Two of Durham‘s busiest streets are getting major safety upgrades for cyclists.
On Monday, the Durham City Council approved over $1 million to install new safety protections for the existing bike lanes on Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and West Main Street.
The project includes almost three miles of new infrastructure. On Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, the city is adding protective barriers along 2.1 miles between Hope Valley Road and Fayetteville Street using concrete curbing, flex posts, and green pavement markings that signify “key conflict zones” like driveways and intersections. A redesigned, protected intersection is also being installed at the intersection of MLK and South Roxboro Street, which the city identified as a high-conflict crossing.
On Main Street, similar protections are being installed between 9th Street and Buchanan Boulevard (0.6 miles), a highly-trafficked roadway that runs adjacent to Duke East Campus.
Currently, bike lanes on both sets of roadway are mostly buffered from vehicle traffic by painted lines. John Tallmadge, executive director at Bike Durham, said adding physical separation protects cyclists already on the road and signals an additional layer of safety that might encourage new riders to take to the streets.
“The biggest difference is that for people who are not out there on their bike because they are afraid, now, they’re like, ‘hey, that looks safe enough for me to be out there,’” Tallmadge told the INDY. “If a driver is not paying attention and they hit a curb, they’ll correct themselves by getting back in the lane, whereas before they might have hit a person. The purpose of the curb is to expand the safety margin when somebody is not paying attention, or the driver’s behavior is not where it’s supposed to be.”
MLK Parkway and Main Street are part of Durham’s high-injury network, outlined by a Vision Zero Action Plan presented to the City Council in March 2025. In addition to the physical infrastructure changes, the city is lowering the speed limit in both areas; from 45 to 35 miles per hour on MLK, and from 35 to 25 miles per hour on West Main Street.
“There’s a higher likelihood of serious injury and death at higher speeds,” Tallmadge said. “So part of the Vision Zero Safe Systems strategy is lowering speeds on those high-injury network routes through the combination of primarily changing the speed limit and the sign, and changing the design and the geometry so it matches that speed limit by narrowing lane widths, tightening turn radii, and in some cases reducing lanes so that there’s not the opportunity to pass at a higher speed.”
As bike commuting has grown in the U.S., road designs have evolved to safely accommodate the increased ridership. Tallmadge said that when streets like MLK Parkway were designed decades ago, the prevailing idea was that bicycles are a vehicle and should share the road with cars. Over time, as research advanced and more on-road experience was gained, folks learned that to make biking safe and accessible, you needed more clearly defined spaces. The infrastructure evolved from just paint on the road, to buffered bike lanes, to flex posts, and now, Tallmadge said, curb protection is the next level.
Back in 2024, Bike Durham contributed $60,000 in supplemental funds to support the protected lane upgrades . The city already had plans for the two roadways, but the additional cash from Bike Durham enabled the city to experiment with trying new materials for the project.
“It’s gratifying that we could take the community’s generosity and put it toward a project like this,” Tallmadge said.
The contractor has 240 days to finish installation on the new infrastructure, followed by a 180-day observation period during which the contractor is on the hook for repairs or any material failures. The project is expected to finish by May 2027.
Also approved on Monday: funding to expand the city’s Neighborhood Bike Routes network, which is made up of streets with less traffic that the city has designated as alternatives to main thoroughfares for cyclists. Lavender Avenue, Knox Street, Bivins Street, and Lincoln Street will be added to the network with the possibility of adding more, the city report said.
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