walkers in the area still eagerly await the completion of a sidewalk along enough of Washington St. to provide a connection to the North-South Greenway. Hey, maybe when the City starts the streetscape work over at West Village, they can just tear up the old sidewalks there and bring 'em up to Washington?

Comments

[ed hubbell]

The bollard is surely, how shall I put it, 'recycled'. Hey rest of Durham - Anyone misplace a bollard?

[Barry]

well, i was at the park earlier today taking pictures, and the bollards at the front of the park are still there, so they weren't recycled from that location.

We had tremendous difficulties at the park entrance, which is supposed to be a vehicle free zone, with people unlocking the bollards (presumably city employees with keys) and vehicles racing through the park, and when we stepped up the program to keep the bollards locked at all times except when the trash was being emptied, we had people unbolting the bollards to drive in. Hopefully nothing like that will happen on the new trail.

by the way, it's still trivially easy to take a car onto the trail from the end of Glendale St.