Chris Perelstein needed to take his two dogs, Castillo and Luna, outside one last time before calling it a night. He moved from Raleigh to Durham with his wife Lindsey nearly a year ago. As he stepped out onto the patch of grass in front of his townhouse last May, a speeding car came barreling down Roxboro Street, jumped the curb, and nearly collided with Perelstein and his dog Luna.
“I think that was the first thing where we got really rattled by unsafe conditions, specifically on the road we live on,” Perelstein says.
Perelstein, a computer programmer, decided to use his skills to develop a system for tracking vehicle speeds on the section of Roxboro Street in front of his house. He uses a camera and a Raspberry Pi, a small single-board computer, to capture photos of vehicles traveling at 55 miles per hour, 20 miles over the speed limit, or faster. Those photos are automatically posted to X (formerly Twitter) under the account @RecklessRoxboro. Perelstein hopes the account grabs the attention of folks in the community as well as the City of Durham’s transportation department and North Carolina’s Department of Transportation (NC DOT).
“I did go through a period where I was at-ing NC DOT,” Perelstein says. “Turns out that counts as spamming them if you don’t provide some method for them to unsubscribe, which I find ironic because I can’t unsubscribe from their unsafe road, right? I briefly got banned by Twitter for that.”
Residents will have the chance to share their concerns about pedestrian safety with Durham city staff at the first of three upcoming open houses regarding the resurfacing of Roxboro Street and Mangum Street. The first meeting takes place on March 12 at Global Scholars Academy.
Resurfacing is often used as a cost-effective way for local governments to make on-street design improvements. Adding features like bike lanes and crosswalks is cheaper because the paint and other materials are already budgeted for.
“Each one of those projects has funding already allocated to put down new pavement markings,” Sean Egan, Durham Transportation Director, told the INDY back in October. “So if we do some of that concept development and community engagement around changes in design, we basically get all of the construction costs for free.”
Making significant changes to state-owned roads can be a difficult task, as advocates found out in September when a communication breakdown between Durham DOT and NC DOT led Durham’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission (BPAC) to write an open letter to city and state officials criticizing NC DOT’s decision to halt infrastructure improvements on Fayetteville Street near NC-147.
“I don’t even look for places to go on Fayetteville Street, knowing we’re not going to drive there, because it’s not safe,” BPAC member Mary Rose Fontana told the INDY last fall. “It’s a deterrent for people who don’t want to risk their safety.”
Residents and business owners in the Roxboro/Mangum project footprint echo concerns about safety in their neighborhood. Exorbitant speeds on those streets are not uncommon, according to data Perelstein has collected over the past several months.
“We generally have about 250 reckless speeders a day,” Perelstein says. “Some days it’s upwards of 350 to 400, some days it’s down at like 150. It varies.”
State law marks reckless driving at 15 miles per hour over the designated speed limit. On Roxboro Street, the speed limit is 35 miles per hour. Perelstein says that, because X (Twitter) only allows him to send 50 automated tweets a day for free, he had to raise the speed limit of cars he tweeted pictures of from 50 to 59 miles per hour. Otherwise, there would be too many speeding vehicles for the account to post.
Mangum Street has seen a resurgence of activity in the last year. New apartments and condos have popped up, and new businesses have taken root in Old Five Points. But the precarity of walking down the block, says Lindsey Andrews, owner of Night School Bar on North Mangum Street, is a deterrent for potential customers.
“We don’t see that much foot traffic even though there are people in the neighborhoods all around,” Andrews says. “I think having a street that feels safer to walk up and down, with more greenery and bike lanes, would really increase foot traffic which would be nice for the businesses.”
Andrews lives in the neighborhood. She opened Night School Bar last October and frequently walks to work. Soon after signing the lease for her new business, Andrews says a vehicle crashed into the storefront next door. Last week, the driver of a passenger van and an officer driving a Durham police car were involved in a crash at the intersection of Mangum and Morris Street that sent the police car into the facade of Indian Monsoon.
These kinds of violent collisions are scary and make would-be pedestrians feel unsafe.
“It’s very difficult to promote people walking downtown,” says Marcus Morrow, neighborhood resident and co-owner of Chibanga’s Neighborhood Market located at 506 North Mangum Street.
Chibanga’s and Everlou, the neighboring coffee shop, offer customers outdoor seating on the storefront patio, but access to the space and constant noise pollution from traffic on the street make hanging out at the businesses a tough sell.
“More people walking is great from a business perspective, but not when they’re terrified of getting hit by a car,” Morrow says.
Last month, residents and local officials gathered at the downtown Durham Bus Station to discuss the future of local transit in the region. City and county staff members shared budget overviews and details on specific initiatives that the transportation departments are investing in to make public transit safer and more accessible.
Disclosure: Justin Laidlaw was formerly a member of the board of directors for the nonprofit Bike Durham. Bike Durham is lobbying for changes to Mangum/Roxboro Streets.
Follow Reporter Justin Laidlaw on Twitter or send an email to [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].
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