Bull City Rising

DATA board pauses on downtown circulator vote

The story of the downtown circulator -- whose route and mission has already evolved in the public discourse a couple of times, from a route that might stretch clear to Duke's West Campus to one that would serve just the Downtown Loop area -- took a new turn on Wednesday night at the Board of Trustees meeting for the Durham Area Transit Authority, which would operate the service.

After an at-times heated debate, a divided board postponed for thirty days actions on the City administration's proposed route for the free service, a move that came after a strong discussion from a number of board members as to whether the circulator would be a desirable service at all.

Yet the deferral comes after what transit administrator Steve Mancuso reminded the board had been a long-term process by which the circulator had come before the trustees several times for approval of the concept before the city, federal and state funds were allocated for the service.

90% of the $1.1 million cost for two buses and half of the operating expenses for most of the first two years of the service are funded with state and federal dollars offered for the new route and service.

The current route as now proposed by DATA staff would have the circulator run from American Tobacco and the ballpark at Jackie Robinson & Blackwell, up to Pettigrew and over to the Durham Station, then down Jackson to Duke St., north to the corner of Main (serving West Village and Brightleaf Square), then east on Main and Chapel Hill St. towards City Hall, coming south on Mangum past the DPAC before ending up back at the ballpark.

This service would run weekdays from 6:00am until 7:00pm on a 10 minute headway schedule.

From 7:00pm until midnight weekdays -- and from 10:00am until midnight on Saturdays -- the route would move to a 30 minute headway, but would branch out to head west on Main St. past Duke's East Campus to Ninth St. and Broad St.

Billboard debate to star at December INC meeting

Tired of all the good cheer and warm feelings the holidays have to offer? Looking to put some cranky back in your life?

Be sure to stop by the Inter-Neighborhood Council meeting next Tuesday, Dec. 9, then, when Fairway Outdoor Advertising's Paul Hickman is scheduled to make a presentation to INC.

The topic isn't specified on the agenda -- but it's a no-brainer that this will be a chance to discuss Fairway's proposal to upgrade a number of their billboards in the Bull City with those shiny new video billboards that can change their appearance and content every few seconds.

As we talked about here back in August, the billboard industry and Durham have been stalemated for years across a demilitarized zone of conflicting laws. Billboards are prohibited in Durham, though existing signs are grandfathered in; under the UDO, you can't renovate a non-conforming property. Yet Federal law protects the billboard industry from having the City remove the signs.

The City/County Planning department has been reviewing the proposal after a vote by the joint planning committee comprised of City Council and BOCC members a few months back.

N&O: Fayetteville gets $270m loop, bypassing Durham and other cities

More on the roads front: the N&O reports that outgoing NCDOT secretary Lyndo Tippett's hometown of Fayetteville just got $270 million in funding for their loop highway, even as larger cities in the Triangle and elsewhere sit on the sidelines:

[Raleigh Mayor Charles] Meeker, also a Democrat, said highway money has flowed to Fayetteville in recent years as most large cities in the state have received little....

Last year, Charlotte's unfinished I-485 loop was pushed back by two years and now isn't expected to be completed for a decade.

But Fayetteville's loop was kept on schedule. The first leg opened three years ago and is handling about 9,000 cars a day. The southern leg of Charlotte's loop handles 120,000 cars a day....

The inequities of Triangle transportation funding (or, another reason I didn't vote Perdue)

I may not always see eye to eye with Carrboro mayor Mark Chilton, but I joined him in one point of agreement this fall: like the liberal mayor of the town that out-libs Chapel Hill, I bubbled in the GOP candidate's name for governor on my ballot this fall.

That's right, I did the "Obama straight flip" -- then backflipped a vote for Pat McCrory along the way.

And just why? Certainly not out of agreement with much of McCrory's social views, though he is somewhat more moderate than your usual Fredsmithian type of candidate.

No, the reason I voted McCrory was simple: he's from Charlotte, meaning he struck me as a little more likely to not give short shrift to the needs of urban areas. (That he was a key vocal backer behind getting light rail in the Queen City was a plus, too.)

Like many Southern states, North Carolina's government is one that's historically had a bias towards rural and agrarian interests over urban ones, and with the eastern parts of the state in particular having political control well disproportionate to their population or economic impact on the state.

Exhibit A: An article on the Triangle Business Journal's web site today, which notes that Wake, Orange and Durham Counties have received, through October, $31.4 million in state highway funding. Not bad, until you realize that said state funding is $935.7 million -- meaning the core Triangle has gotten about 3% of the dollars.

The article points out that another $525 million of projects will be awarded in November and December -- only one-half of one percent of those projects are in the Triangle.

DATA circulator to connect downtown, Duke come winter

During our interview with Durham Area Transit Authority (DATA) director Steve Mancuso last week on "Shooting the Bull," Barry and I touched on a number of interesting topics -- but none more so, to my mind, than the DATA downtown circulator that Mancuso described.

We mentioned the item briefly here last spring as one of the augmentations in City services unveiled in this fiscal year's budget -- a budget weak on new spending, with tax increases projected to a large extent to make up for declining sales tax and permit/license collections.

