Carrboro Town Council Should Vote on Parking Reform This Week (May 16th)

Posted on May 15, 2023 by patrick

On Tuesday, May 16^th, the Town Council will discuss the potential of removing parking requirements in town for the first time.

The Short Story: All of the information the Town Council needs to make a decision about parking requirements is already in the public domain, and there is no additional research that can be undertaken to further illuminate the policy question. To take an affirmative, meaningful step towards the goals of Climate Action and Racial Equity that uphold the Carrboro Connects plan, THE TOWN COUNCIL SHOULD VOTE ON MAY 16^TH TO CONVERT ALL MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS TO MAXIMUM PARKING ALLOWANCES IN THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS:

Downtown Carrboro zoning districts
All non-residential parcels within ½ of mile of All-Day (J, CW, CM) and Express (JFX, 405) bus routes

AND ELIMINATE ALL MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS IN THE REMAINDER OF THE TOWN, WHILE REFRAINING FROM ADDING PARKING MAXIMUMS ON RESIDENTIAL-ONLY PARCELS.

Any alternative policy that requires developer negotiation with staff or council to meet a parking number is a version of the failed status quo and should be considered dead on arrival at the Council table.

The Bigger Picture: The town staff materials discussing the proposed parking policy change in the May 16^th agenda packet focus on highly improbable outcomes and do not mention climate change, or equity risks inherent in the status quo.

Before we get into the details, I want to make two key points. The first:

THE ELIMINATION OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS DOES NOT REQUIRE THAT NEW DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS HAVE ZERO PARKING SPACES.

201 N Greensboro street recently got a permit that did not use the town’s minimum parking requirements – they simply proposed a number that made more in line with the actual use they anticipate. The removal of parking requirements allows developers to bring in proposals with a number of parking spaces they think makes sense while meeting other project goals like street trees, affordable housing, and high quality design. It saves time and helps get us good projects faster.

The second key point:

THE PRIMARY GOAL OF ELIMINATING PARKING REQUIREMENTS IS TO MAKE GOOD DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS (INCLUDING THOSE WITH AFFORDABLE HOUSING COMPONENTS) CEASE TO BE FINANCIALLY INFEASIBLE DUE TO AN ARBITRARY NUMBER OF PARKING SPACES IN THE TOWN CODE THAT DRIVES UP CONSTRUCTION COSTS. REMOVING MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS STILL ALLOWS ANY DEVELOPER TO PROPOSE AS MUCH PARKING AS THEY WOULD LIKE.

The Details:

The Town Staff materials on the policy have several shortcomings we need to unpack to have a healthy community conversation about this. If you read the Staff Materials, you might have the following take-aways:

That we know nothing about how Carrboro residents travel today that could help us think about whether eliminating parking minimums has risks to the town.
That altering policy on parking requirements requires a certain level of transit service or it can’t be done.
That removing parking requirements raises the risk of a flood of automobiles into Carrboro city streets for on-street parking that will be so substantial that it will block fire trucks and first responders to reach emergencies, and these are potential outcomes even along semi-rural Rogers Rd.
That parking requirements have nothing to do with climate change, which is not mentioned in the document.
That it is not possible for Town Council will take an action any sooner than fall 2023.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly – it presumes that the status quo is less risky and more equitable than the potential policy change. Unrealistic risks that have not happened in other communities that have reformed parking are imagined in the staff memo, and the force that parking requirements apply to make mixed-use and mixed income housing projects financially infeasible – is only obliquely referenced.

The remainder of this blog post addresses each of these shortcomings in the staff materials.

ANALYSIS USING CARRBORO TRANSPORTATION COMMUTING BEHAVIOR DATA

If we care about slowing climate change, we must work to actively reduce the auto-dependency of our communities. However, the staff memo does the opposite, assumes a fully auto-dependent population, and assumes that for each new development, that every developer will underestimate the needs of their building, and that they will not provide enough spaces and produce spillover effects on town streets. But does every Carrboro resident drive everywhere? No. We have lots of data on this.

Nearly Half of Carrboro Commuters Carpool, Take the Bus, Bike, Walk or Telecommute

Here are the 5-Year Average Estimates for Carrboro commuting modes from the American Community Survey, the best publicly available data, for the years 2017-2021:

Drove Alone	Carpool	Transit	Bike / Walk / Telecommute	Total
55.3%	7.9%	10.9%	25.8%	100.0%

Method of commuting to work, Carrboro American Community Survey, 2017-2021

Prior to the pandemic, Carrboro was already one of the towns with the highest percentage of residents who DON’T drive alone to work in the Southeast. The work-from-home revolution has significantly contributed to the expansion of the Bike/Walk/Telecommute number above, and transit use in Carrboro remains at a level equal to or above that of suburbs of major US cities with mature rail systems.

What does this mean for parking use? It means being a two-worker, one car household in Carrboro is much easier than in other communities. It means that when I go downtown on good weather days, I’m much more likely to bike than drive. Our household of three has gone from being a two-car family to a one-car family for the past 18 months, and living in Carrboro makes it possible because we have transportation choices. As we permit new buildings, the new residents will have the same opportunities.

Carrboro literally welcomes new residents and helps them to drive less!

We don’t just see this in commuting data, though. We also see it in traffic counts.

TRAFFIC COUNTS HAVE FALLEN SIGNIFICANTLY IN CARRBORO OVER THE PAST TWENTY YEARS

What? Am I kidding? No. You can go fact-check me at the NCDOT interactive traffic count website if you want to.

