I agree that Durham as a whole, like Raleigh, is not “lack[ing in] investment in buses”. I think the difference comes from how skewed it is by region.
In June 2019, GoDurham approved a short-range transit plan that shuffled around how buses work in Durham. This plan upgraded some bus routes to run every 15min all day at a cost: it also cut several bus services that were a major part of very-low-income riders’ lives. The services were the Bull City Connector, Durham’s version of the R-Line, and bus routes in eastern Durham that served many residents in need. The latter was replaced by a rideshare subsidy, but that approach is filled with its own flaws like age, time, and frequency restrictions.
By the way, that’s not the first time those parts of Durham got passed over for infrastructure improvements.
For example... (click me!)
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Durham’s light rail attempt didn’t include a very meaningful part of eastern Durham until NC Central lobbied for an extension.
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Many of eastern and southern Durham’s bus stops are completely missing sidewalks, and their locations overlap with clusters of pedestrian injuries/deaths. The City of Durham has been trying to work on them, but they appear to have a long-enough backlog that the Bull City’s counterpart to @dtraleigh felt the need to write his own piece about it.
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Trees and other sidewalk and neighborhood improvements in Durham are more heavily clustered around western Durham. A Duke environmental scholar even found that tree canopy density correlates with segregation-era redlining maps.
Another correlation: look closely at the affiliations of the authors of the op-ed. Eastern Durham, Hayti, and Braggtown, the causes of interest for many of them, are some of the neighborhoods in Durham that were subject to those changes.
You know who else is annoying when it comes to regional rail? Norfolk Southern, the freight company that seems to like to cooperate with passenger rail as little as possible.
I ran into this article, and thought: is NS being belligerently obstructive against all passenger rail? Or are they just simply incompetent and terrible at rail scheduling? (If it’s the latter, could that mean they could become much more supportive of rail throughout the Triangle if they just learn to get their shit together?)