Still, the concept hasn't had a lot of illumination, getting overshadowed more recently by the Durham Area Designers' idea of a streetcar/trolley system running north-south and east-west through core neighborhoods.

Unlike the streetcar concept, however, the DATA circulator is a concrete service that's set to begin this winter; by March, at least, and probably sooner if the Durham Station multimodal transit facility finishes construction ahead of schedule.

Shooting the Bull: Podcast for October 30, 2008

In this week's edition of "Shooting the Bull," Durham Area Transit Authority head Steve Mancuso joins Barry and Kevin for the second of a two-part series looking at transit and transportation in the Bull City. We talk about DATA service in the Bull City, including the new downtown/Duke circulator, the new Durham Station opening this winter, and his perspectives on how to make Durham more transit-friendly. Plus, Barry and Kevin talk about a great honor for the Nasher's Sarah Schroth and about this weekend's happenings in the Bull City.

Thanks as always to the folks at WXDU for the opportunity to host this weekly show.

If you missed the Thursday night broadcast, you can download or listen to the show from the Internet Archive, or listen to it via this embedded player. You can also subscribe to the show in iTunes, via WXDU's hosted podcast.

Triangle Transit RTP transfer station moves to Imperial Center in December

The N&O's erstwhile transportation reporter Bruce Siceloff reports on the N&O's blog that the move of Triangle Transit's RTP-area transfer station from Davis Dr./NC 54 to Imperial Center, home to Quintiles' new HQ, lots of retail and office space, and -- as longtime BCR readers know -- the annual Taste of Durham festival.

As the Old Reliable notes, the new easterly location should cut transit time for commuters coming in from Wake County by an average of eight minutes, while Durhamites should see no change in their ride times. One-fifth of Triange Transit's 4,600 daily riders have to make a transfer.

Look for the changes to start December 1, and expect this to remain Triangle Transit's transfer home -- except in the event that governmental leaders can find a way to agree on a rail/bus system expansion, in which case a rail station co-location is the likely eventual outcome.

"The Pavenator" wins the mascot naming shoot-out, leads new web site

Remember that cartoon character that the City rolled out a few weeks back as the symbol of progress on road pavin' and pothole fixin'?

It's got a name now: "The Pavenator," courtesy of De'Mar Glasper, a fifth-grader at Burton IB Elementary here in the Bull City.

Not a bad nickname, kid, though the joke possibilities remain endless. Road not fixed quick enough? It's because the Pavenator said, "Ahhl be baaack." Also, do note that Pavenator rhymes nicely with procrastinator.

Joking aside, the naming contest's end coincides with the launch of Durham's new road paving web site, DurhamOperationGreenLight.org.

Triangle Expressway toll road delayed by credit markets

The Triangle Expressway toll road -- initially slated to start construction later this year, connecting the terminus of the Durham Freeway through RTP and down to the extension of 540 through western Wake County -- has seen its schedule slip due to the slipping debt markets.

The Triangle Business Journal reports that while the N.C. Turnpike Authority had planned to launch its initial sale of $600 million in bonds by the end of this month, that sale has been delayed indefinitely until the bond markets will support the issue.

The news comes on the heels of reports recently that both Wake and Durham counties, like governments throughout the country, have had difficulty issuing new debt as investors have reached for their nitro tablets in the wake of challenges in the markets.

The $913 million total investment in the road will bring a 19 mile stretch of tolled freeway from Holly Springs to Durham; it's just slightly less than the cost of the commuter rail proposal we looked at last week (though from a carrying capacity perspective, of course, transit's numbers look much different -- which is still another reason to look at the capital expenditure for commuter rail as a freight as well as a passenger investment.)

Durham's gas prices: top in all of N.C. metro areas

A letter-writer complains in today's Herald-Sun that Durham has the most expensive gas in North Carolina, according to gas price tracker gasbuddy.com. And given that N.C. has the highest gas prices in the lower 48 right now -- does that in fact make Durham the most expensive place in the country to get gasoline?

Not exactly -- though it's not far from the truth. As it happens, there are a number of cities in N.C. that report gas prices as high or higher than Durham, particularly in some . Still, as of this writing, the GasBuddy web site in its list of major cities and metro areas sees Durham ($3.502) edge out Raleigh ($3.469), Charlotte $3.399) and Greensboro ($3.374) for one top-in-state ranking we don't exactly want to be at.

More expensive than the Bull City? Among the major cities tracked, only Chicago, San Francisco, and San Jose among the contiguous United States, though Honolulu and Anchorage still are top in the entire U.S.

One argument we here at BCR are sick of hearing about when it comes to gas prices: North Carolina's gas tax, the highest in the southeast. Yes, folks, we have a high gas tax. We also have the second-largest state-maintained road network in the U.S., after only the geographic behemoth of Texas.

What does that system buy us? Well, it means relatively few roads maintained by local government, which means you pay for roads in your gasoline purchase, not your property and retail sales tax. Until recently (when fuel economy variances started happening widely with hybrids and other vehicles) it's proven a seemingly fair way of implementing a use tax based on distance driven, though officials are also looking at piloting GPS-monitored history of distances driven and taxing for road use on that basis.