Here are some daily traffic counts for key locations in town by year:

West Main Street in Front of Town Hall (total of all vehicles over 24 hours)

2003: 5,200 cars
2009: 4,500 cars
2017: 4,100 cars
2021: 3,100 cars

North Greensboro Street in front of Fitch Lumber

2003: 16,000 cars
2009: 13,000 cars
2017: 14,000 cars
2021: 7,800 cars

East Main Street by China Gourmet Kingdom

2003: 21,000 cars
2009: 18,000 cars
2017: 15,000 cars
2021: 12,000 cars

N Greensboro St West of Blue Ridge Rd (Close to MLK Jr Park)

2003: no data
2009: 6,200 cars
2017: 5,800 cars
2021: 3,900 cars

Again, here’s the link, go see for yourself.

The only place in town you see counts rising is on NC 54, because that is predominantly pass-through traffic in our growing region. Within town, our residents are driving less and biking, walking, and working from home more.

The final point I want to make here is that between 2000 and 2020, Carrboro also grew from 16,782 residents to 21,295! The town added almost 5,000 new residents and CAR TRAFFIC FELL ALL OVER TOWN.

WHY IS THIS DATA RELEVANT?

What we see in our commute data tells us that if we pick 20 Carrboro residents at random, 12 of them will drive to work alone, two of them will carpool, another two will ride the bus, and four will bike, walk or work from home.

But our ordinance in the staff memo (Attachment B, sections 1.100 through 1.300 of the Part I table) basically assigns one parking space per bedroom, or two parking spaces per unit. This is functionally requiring 20 parking spaces for the 20 random individuals above. We’re requiring too much, and making housing more expensive by requiring the unneeded parking.

THE LEVEL OF TRANSIT SERVICE IS LARGELY IRRELEVANT TO REMOVING PARKING REQUIREMENTS

If finding the “right” level of transit service to safely eliminate parking requirements was critical, we would see parking crises in towns with less bus service than Carrboro that have taken this action. However, towns in NC that have eliminated parking minimums include:

Graham (83% Drive Alone in 2017-2021 ACS)
Mebane (85% Drove Alone)
Albemarle (82% Drove Alone)
Mooresville (84% Drove Alone)
Gastonia (84% Drove Alone)

All of these places have significantly less transit service than Carrboro, and Graham and Mebane grow much faster than Carrboro does due to our restrictive zoning. Even during the bus operator shortage, the J bus still operates 15-minute service on Main Street and 20-minute frequency on the CW in the morning. The CM and JFX supplement with rush hour frequencies of 15 to 25 minutes, and GoTriangle 405 connects us to Durham every 30 minutes. These are excellent transit frequencies at peak times in any southeastern US city. Only the F bus, which only runs four daily roundtrips at this point, has a qualitatively different and noticeably low level of service. It is reasonable therefore to exclude the F but otherwise support parking policy reforms around the remaining All-Day (J,CM, CW) and Express (JFX,405) services.

If the towns above aren’t having parking nightmares with less transit and 30% more drive-alone commuters, why are we contemplating such outcomes in Carrboro? Surely if the votes to reform parking in these five other communities had created significant problems, we’d be able to find news of it. That doesn’t seem to be the case. From a qualitative point of view, if you haven’t been to downtown Graham recently, it’s jumping. Old buildings are full of new businesses and it’s an increasingly lively and pleasant place, and the elimination of parking requirements has been a key ingredient in activating old buildings with new businesses.

If these small towns with fewer transportation choices and greater auto-dependency can make these parking change without crisis, Carrboro, with its significantly larger transit, bike, and telecommuting mode shares, can likely do so without any noticeable impact on our streets, given our reduced traffic counts in recent years.

CLIMATE ACTION IS A PILLAR OF THE CARRBORO CONNECTS PLAN

It’s frustrating to see a document from the Town related to Carrboro Connects that is silent on climate change.

Councilor Slade has made repeated valiant efforts to bring climate action to the Council Table, and I believe that the Council is earnestly interested in taking action. Transportation is the largest source of GHG emissions in Orange County, and therefore is the biggest lever to push to move the needle locally to reduce GHG emissions. Requiring too much parking is fundamentally encouraging further auto use when we need to reduce it. Eliminating parking requirements doesn’t even discourage auto use, it merely stops over-promoting it. Developers can still choose to provide parking at a level that is out of touch with climate imperatives. Parking maximums, however, with their limits on ultimate parking supply, affirmatively discourage auto use, which is why I recommend it as the preferred policy at the beginning of this post.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Orange County by Sector

THE USE OF THE RACIAL EQUITY POCKET QUESTIONS IS INCOMPLETE

As a regular reader of Town Council packets, I observe that the Racial Equity Pocket Questions are primarily posed to consider the racial equity benefits and impacts of a proposed policy change, but not the racial equity dimensions of the status quo policy situation.

This is a problem as it assumes that the current state of affairs is inherently more equitable, even though the Carrboro Connects plan identifies many inequities in town that demand action more than additional study. The Racial Equity Pocket Questions are one of the best new practices in local governance, but they need to examine the status quo as vigorously as any proposed policy change for the best outcomes.

