I’ve been a full-time bike commuter since 2014 when I sold the only car I’ve ever owned, a beat-up 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and fully embraced life on two wheels. “Cyclist” was not my identity. Bikes were just how I got from point A to point B.
But the streets of Durham radicalized me.
Bike commuting is like a game of Mario Kart where everyone has blue shells and gold stars except you.
Last September, after 11 years of cycling on the streets of Durham, I was t-boned by a driver in the traffic circle at Hope Valley Road and University Drive. The driver never yielded before entering the circle. Did they think they had more time before I got around? Did they expect me to yield because I was on a bike and they were in a car? I’ll never know the answer; the driver didn’t stick around long enough for me to ask.
I walked away from my brush with death without serious injury, but that’s never a given when bikes and cars clash.
Even my regular commute between Lakewood and the INDY office in downtown Durham is rife with obstacles. At the risk of making too many video game comparisons, each trip is a game of Frogger, weaving in and out of the bike lane to avoid neighbors who park on the street instead of their driveway, and gym rats at the Lakewood YMCA who use the nearby bike lane as overflow parking, and customers at the Lakewood Cocoa Cinnamon who park in front of the shop instead of in either of the adjoining parking lots or the massive sea of parking across the street, or the maintenance crews who park their work truck in the protected bike lane next to Bell West End. And that’s just the half of my two-mile route that has bike lanes.
So, on the heels of National Bike Month, I decided to look into what the rules actually are when it comes to the Bull City’s bike lanes, what goes into implementing them, and what the data says about bike safety in Durham.
The Rules of the Road
Section 66-310 of the City of Durham’s Code of Ordinances says, “Whenever a lane of traffic on any roadway is indicated by pavement marking or by a sign as being assigned as a bike lane, it is unlawful for the driver of a motorized vehicle, except electric assisted bicycles, electric scooters, or other types of micromobility devices, to occupy such lane for moving or parking, except that a driver may cross such lane to make a lawful turning movement, yielding the right-of-way to riders of bicycles, electric assisted bicycles, electric scooters, or other types of micromobility devices occupying such lane.”
Johnathan Bell, a Durham police officer with the Traffic and Crash Team (TACT), which investigates serious and fatal motor vehicle crashes, puts it in simpler terms.
“The bike lane is for bikes,” Bell says. “It’s not designed for vehicles to park in. It’s not designed for vehicles to pass and turn on the right. It’s not designed to stop there and run into a place and get a meal and all of these other things.”
In 2017, the city adopted the Bike+Walk Implementation Plan, a set of guidelines to help steer the development of bike lanes, sidewalks, and multi-use paths around the city. Erin Convery, a transportation planning manager with the city of Durham, says that the Bike+Walk Plan is shaped by community feedback and informs much of the design and prioritization of new transit infrastructure. The city of Durham and Durham County are currently updating the plan.
“We’re really focused on engagement and outreach, because that’s what informs the next several years worth of bike projects,” Convery says.
Educating residents on new bike lanes and other infrastructure starts long before the rubber meets the road. During the early planning phase for a new bike lane, the transportation department sends out teams to events, local businesses and community gatherings to get input from residents about what projects they want the city to prioritize. These touch points often coincide with the location of the future project.
The city’s outreach efforts also serve as early educational opportunities for folks unfamiliar with how the new infrastructure works, and how it will affect their neighborhood. In addition to in-person events, the transportation department sends mailers to residents and property owners within the proposed project area to share information about what’s to come.
The TACT team works in tandem with the city transportation department to analyze crash sites and design ways to prevent future incidents using what Bell calls the three Es: education, engineering and enforcement. Bell also presents at driver’s education classes and says that he provides an entire section on bike and pedestrian safety, including how to navigate bike lanes.
Good Design Protects Against Bad Behavior
Education and awareness can fall short, though, no matter how much outreach is performed. Transportation staff have to take into account human error, or deliberate malfeasance. The design phase is where engineers can mitigate the potential for accidents and crashes by building in preventative features like vertical flex posts to “provide a visual cue and some level of barrier between vehicles to act as a deterrent for cars to enter the bike lane,” Convery says. For future projects, the city is looking to provide more vertical delineators, including concrete separation between the vehicle and bike lanes, to reinforce protection for folks traveling in the bike lane.
