Locals seek safer street

For the second time in seven years, the N.C. Department of Transportation is examining safety at the intersection of Jones Ferry Road and Davie Road in Carrboro.

The intersection, which is busy with school children, a Chapel Hill Transit bus stop, a gas station and an unofficial day laborer pick-up site, features a crest in Jones Ferry Road that creates visibility problems for crossing pedestrians and for motorists turning left out of the Abbey Court Condominiums.

“There’s a growing frustration that NCDOT is really neglecting their duty to provide us with a safe corner,” said Hugo Olaiz, a resident of Abbey Court.

“I have been concerned for a long time.”

After the state studied the intersection and rejected requests for a crosswalk in 2002, residents lobbied the Carrboro government to re-examine the issue.

Carrboro officials met with Department of Transportation representatives Oct. 14 after a series of e-mails between citizens and Carrboro officials cited increasing frustration with the danger of the intersection and the process of requesting a study.

Trish McGuire, planning administrator for the town of Carrboro, said the Department of Transportation agreed to study the corner at the meeting.

Mike Mills, division engineer for NCDOT Division Seven, based in Greensboro, said the higher the number of accidents and the more severe the accidents, the more likely an intersection will be listed as needing what he called “spot safety” funds from the state.

Carrboro’s Community and Economic Development Director James Harris joked at the most recent neighborhood meeting at Abbey Court that the best way to help get a signal installed was to get in an accident.

Mills said that assessment isn’t very far from the truth.

“Sometimes that does bring it to the forefront, if there’s a bunch of accidents out there,” Mills said.

“Just one won’t mean you actually qualify for a signal.”

UNC professor Judith Blau, who has been an activist for Abbey Court residents, complained in an e-mail to Harris of almost having an accident at that intersection.

“I am sorry that you all missed my near collision yesterday. I just didn’t see the fast car barreling over the hill,” she wrote in an e-mail dated Oct. 7. “I would have taken a photograph, but I was sort of preoccupied.”

Citizens first requested a safety study in April at a community meeting at Abbey Court, but a vacancy in the position of the Carrboro transportation planner put the matter off until September.

Olaiz instigated the thread of e-mails between town officials that prompted a renewed effort to get a crosswalk or a signal installed at the intersection.

He complained to Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton and Town Manager Steve Stewart, both of whom said they could do nothing without the department.

“Residents have little or no say-so, but even local elected officials are virtually powerless in dealing with NCDOT,” Chilton wrote in an Oct. 7 e-mail to Olaiz.

“I am not passing the buck. I am telling you the tragic truth.”

Before a signal can be installed, be it a traffic signal or pedestrian crosswalk, the department has to conduct a lengthy study.

While visiting the site with local government leaders, state officials were able to get an idea of the problems.

“They spent a good amount of time looking at the intersection at Davie and one other intersection, talking about possibilities,” McGuire said.

“While we were there, there were many pedestrians, as usual.”

Mills said the study could take six to 10 weeks, starting mid-October.

“We’re looking primarily on what we can do to help the pedestrians in that area,” he said.

The department will examine traffic and pedestrian patterns and accident data before it decides whether to put the intersection on a list to receive a new safety feature, Mills said.

Once on the list, it could take more than two years to get the funding to install whichever safety feature is likely to be the most effective.



Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.