SOME OF THE ANALYSIS IS AT ODDS WITH CURRENT LOCAL TRENDS AND BEST PRACTICES IN TRANSPORTATION PLANNING

While several of the answers in the Racial Equity Pocket Questions in the staff memo are well-considered, there is also a good deal of unrealistic speculation that is at odds with most transportation planning best practices and what we know about relative life safety risks in our community. For example, the memo states:

“Unintended consequences include the congestion of small streets that are unequipped for street parking (as residents who live or move into the area still have cars). Congested streets could make it difficult for emergency services to access residences, could make the streets more dangerous for walkers and cyclists…”

First – development in Carrboro is so slow and so difficult due to our development ordinances, that it is not going to be possible to develop quickly enough in most of the town for this to become a problem. Removing parking minimums is usually a necessary, but not sufficient step to unlocking new economic development opportunities, mixed-use buildings that drive tax revenue for equity goals, and new affordable housing concepts. Unfortunately, the town’s development ordinances have many other hurdles embedded in them that will also need to be overcome. But this situation also means it will be impossible for a parking problem to overtake the town with any speed, especially in residential neighborhoods.

Second, this paragraph is embedded with the assumption that ever more car use is inevitable, even as noted above, car traffic on many Carrboro streets has fallen by 50% over 20 years!

Regarding congestion, the Town of Chapel Hill just added parking protected bike lanes to Franklin Street, and car speeds are slower and people walking and on bike report feeling much safer even though motorists might consider the street more congested. Many Vision Zero strategies that municipalities are using to reduce traffic deaths and life-altering injuries intentionally deploy congestion as a tool to slow automobile speeds.

From an overall life safety perspective, many more residents in Carrboro are injured each year by traffic violence than by fires in homes or businesses. Making streets fast for first responders mostly makes them fast for all other drivers, which puts everyone in town at greater risk every day, even if it gets a fire truck to a house a few seconds earlier on a much less frequent basis.

A second excerpt states: “Spatial analysis…—indicates most of the parcels in Carrboro’s two qualified census tracts (QCTs) as well as historically Black neighborhoods near Rogers Road and Alabama Avenue would be impacted by changes identified in this project.”

Again, this statement seems to be embedded with the notion that removing parking requirements will lead developers simply not to provide parking, leading to congest the sides of streets like Rogers Rd with parking on the shoulder of the street. Whether they are private developers or mission-driven ones such as a church, both have self-interested incentives not to do this. Private developers have profit at risk, and want to meet consumer preferences. In places that have a semi-rural built environment, such as Rogers Rd, the expectation will very much be for off-street parking, and developers will likely cater to that expectation to sell or rent their homes. Similarly, if a church or other mission-driven organization like Habitat for Humanity proposes a development, they will likely propose parking locations that work for their stakeholders, not those that straddle the road right-of-way. This is a significant amount of discussion for a risk that is unlikely to materialize.

WHAT’S THE MOST PRO-CLIMATE ACTION AND PRO-RACIAL EQUITY POSITION POSSIBLE?

On climate, sustaining minimum parking requirements is 100% in conflict with all climate goals, and is Anti-Climate Action. This consensus spans all kinds of publications, from Bloomberg to Mother Jones, and international transit advocacy organizations:

Climate Action’s Next Frontier is Parking Reform – Bloomberg

Why US Cities Are Falling Out of Love With the Parking Lot

To Tackle Climate Change, Cities Need to Rethink Parking

Maintaining minimum parking requirements is the bad-for-the-climate status quo that Carrboro must move on from on Tuesday night.

As mentioned at the top of the post, eliminating parking requirements still allows a developer to propose as many parking spaces as they would like for a project, even if that number of spaces encourages auto dependency. So eliminating parking requirements is progress from a bad status quo but is still only climate-neutral.

With required parking maximums that cannot be exceeded, the Town is explicitly directing developers to take positive Climate Action to bring forth concepts that double down on Carrboro’s strong mode share performance for biking, walking and transit, and to de-emphasize car use as much as feasible while still bringing new jobs and economic development to Carrboro.

Relative alignment of Parking Requirement approaches with Climate Change Mitigation Action

Regarding racial equity, BIPOC homeowners, particularly black residents, have been negatively impacted by systemic racism that discouraged bank lending and wealth-building through homeownership in minority communities over many decades. While adopting maximum parking requirements is a stronger climate policy than simply eliminating minimum parking requirements, applying maximum parking requirements only to commercial properties in Downtown Carrboro and within ½-mile of all-day and express bus services allows commercial landowners to lead on parking supply innovation while ensuring that BIPOC homeowners (and all homeowners) have the freedom to build as much or as little parking on their land as suits their needs. Taking the climate neutral approach of Eliminating Parking Requirements on residential-only land in Town is therefore positive movement on climate while also being a pro-Racial Equity position that does not add regulatory burdens to homeowners, including BIPOC homeowners.

IN CLOSING: CARRBORO CONNECTS CAN BE A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OR A COMPREHENSIVE WISH

Most of the data in this blog post is old. We know a lot. A plan is something you do and we have enough information to give us the wisdom to act.

Adding density to land in town on transit routes in small units offers one of our best chances to expand the stock of small multifamily homes that will have some legally binding affordable units, and others that will be attainable to 1 and 2 person households near the median income. But our parking requirements are probably the #1 barrier to making this happen.

So the land use reform vs affordability debate is on the table again Tuesday night, as it has been at every Town Council meeting since the Carrboro Connects plan was adopted on June 7^th, 2022. The median home price has risen about 5% (~$21,000) since plan adoption. Waiting has consequences.

Carrboro Connects plan is a great document informed by the most inclusive planning process the town has ever done. But without policy action, it’s a comprehensive wish, not a plan.

Let’s take a vote Tuesday evening, shall we?