“This puts the onus less on users of the facilities to know all the rules, and through design, helps people understand where they should be in the mix,” Convery says.
Transportation infrastructure is constantly evolving. In the past decade, there’s a good chance your regular commute has been altered by a new traffic circle, stop sign, stop light, crosswalk, speed bump, bike box, bus stop, or bike lanes.
Since the last Bike+Walk Plan was adopted in 2017, the city has added 25 miles of bike lanes, enough miles to get you from downtown Durham to downtown Raleigh (by car). Durham also added seven miles of neighborhood bike routes—also known as bike boulevards—streets with less traffic that the city has designated as alternatives to main thoroughfares for cyclists. Convery says the city has an additional 11 miles of new neighborhood bike routes in the design pipeline, as well as 4.5 miles of new vertical protection on existing bike lanes and 3 miles of new on-street bike lanes through the Downtown Durham Bike Lanes Project.
That’s a lot of new infrastructure, no matter your preferred mode of transportation. Adjusting to a new reality on the road that includes something called a bike box takes time and patience, for drivers and cyclists alike. After installing new transit features, the transportation department relies on assistance from other groups like the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC), the city’s Communications department, and nonprofits like Bike Durham to educate residents on how to use the facilities safely.
Not everyone is thrilled about the spot in front of their house that they’ve always parked in becoming a bike lane. But installing bike lanes often means additional traffic calming measures like narrowing the travel lane for vehicles, which slows down vehicle speeds—a welcomed byproduct of the new lanes even for folks who don’t plan on using them.
“That doesn’t resonate with every single person, but there are a lot of folks who are interested in slower vehicle speeds, even on their neighborhood streets,” Convery says. “So I think that being able to talk through the benefits beyond just for those who are in the bike lane, while there are obviously clear benefits for those folks too, often helps people think about the bigger picture.”
Rejoice, drivers. Convery says the goal is not to eliminate all on-street parking. She says street parking can actually serve as “visual and physical friction” that makes people want to drive slower in some cases, and can be used as a buffer between the vehicle travel lane and the bike lane. Just make sure you check your blind spots before getting out of the car.
Safety first
Traffic violence in Durham has seen an uptick in recent years. From 2019 to 2023, Durham residents suffered 278 serious injuries from crashes, and 121 fatalities in the same time frame, according to Lauren Grove, Vision Zero Coordinator with the city of Durham, who presented recommendations for how the city could curb traffic violence during a March city council work session.
At last night’s city budget public hearing, BPAC Chair Mary Rose Fontana, who lives in South Durham, said that the lack of bike infrastructure in her neighborhood makes her commute dangerous. She praised the city council for investing in expansion of the city’s transit network.
“Every time I leave my house, or watch my husband ride his bike to work, I worry about whether we will survive the half-mile distance to Fayetteville Street, a half-mile of road where we have frequently been verbally threatened by drivers for merely existing on the road we live on,” Fontana said. “People shouldn’t have to worry each day about whether their loved ones will make it home safely.”
In this year’s proposed city budget, City Manager Bo Ferguson recommended $500,000 for Vision Zero initiatives and $1.2 million from the city’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) to continue moving forward on a possible two-way conversion of Roxboro and Mangum streets.
The Durham Police Department is also investing resources into its fleet of bicycle officers. Officers who are exposed to the same bike infrastructure, and the same interactions with drivers, as other cyclists could be well positioned to make recommendations for how to improve public safety.
“Trust me, we definitely want to keep bicyclists safe, just the same as anyone else,” Bell says.
Folks who encounter traffic infractions can submit reports to the police department, but Bell also encourages residents to use Durham One Call, a portal for submitting non-emergency service requests like repainting a bike lane, filling a pothole, or towing a car that’s parked illegally.
Bell’s three Es (education, engineering and enforcement) are about one central idea: safety. Each of us is responsible for educating ourselves on how our preferred mode of transportation fits into the bigger picture, and re-educating when new infrastructure changes that picture so that we can be good stewards of the road while co-existing with others.
“We just want to make sure that we’re being cautious, because even if we’re right, we could still get hurt.”
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