On Thursday, U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Durham mayor Leonardo Williams, Gov. Roy Cooper, and several other local leaders walked the half-mile stretch along Holloway Street from Antioch Baptist Church to The Village Shopping Center.
Nearly the entire path was a treacherous hike over gaping holes, giant tree roots, and makeshift gravel walkways with almost no sidewalks—a vivid illustration of much-needed investment in local infrastructure.
Luckily for Durham residents, that investment is coming in the form of $12 million for improvements from the federal government’s $1.8 billion Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grant program. The money will pay for new curb ramps at 33 intersections, plus new sidewalks, street crossings, and bus stop upgrades, including new shelters, lighting, benches, and bike racks, along Holloway Street, a main transit corridor for GoDurham.
“You’ve got a community here that has been left out of some of the historic rounds of transportation infrastructure investment and we’re changing that,” Buttigieg said. “It’s going to matter to neighbors, it’s going to matter to businesses, it’s going to matter to the congregation of [Antioch Baptist Church].”
Durham’s Holloway Street project is one of 148 projects across the country receiving RAISE funding. The project area represents almost a fifth of GoDurham’s total ridership, and the GoDurham 3/3B/3C route along Holloway Street is the city’s busiest, with nearly 3,300 weekday riders.
“Today, we get to fill a gap that needed to be filled,” Mayor Williams said. “This is an opportunity for us to truly build community. In Durham, we define a wholesome community as being able to address affordable living.”
Buttigieg praised the work of community activists who have long advocated for improvements along the corridor.
“I want to applaud the community taking a much more intentional approach here and making sure that community voices are included in the designs and the plans that are put forward,” he said. “If you walk this stretch of Holloway, it’s clear that there needs to be a better standard of service and we can deliver that.”
The tour stopped outside the Moroleon Supermarket at the Pupuseria Doña Laura food truck where Buttigieg and others met with GoDurham employees and held a brief press conference before celebrating the historic investment over pupusas.
“There are parts of my job you cannot do from behind a desk in Washington, DC,” Buttigieg said. “Being able to walk the streets with the mayor, to criss-cross the region with the governor, to have a conversation with [Durham congresswoman Valerie Foushee], who was just quizzing me from her seat on the committee of oversight in Washington a few days ago, and now be on the ground in her district—I think just reflects the way that these decisions and policies people talked about in Washington …. have a very specific impact on people’s everyday life.”
The City of Durham has already made notable commitments to improving transportation infrastructure. City staff included $232.2 million dollars in this year’s budget for new and ongoing projects and a $115 million bond for streets and sidewalks will be on voters’ ballots this November. Improvements to the Holloway Street corridor are currently in the design phase and construction is expected to begin in 2026.
“What we hear so often from the community is ‘When are we going to see on-the-ground improvements?,’” says city transportation director Sean Egan.
“Residents and transit riders have filled out so many surveys, and they’re done with the plans and the surveys. They want to see results on the ground that are making it easier to get to and from the bus stop. This grant is the difference between us just planning and being able to actually build the improvements that our community has been calling for for the last four years.”
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