Lloyd Farm Is Only “Doing The Wrong Thing Better” And Should Be Voted Down

Posted on October 22, 2018 by patrick

One of Canada’s leading urban planners, Brent Toderian, shares this slide with communities he consults in to spur discussion:

As the Carrboro Board of Aldermen contemplate the Lloyd Farm proposal Tuesday evening (10/23), they should know that they are clearly dealing with a case of Doing The Wrong Thing “Better.”

Despite years of discussion, the principal flaws of the Lloyd Farm proposal remain the same.

A Missed Economic Opportunity

We need to maximize our tax value per acre on parcels in Carrboro to better balance our commercial and residential tax base, and that means building up in a denser format. An urban grid with rectangular or square blocks makes redevelopment much easier in the long run.

Instead, Lloyd Farm gives us the limited value proposition of the Timberlyne Shopping Center and its strip mall-plus-outparcel format. Joe Minicozzi from Urban Three found that suburban Timberlyne produces a tax value of about $950,000 per acre while the taller, urban format Hampton Inn in downtown Carrboro produces over $33 million per acre.

A Missed Design Opportunity

The two most damaging design features of this proposal are the curvilinear road running through the site, and the poorly placed stormwater ponds that will make creating urban blocks on the site financially challenging or impossible for future redevelopers.

One needs only to view Durham’s Patterson Place in Google Maps to see how a suburban site can be laid out in a grid-like fashion to be infilled later. Twenty years after it was first developed, the Durham Planning department is doing exactly that, and a five-story Duke Medical office building and a Springhill Suites hotel are the first signs of a new, more vertical, higher tax-base per acre urban future at Patterson Place.

A Missed Housing Opportunity

Carrboro will not address its housing cost challenges without building significantly more new units, many of which could be built on such a large site. It’s also disappointing to see only senior housing being proposed. While there are housing needs for senior citizens in Carrboro, it is worth noting that older Americans are generally wealthier than everyone else.

Furthermore, the Town’s economic analysis indicates that the vast majority of the jobs expected to locate at Lloyd Farm will earn less than $15/hour, and are professions that are generally held by younger people. This proposal could have contained a significant number of micro-units in the 400 to 600 square foot size range so that people who worked at Lloyd Farm could live there, too, and walk to work- helping us be more inclusive in our housing while also reducing traffic.

So Where’s The Better?

The developer has made some changes to the original proposal. Getting buildings on the north side of the grocery store parking field may help that part of the site transform one day, and the addition of more floors of office space is better than those remaining one story buildings.

But while there is also a public gathering space/amphitheater designated, it does not have a real connection to the uses that would help activate it- the restaurants and retail. Instead, it is closest to the parking lot of an office building, and separated from those potentially synergistic uses by the beating heart of this proposal- the massive parking field for the grocery store.

Years of discussions have not changed the fact that the developer is basically following the punch list of a chain grocery store for their preferred suburban layout, where they work from the assumption that everyone always drives to the store, and that there’s no need to push back against that norm to do something better. This is the wrong thing to do in the 21^st century.

Carrboro cares about equity, works hard to make transportation choices possible, worries about how to grow the commercial tax base, and proclaims a desire to make a difference in a world where the IPCC just told us we have about 12 years to turn the tide on climate change.

Carrboro can do so much better, and it should. The Aldermen should reject this proposal and immediately get to work on a comprehensive plan to help guide developers toward those better outcomes. If you agree, shoot an email to boa@townofcarrboro.org and let the Aldermen know.

Comments for Second Public Hearing on Library Site at 203 S Greensboro St

Posted on October 3, 2017 by patrick

I sent some comments to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen this evening for tonight’s public hearing. Sorry for not formatting them better, but time was short! Here they are:

First, I appreciate Mr. Spencer’s efforts to capture what was heard last time- I think he got much of the input from the public captured well, and better still- I see it expressed in the new material he created.

Here are my reactions:

1. On the north side of the block, fronting Roberson Street, remove the drop-off lane. Drop-off-pickup lanes are generally a suburban construct so that traffic can keep moving at high speed. That should not be a purpose that is encouraged on Roberson. Drop-off and pick-up in the urban context should happen at the curb, and these movements help to calm traffic. Removing this zone allows for the extension of the sidewalk to the entrance to the underground parking.

2. Carrboro has a chance to do real street trees here. If the trees are against the building on Roberson, they do not act as effectively as a traffic control device, and provide less shade in summer. Put the sidewalk between the trees and the building, and it will be easier to look into what I hope will be big windows into the library, while providing more shade for people using the sidewalk.

3. The parking underground cites 88 spaces per underground tier. I think the project can function with two parking tiers, or even one, meaning either 88 spaces or 176. I suggest dedicating less than 20 spaces to Town Use and leaving the rest as public parking which would be Shared, Managed, Unbundled, and Paid. I talked about what each of these mean in my prior comments.

https://citybeautiful21.com/2017/09/19/development-at-203-s-greensboro-needs-less-parking-startup-space-to-complement-library/

4. The remote parking options continue to replicate the primary problem with how “parking” issues have been addressed in downtown Carrboro for years, which is the thought that there will need to be parking built, and that it should be a public deck. We ***MUST*** get beyond this limiting mindset and think about DISTRICT parking downtown where public and private lots contribute spaces to a PUBLIC PARKING DISTRICT.

