On World Day of Remembrance, city officials and residents remembered the dozens of people who died in traffic-related incidents in 2024. They also celebrated new safety measures -- new traffic patterns, more public transit, and the passage of infrastructure bonds.
In Durham, 37 victims lost their lives to traffic-related incidents in 2024, higher than the average of 25 residents who are killed in such incidents annually.
On Sunday afternoon, a group of city officials, city staff, and community leaders gathered in the Village Shopping Center in east Durham to honor victims of traffic violence for World Day of Remembrance. In 2005, the U.N. General Assembly officially adopted the third Sunday of November each year to recognize the holiday.
Outside the POOF Teen Center, members of the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization, known locally as the MPO, set up large poster boards showing a map of the MPO's coverage area and a zoomed-in map of Durham County. Each map included small orange dots to mark where traffic crashes had occurred between 2016-2023. Residents walking by stopped to ask questions and give feedback about how the MPO could improve street safety.
One resident told Durham's Vision Zero Coordinator Lauren Grove that Hillandale Road, a prominent commercial corridor, was "crash central." The city hired Grove as its first-ever Vision Zero coordinator last December to collaborate across departments to work to reduce traffic violence on the streets with the mission to bring the yearly death toll to zero.
Attendees moved inside the POOF center to hear brief remarks from Grove, Bike Durham Advocacy Campaign Organizer Gregory Williams, Mel Downey-Piper from the American Heart Association, and Durham city council member Javiera Caballero.
"Today is a somber reminder of the lives lost and the families forever changed by traffic incidents in our community this year," Williams said. "It is also an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate the investments that the city has completed to make our streets safer for everyone."
Durham city staff are in the process of developing a Vision Zero action plan, a roadmap to reducing traffic deaths and serious injuries by 50 percent by 2035, and eliminating them completely by 2045. Grove is collaborating with other city departments to outline strategies for better land use policy and safer infrastructure that prioritizes safety for folks other than just drivers. The city council recently updated its decades-old design standards.
"These plans represent a turning point for our region," Grove said, "but they're just beginning. To everyone here, your advocacy, your stories and your voices are vital. You help ensure that safety is not just a priority on paper, but a reality on our streets."
The group walked a half-mile from the Village to the crest of North Miami Boulevard where new traffic patterns were recently installed between Geer Street and Raynor Street. The design includes white bollards along the bike lanes, which are situated on the inside closest to the curb. Parking spaces were situated on the outside of the bike lanes.
Sean Egan, the city's transportation director, says this is the first time the city has implemented this style of road design. The desired effect is to protect cyclists from being "doored," which happens when the driver of a parked vehicle opens their door in front of a cyclist, causing them to swerve or crash. Egan has personal experience with the issue; his sister was seriously injured in a dooring incident while biking in Boston.
"We're still having a little bit of a challenge with neighbors getting used to this configuration, because this is the first place in Durham where it's been done," Egan said. "So we're working with the neighborhood and trying to make sure that there's a clear understanding of how this is different and new, but also why it's important, because it mitigates that risk and makes it safer."
Egan told the INDY that the municipal bonds that voters recently passed support additional work that's planned on Miami Boulevard, Holloway Street, and other streets in East Durham. Construction costs have been a barrier for some improvements in the neighborhood, leaving gaps in the transportation network. The bonds will give the transportation department more money and resources to tackle these longstanding projects.
"We're just going to have to dig in and get them done, because we've been kicking the can down the road for far too long," Egan says.
Over the past year, the transportation department has also worked with GoTriangle to increase the frequency of bus service, especially during evenings and weekends. Egan says he heard from a particular rider who worked full-time and took night classes at Durham Tech. The bus often left campus right as class let out, meaning that person would have to wait another hour before the next bus arrived. But since April, GoTriangle has increased route frequency for the eight route, which serves Durham Tech, and other routes that only have hourly service on evenings and weekends. The transportation department is also collaborating with city and county officials along with Durham Public Schools to provide service for some Durham high schools.
"We made changes in August to focus around North Durham," Egan says. "We're trying to help with the DPS school bussing issues. So we actually doubled service at both Riverside and Northern High schools. Southern is still one hour, but in the spring of 2025, we're going to double that up so that that school is served every 30 minutes."
Back outside the POOF Center, folks gathered in a circle holding small lit candles as Williams read off the names of the 37 victims killed by traffic violence in Durham in 2024. Traffic violence does not discriminate; the list of victims spanned a range of ages, races and gender. The location of the fatalities showed some consistency, though. Many incidents happened on state-owned roads and high-speed thoroughfares like Roxboro Street and Fayetteville Street, areas where the city transportation department and community advocates have pushed the NC Department of Transportation to overhaul the street designs.
Despite the roadblocks, Durham city officials are prepared to do their part to end traffic violence. Caballero says it was a World Day of Remembrance observance two years ago that she seeded the idea of putting infrastructure bonds on the ballot in 2024.
Now, the city will have more resources to see their vision for safer streets become a reality.
But changing the city's infrastructure takes time, and residents are ready to see results. Egan says the transportation department is making project speed a priority, and the results are starting to show. Drivers and pedestrians will notice new reflective white paint at many intersections and improved traffic patterns throughout Durham.
Caballero says that when advocates use their voice to affect change through processes like the bond referendums or participatory budgeting, the city should do a better job of highlighting those collaborations after the project is complete.
"There's been a lot of conversation about, how do we do a better job telling that story? I want giant signs. I want it to say, 'Brought to you by the voters of this bond,'" Caballero says. "So folks feel like they were part of it and it's not just staff who are getting the kudos. It's the folks who also are in the community who advocated for this thing. We all won because we did it together."