Durham’s Transportation Department wants to give one of the city’s busiest traffic corridors a major upgrade by developing its first Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route.
The proposed 7-mile route would run through much of Central Durham and link a number of important destinations including Duke Hospital and the Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center, Duke Central Campus, Ninth Street, Brightleaf Square, the downtown Durham Station, the main library downtown, Holton Career and Resource Center, and the Wellons Village shopping center in East Durham.
The project is in the pre-development phase as the city begins to scope out the route and determine its feasibility. Residents can complete a survey to share feedback on their transit needs.
Bus Rapid Transit is a souped up version of the bus system you’re already familiar with: often describes as a “rail-like service on rubber tires” with enhanced buses, dedicated bus-only lanes and more frequent service intended to make bus travel a more competitive alternative to driving. In regions like the Triangle that couldn’t get out of their own way to build rail projects, BRT is a less costly substitute that is easier to shift into gear.
Ridership through the proposed corridor is substantial. The route 3 stop at Wellons Village serves the second-highest number of passengers behind only the downtown Durham Station. Overcrowding on route 3 and route 11, which travels to Duke Hospital and the VA, has been a challenge, even with an increase to 15-minute service frequency. The transportation department has already invested in more frequent bus service and committed to additional road improvements to meet the demand for those routes. A “mobility hub” at Wellons Village, which would serve as a secondary satellite station in East Durham and include restrooms and a customer information desk, is also in the planning pipeline.
“This is a really promising corridor,” says Sean Egan, the City of Durham’s transportation director.
Across the GoDurham system, about 75 percent of riders live in car-less households. Public transit is their only source of reliable, cost-effective transportation to access jobs, healthcare, groceries, and education. BRT would allow passengers who rely on the bus as their primary mode of transportation a faster, more efficient means of traveling.
“How do we make it faster, more convenient, more reliable for folks, particularly those living in zero-car households, low-income, minority populations?” Egan says. The goal for the BRT route is to cut travel times in half. Think Speed but the bus shouldn’t explode if it doesn’t get from Brightleaf to the downtown library on-time.
“How do we make it quick, reliable and easy for them to get where they need to go?” Egan says.
In addition to a dedicated bus lane, the transportation department is looking at other road augmentation opportunities to ensure the project’s feasibility. Buses on the BRT line could receive preferential treatment with their own traffic light signals that would allow them to skip traffic and stay on time. Rerouting traffic away from railroad crossings, which can cause significant delays when trains are passing through town, is also on the table, but could require creating “contraflow” lanes on one-way streets like Gregson Street where the buses would travel in their own lane going the opposite direction of car traffic.
The transportation department added three full-time employees in this year’s budget to develop and implement a BRT plan. Durham joins its Triangle neighbors who have also started the installation process for a BRT system. Durham followed their blueprint when thinking about the most appropriate route to kick off the BRT network, Egan says.
“We really took a page out of the experience of our neighbors,” Egan says.
Last year, my colleague Chase Pellegrini de Paur reported on Chapel Hill’s efforts to create five miles of dedicated bus lanes to support BRT through the town’s primary north-south corridor, which connects to UNC Hospital. And Wake County editor Jane Porter reported earlier this month that Raleigh’s extensive BRT project is finally underway, with Phase 1 also connecting riders to healthcare facilities at WakeMed hospital.
“[Durham] Mayor Pro Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton says the test of a truly great city is whether you can get where you need to go without a car,” Egan says. “He grew up in New York, so we’re not going to be New York anytime soon, but we’re focused on the sidewalks with the bond referendum, we’re focused on improved bicycle facilities, better bus service, better train service. We want Durham to be a place where you can get where you need to go without having a car. And so the BRT is a huge step forward in that work.”
The initial project development activities are funded locally. The transportation department is working with consultants to help determine the project’s federal funding potential through a program with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) called Small Starts, which scores the project based on key factors like ridership volume, as well as population density and employment density along the route. Egan believes the project will score well in the process, but that’s no guarantee that the feds would back up the Brinks truck anytime soon. He also says the current administration is less eager to take on new projects and is more concerned about clearing the large backlog of projects that have already been approved for funding.
The transportation department is hedging their bets, should federal funding come as a slow drip, if at all. Egan says his team is working with local stakeholders to determine if the first phase of BRT could be locally funded as a proof of concept. Federal funding could then be used to expand the network to areas like 15-501, another major residential and commercial corridor, and possibly to Raleigh and Chapel Hill.
Funding isn’t the only hurdle. Durham will have to work with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), which hasn’t always gone smoothly, to make any significant changes to the roadways that much of the potential BRT route falls on.
Still, transit enthusiasts are hopeful that these steps toward increased bus service could be a tipping point for making public transit a legit alternative to driving in Durham, and the region.
“We see a pretty significant jump in ridership when we add frequency, so we expect that to continue as our existing riders make more use of the system,” Egan says. “As it becomes more and more competitive, more folks from across Durham are going to start saying, ‘yeah, this transit is easy, it’s 10 times safer than driving, I don’t have to worry about parking, and I don’t have to fight with some of the other drivers who are not very courteous. I could just sit and have a podcast on or watch TikToks on my phone, and next thing I know, I’m at my destination. So we really want to focus on that ease of use, convenience and travel time competitiveness.”
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