Rarely is the City of Durham on the receiving end of a donation from a local nonprofit. But at the city council meeting last Monday, the city council was presented with a gift.
Bike Durham, a transportation advocacy nonprofit, donated $60,000 for a bike lane vertical protection project on Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway. The city council approved an amendment to the 2024-25 budget to include the donation in addition to the $500,000 already committed to the project. Mayor Leo Williams recognized two members of Bike Durham, Mary Rose Fontana and Gregory Williams, at the start of the August 5 meeting.
“Anytime there are community members who look at the budget, look at the projects and say, “We want to partner with the city, we see you’re going in the right direction and we’re going to do our part”—we’re community members who are coming together for a very good purpose,” Williams said.
Vertically protected bike lanes add stronger visual cues or physical barriers using bollards or raised curbs to improve the safety of bike lanes. Advocates say the improvements make the lanes more inviting and comfortable for people riding their bikes as well as for people walking on adjacent sidewalks.
“I’m hoping that the city will continue to do more innovative things,” David Bradway, member of Bike Durham’s advocacy committee, says. “Anywhere we can get those vertical indicators and separation between moving cars and bikes and walkers, the better.”
Transportation infrastructure in the Bull City has seen significant gains in the last few years due to increased investment from the city, state and federal governments, and the private sector. Last month, the City of Durham received a $12 million grant to build a transit corridor along Holloway Street. Getting a $60,000 donation may seem small in comparison, but council member Carl Rist, who sits on the Durham Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Commission, says that any opportunity to collaborate with local partners keeps the ball, and tires, rolling in the right direction.
“There’s all kinds of public private partnerships, some bigger and others that are private groups like Bike Durham who see an opportunity to help enhance what the city’s doing because there’s a shared vision,” Rist says. “So the resources help expand the pie and allow us to be more innovative.”
This fall, the city council will turn its attention to promoting a transportation investment with a slightly larger price tag. Two infrastructure bonds totalling $200 million are on the ballot in November. Council members have said they will put their energy behind promoting the bonds leading up to Election Day. An investment at that scale could help push projects that work stoppages during the COVID lockdown or a lack of funds hindered.
Bradway says the last few years of infrastructure upgrades across the city have felt piecemeal with small improvements here and there rather than a larger strategy guiding the vision.
“It’s been opportunistic repavings, or whenever they dig up the road for water main work, they might make some small improvements,” Bradway says. “If this streets and sidewalks bond is passed, [I hope] you’ll start to see faster rollout of sidewalks, bike lanes, repavings, and it’ll start to feel more like a cohesive network where you could potentially bike safely from one part of the city to another without having to go through a lot of sketchy segments.”
Disclosure: Justin Laidlaw was formerly a member of the board of directors for the nonprofit Bike Durham.
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