What does this look like? Let’s say you do a one tier underground parking facility at 203 S Greensboro. 15 spaces reserved for the town, the remaining 73 are public. They get added to the Public Parking District. At any time when those 73 spaces are less than 85% full, it is free to park. When those spaces are more than 85% full, a price is added to help free up some spaces. This gets managed with smart parking apps like those in Chapel Hill, Asheville, and Durham.

How do we add private spaces to the Public Parking District? The parking study clearly shows that one of the emptiest lots in all of downtown is the Bank of America lot, right next to 203 S Greensboro. The Town, having set up the Public Parking District, approaches Bank of America and says: “We see you have 35 spaces that are mostly unused during the lunch crush time for restaurants. We have set up a software-managed Public Parking District. We invite you to put ten spaces into the Public Parking District, keeping 25 for yourself. They will be priced to keep them 15% empty. At times of day when they are 15% empty without charging, they will be free. For participating, after covering the cost of managing the system, the Town of Carrboro will provide some of the revenue received from pricing back to your business, and some of the revenue will go to the town to help fund access projects to downtown Carrboro, including Parking Signage and lighting, wayfinding, bike and sidewalk projects, and additional bus service.”

Once you have 10 spaces there, you approach another business- perhaps the lot owned by the folks who own the Clean Machine building. You add the Century Center Lot to the Public Parking District as well, running on the same rules. You keep going from business to business, and others will join. You will *FIND* additional parking it by freeing it from those private lots. Businesses who are open 9 to 5 can elect only to participate after 5:30 pm. Bars that open at 11 am can elect only to participate to 10:30 am.

This is going to cost orders of magnitude less than additional parking construction, and perhaps bring the Town and businesses revenue. It also means that someone in a minivan with 3 kids driving from Lake Hogan Farms who wants to park at 203 S Greensboro will *ALWAYS* find a space. That’s what pricing does. If you’re that parent, are you willing to pay $1.25 to have a convenient, easy place to park to take your kids into the library? If they can pay by smartphone app, the answer is definitely “YES.”

So let’s stop trying to site decks, and work on freeing private spaces by becoming the leader of a downtown Public Parking District, and invite private partners to join.

5. In terms of the site layout Jim Spencer has created with the space to walk between the buildings, consider whether an upper floor connection for the levels above the ground makes sense. This could provide a sense of enclosure to the space and also make it easier for employees to move around.

6. We’re trying to do economic development, right? Then this building should be five stories. The Level 3 floorplate should be replicated on Level 4, and again on a 5th level. We only have one downtown, and if we are tapering building height to transition to residents on the south side of Carr Street, we are literally reducing the economic capacity of Carrboro’s (population: 20k plus) most productive real estate to honor the theoretical aesthetic concerns of maybe 10-12 people. Folks who live next to downtown should be prepared for the buildings to get taller over time, and to their credit- those who spoke from the Carr Street neighborhood at the meeting seemed to understand this.

Development at 203 S Greensboro Needs Less Parking, More Startup Space to Complement Library

Posted on September 19, 2017 by patrick

On September 19, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen will be discussing a proposal to redevelop 203 S. Greensboro St into the Southern Orange County library and several other public uses for Town of Carrboro departments.The current plan significantly over-provides parking and under-supplies useful commercial space in a downtown whose own recent parking study found that there are over 1,280 unused parking spaces in downtown Carrboro (click here, see page 9 of PDF) at virtually all times of day, 365 days a year.

Before moving forward with this plan, the Board of Aldermen should modify the project as follows:

Reduce the overall parking program to 150 spaces, using only the below ground and 1st levels for parking.
Add a minimum of 8,400 square feet to the project on the upper floors that would be leased to private, taxpaying uses
Explore if building more sq footage brings cost per square foot down, especially if building full, flat floors across floors three and four
Pursue a partnership with American Underground to fill some of the space with startups, and/or use a commercial broker to lease the space
Allocate the 150 parking spaces as follows:
1. 20 spaces for use by Town (all departments combined)
2. 130 public spaces (can be used by library patrons, artscenter, town workers, etc as long as they follow parking rules)
Price the parking in the deck to keep 15% of public spaces free at all times, adjusting the price by time of day according to demand. If the deck can have 15% of spaces free without charging at some time of day, parking should be free in that time period.

Why The Aldermen Should Take These Steps

Let’s unpack these moves one by one.

1. Reduce parking to 150 spaces. Here’s the ground floor of the proposed building. South Greensboro Street is to the left, Open Eye Cafe is be directly above the building. The ground floor of our new signature Town building would be a 14,000-odd square foot library and 19,000 or so square feet of parking. As you go up, the pattern remains this way- about 33,000 sq feet of development of which 58% is parking and 42% is everything else. The below ground floor is 80% parking. This is just too much. If you look at the total program proposed, it comes out to 5.4 spaces per 1000 gross square feet (GSF) of building. To put this in perspective, malls and big box stores generally provide 4 spaces per 1000 GSF. After the administration in Washington signaled its intent to pull out of the Paris Climate accords, Carrboro put green lights up on Town Hall to signal its commitment to climate action. If we are going to build more parking for our public buildings than Southpoint Mall builds for its shoppers, then I would suggest we take those green lights down and stop pretending we’re committed to fighting climate change. A lot of communities don’t even have parking requirements downtown anymore (i.e. Durham) because they are working to help people use more sustainable travel modes by not subsidizing auto usage.

14,390 square ft of Library, 19,000 square feet of parking!

2. If we took out two levels of the parking deck, according to the cost per square foot and cost per space of parking for the Town in the June 20th presentation, we could add 8,400 square feet of space and pay the same amount to build the building as if we built 55,000 square feet and two more levels of parking. However, we would have more space to lease that would hopefully bring a return on investment to the Town over the years.

3. The cost of this building is projected at $250 per square foot. I am not sure if this is high, but the irregular shape of each floor to wrap around the parking deck may be driving the cost up. The Board should seek advice from Jim Spencer, the architect, on whether having more conventional floor plates on the third and fourth floor in lieu of parking would bring the overall cost per square foot down. If so, then the Town could consider even more square footage that could be rented to the private sector.

4. Pursue a partnership with American Underground. For those who don’t know, American Underground is the wildly successful startup incubator in the basement of the American Tobacco Campus in Durham which has since expanded to two more buildings in Durham and one location in Raleigh. Now that Carrboro has direct bus connections to Durham with stop one block from 203 S Greensboro and one block from American Underground(AU), it’s a great time to leverage a lot of the common cultural affinity between Carrboro and Durham and see if AU is interested in establishing a “Western Outpost” for their ecosystem in Carrboro. We may be able to offer less costly expansion than the increasingly expensive office space market in Downtown Durham, while still offering many of the amenities that both downtowns share.

5. Allocate the 150 spaces as follows: 10 for town employees, 140 public spaces. The current proposal has 30 spaces for Parks and Rec. If the Town wants to get businesses in downtown Carrboro to get their employees to stop using up public parking that visitors and customers could use, they should lead by example. Last year, a delegation from Chapel Hill and Carrboro visited a very successful mixed use project in Boulder, Colorado that had multiple users using one parking garage called Boulder Junction.

Boulder Junction in Boulder, CO has its parking Shared, Managed, Unbundled and Paid

Boulder Junction’s parking operates on four principles: it is shared, managed, unbundled, and paid. “Shared” means that any person can use any space; there’s no “parking for XYZ business only” signage. “Managed” means that there is a strategy for how the parking is to be used, and an entity providing policy and enforcement to ensure the strategy is carried out. (in this case, the city of Boulder) “Unbundled” means that if you rent space in the building, you are not automatically allocated a parking space- you must also rent spaces individually as well, whether you rent by the hour, day, week, or month. Finally, “paid” is relatively obvious. While the Carrboro Parking Study’s chief failure is no mention of the word pricing, the Town actually went ahead and priced the Rosemary Street lot by Carrburritos and Bowbarr recently, so we’ve crossed the Rubicon and now charge for parking in Carrboro. So let’s do it right. Let’s start where we are as a Town, and implement a system that lets the first 2 hours (or 3! or 4! or whatever we decide!) be free, and only thereafter charges the user. This system is deployed in the North Deck at the American Tobacco Campus in Durham, and people can pay using the Parkmobile app. It’s convenient, promotes turnover, prevents park and ride in inappropriate places, and allows for parking to be free as long as it makes sense.

Taking these four principles, a purist approach would put all 150 spaces into this system. But the Town has storage for some departments in the basement, and there are probably some needs for moving equipment in and out of the building for key events that should have those spaces reserved for town staff. But ten spaces should be enough.

Beyond those ten spaces, the Town should be encouraging downtown employees to park on fringe lots and either walking, biking, or busing to the core sites downtown (203 S Greensboro and the Century Center).

On page 20 of the parking study, you can see that VHB documented 151 cars parking for over 7 hours in our “2-hour stay” public lots. VHB estimates that 50 to 60 of these are town employees, and another 90 to 95 belonged to other downtown employees or UNC students stealth park-and-riding to campus.

I’m sure town employees who currently enjoying parking downtown may be disappointed with this recommendation. But hopefully they recognize that if they can park a little further away, they can support vitality for downtown businesses, and get a few more steps in to finish their commutes, or snag a CHT bus from a lot a little further away.

6. Price the deck for 85% occupancy. This is considered a best practice in the parking industry. If you set the price so that 15% of spaces are empty, then you can pretty much guarantee that with people coming and going, you will ALWAYS find a space at your destination. No more circling and hunting for a space. If demand for spaces is such that 15% of spaces are empty even if the price is free, then that’s what you charge – $0. Based on the Carrboro Parking Survey, it appears weekday lunch hours represent the greatest crunch given our current conditions. In this case, the parking at 203 S Greensboro might have a charge at lunchtime, but not earlier or later in the day. We’d have to set up the system and see. That said, once the system is up and running, businesses could opt in, just as they did in Asheville.

If you take these steps together, and only add the 8,400 square feet while reducing to 150 spaces, you still get a parking ratio of 2.4 spaces per 1000 square feet, which is higher than many downtowns like Carrboro require today. That’s a reasonable outcome to transition downtown away from auto dependence and towards greater economic vitality, while also delivering needed Town office space and the library everyone wants to see happen.

It’s time to do parking pricing right, on the Town’s terms, in a strategic way that balances our goals and puts us on a path to unlock the 1,280 spaces that are tied up in 140+ individual lots, while raising money for alternative modes. This worthy project is the place to start that new effort.

If you agree, please let the board know by emailing boa@townofcarrboro.org.

Roundabout Being Considered for Estes Dr and Greensboro St Intersection

Posted on October 17, 2016 by patrick

Did you know that NCDOT is considering removing the traffic signal at the intersection of Estes Drive and North Greensboro St in Carrboro?

There will be a drop-in meeting Monday, November 14th at from 4 to 7 pm in the Carrboro Town Hall Board Room.

Study Area for Potential Roundabout

Roundabouts have significant safety benefits as their design reduces 32 potential conflict points for cars to only 8, and 24 conflicts down to 8 as well for pedestrians- when compared to a standard 4-way intersection.

This intersection also provides a link to the Frances Shetley Greenway, so hopefully there will be an excellent bicycle interface between the two facilities. Make sure to stop by Town Hall on Nov 14th!

Lloyd Farm: What Happens When You Let a Grocery Store Chain Do Urban Design

Posted on June 27, 2016 by patrick

After several years of hearing suggestions for improvements from adjacent neighborhoods, elected officials, advisory boards and citizens from all over Carrboro, the folks at Argus Development have submitted plans for what they have always wanted to build here – a grocery-anchored strip mall. I first wrote about this project in 2014, nearly 18 months ago, and have talked to many Carrboro residents about it since. Very, very little about the proposal has changed and its chief flaws dating back to 2014 remain mostly unaddressed.

If I was a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen, I would vote to deny this rezoning application.

The most recent site plan attached to Tuesday’s packet is below. If you look at the link above to my prior post, you’ll see little has changed in 18 months. I’m going to list several shortcomings ahead of the image below.

The overall design of the site is simply too suburban, which makes it hard to redevelop into something better in the future. Some of the suburban features damaging this site layout in particular are the gently curving road from the top of the site the area down by the two stores surrounded by stormwater detention ponds. This roadway geometry and lack of buildings along the side of the road will encourage speeding through the site by cars.
Tax base efficiency for the town. This design incorporates several of the low-value per acre approaches documented in the 2014 presentation by Urban 3 to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce (click to see slides-they’re EXCELLENT!). In a town with a rural buffer, we need to do our best to maximize our tax value per acre on parcels inside the buffer to produce a better balance between commercial and residential tax base in Carrboro, and that means building up in a denser format. The site design for this plan incorporates the limited value proposition of the Timberlyne Shopping Center and the “Older Outparcel Format” on slide 18 with parking completely surrounding a building, providing a much lower value per acre (in this case, about $950,000/acre) than more urban building types such as the Hampton Inn in downtown Carrboro. (Over $33 million per acre!). Go to the final slide and look at the comparison of mall or strip development per acre with mixed-use at 3 and six stories. The Lloyd Property should be in the categories on the right hand side of the chart; instead, it is mostly in the strip mall category, with limited tax base per acre developed and a design that locks that in for probably 30 or more years.
The massive parking field in front of the Harris Teeter grocery store. I don’t think I have had a single conversation about this project that doesn’t involve someone lamenting the massive parking lot fronting the grocery store, and how much better it would be to have something more akin to Southern Village instead. This suggestion has been made repeatedly to the applicant, and they have done nothing to engage with this community request in their design. The most likely reason is that their client, Harris Teeter, has probably sent some middle management person to the site who looked around and said “yup, this looks suburban, it must have the suburban standard site layout,” which comes with a checklist that says, more or less- “if we can’t have all the parking right in front of the store in a massive parking field, the store will not make money. Our customers are simply too stupid to figure out how to use our stores otherwise.” Harris Teeter’s own store at North Hills in Raleigh shows this isn’t true, but since the corporate grocery office has labeled this “suburban” rather than “urban” they are shoving the standard design down our throats. Let me say that again another way- one of the most significant undeveloped parcels in Carrboro is being designed primarily around the needs of a checklist in a major grocery store corporate office, not the town’s needs and goals.
The two water detention ponds with the two outparcel sites featuring a triple drive-through (worst kind of drive through!) bank and another retail site are a pretty irreversible suburban set of uses that work to prevent a future urban street grid from being installed while also only supporting low-intensity uses.
No public gathering spaces. There are two locations titled “Plaza Lawn” on this drawing. Neither of them are likely to be used by many people and become the beloved community space that the Weaver Street lawn is. One Plaza Lawn (bottom left) is going to be nearly empty, all the time. With no adjacent uses other than parking, and a walking path to Old Fayetteville- the side of the site featuring the least pedestrian traffic, there’s no reason to be here. The Plaza Lawn in the curve near the top center of the site will have high-speed traffic on one side, and a retail/restaurant space on the left side. Perhaps there may be some spillover here if this is a restaurant, but if it is a retail store, this will just be another grassy berm that goes unused. Looking at these two sites plus the big green swath of land between the road and the detention pond north of the senior housing, there was plenty of space in this site to create a village green surrounded by active uses, but the parking for the grocery store was too important. Are you one of the folks who was really interested in a gathering spot, or are you interested in learning more about the failures of American “plazas,” and why the Lloyd Farm “Plaza Lawns” fail in the same way? Check out this neat piece by Neil Takemoto on the difference between Americanized “plazas’ and Italian “Piazzas.”
Age-restricted housing. My most recent post on Lloyd Farm covered the issues with Senior Housing instead of housing for all ages. Click here to read why going from apartments to age-restricted housing presents a dilemma when it comes to equity issues in housing.
None of the buildings have any relationships with the streets. They have relationships with the parking lots. This means that it will be harder to tear these buildings down and replace them with more dense development in the future, effectively restricting the future economic capacity of one of our limited commercial zones.
Virtually all of the commercial buildings are one story. Orangepolitics ran a great piece recently on how we don’t have space to receive small and growing companies, and we can’t get ANY of these buildings to have a second story with some space for the next business that breaks out of an incubator to move to?

Lloyd Farm Plan April 2016

In closing, I’m going to share a few comments from the advisory boards that I thought were particularly good:

Add multistory mixed use development with ground floor commercial with residential
and/or office use above, and increased clustering of buildings relative to the current site
plan. Consider the model of Southern Village. The current site plan has too many
buildings too far apart with too much separated parking. Building up and clustering
would reduce impervious surface and therefore more effectively address stormwater
runoff and flooding issues. – Environmental Advisory Board

And…

The Board recognizes the need for senior housing in Carrboro, but is disappointed with
the lack of affordable or workforce housing. We would like to see some of the senior
residences made available at workforce rates. A payment-in-lieu should be required as a
condition of the rezoning.- Planning Board

And…

The Board strongly suggests that the final plan reverse the positions of the grocery store
and the buildings facing it. The intent is to reinforce a residential buffer. It would also
serve to decrease the distance between the grocery store and the senior housing.
The rezoning should include conditions regarding architectural standards, including
uniformity of materials and setback of taller buildings in proximity to residential areas,
which mirror the Downtown Districts. The conditions suggested by the Applicants should
also be included, however condition #1 should be amended to reflect the change in
positions of the grocery store and the facing retail buildings.

It seems pretty clear that the rezoning is the last chance to get any improvements to the design or reconsideration of strategies, and I hope the Board signals that this proposal should not proceed unless these issues are addressed. Given we’ve been at this for 18 months formally and longer informally, I’m not terribly optimistic that we’re going to get much better by giving them a green light.

In closing, I want to acknowledge that I think that development processes that don’t make it clear what the community wants and expects make it harder for developers to come to reasonable win-win outcomes for the community. I understand that the proposed investment at this site is a big deal, but I also think a superior project would offer better upside for the town and the developer if they could get past the inflexible approach to the parking on the grocery store and the other conventional mid-to-late twentieth century design approaches they are taking to the site layout and organization. Honestly, I feel like the investors and the Town are leaving profit and taxbase on the table to cater to the checklist at the Harris Teeter corporate office.

Given that we already have a Harris Teeter with a dangerous, pedestrian-hostile parking lot in Carrboro, and that these folks don’t seem to have incorporated much of what the community is asking for, I think that denying this rezoning is reasonable, and that the town should then turn to establishing a process that the TOWN leads to establish what type of development is appropriate for this site. We can (and should) do better.

The Difference Between Space for Parking and Space for People

Posted on February 11, 2016 by patrick

This is a quick look at how much more space cars take up than people, visualized. While the context here is a street, think of it as a parking lot for a moment. Then, as you think about how to enhance what we love about downtown Carrboro, think about whether we need to focus on providing more parking downtown, or improving other ways to get there. See you tonight at the Carrboro Parking kickoff!

Carrboro Parking Study Needs Your Input Thursday Eve (Feb 11th)

Posted on February 9, 2016 by patrick

If you care about having choices in how to get to and enjoy downtown Carrboro, it is very important that you attend the Carrboro Parking Study Kickoff Meeting at Carrboro Elementary school Thursday evening from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

I’ll be there to share a simple message, and I invite you to join me to reinforce it. That message is:

I apologize for going large font on everyone, but really, this is the heart of the matter. People love downtown Carrboro because it is full of life, energy, commerce, culture, food, art, music, protest, you name it. And all of those great things come from PEOPLE. Some of them happen to come downtown in cars, but really, it’s the PEOPLE that make the magic. Cars don’t have wallets and shop in our stores. Cars don’t play in local bands in our venues. Cars don’t wait tables in our restaurants. PEOPLE do. The town staff, fortunately, seem to get this. From a 2013 staff memo sent to the Board of Aldermen:

In, Parking Evaluation, Evaluating Parking Problems, Solutions, Costs, and Benefits, a publication from the Victoria Transport Institute, the author notes, “A problem correctly defined is a problem half solved.” As the Board continues to refine its overall parking objective–from the continuum of creating a greater number of parking spaces, to encouraging more consumers to the downtown, to reducing the number of existing parking spaces, to removing automobiles from the downtown and thereby reducing the Town’s carbon footprint—it may become easier to frame potential policy changes and LUO text amendments.

Citizens need to encourage the Board of Aldermen to continue in this direction described in the staff memo. Here are a few strategic initiatives to consider that could move us in this direction.

The People Who Drive Downtown Most Often (and Stay the Longest) Represent the Biggest Potential Pool of Parking Spaces to Free Up: Employees If we can identify what barriers keep downtown Carrboro employees from coming to downtown by means other than a car, and address those- we can get all those people to work and free up a lot of parking capacity downtown without adding a single new space. The most obvious example here is that we have 33 restaurants and bars downtown, and while most places finish serving dinner in the 9:30 – 10:30 pm range, the bus service back to most in-town neighborhoods has a final trip leaving downtown before 9 pm. Workers may be able to bus in, but needing to drive home also necessitates driving in, and taking a parking space for the entire dinner shift in downtown.
Recognize That Not Every Access Strategy Needs to Be Used by Everyone In Order for Everyone to Experience Better Access The more people with cars who sometimes drive to downtown that we can help try walking or biking downtown, the more parking will be available for folks driving in from places where biking, walking, or using transit are not as easy. On some days, those people who can walk or bike may still drive, but working to make sure walking and bike access is assured for those within a closer distance makes it more likely that parking spaces are open for those coming from further away, or those not on a bus line.
Consider the Power of Many Small Changes Let’s consider a downtown employer with 10 employees, all of whom drive to work every day. Generally speaking, that employer will have a much easier time getting all ten of them to find a way to only drive 4 out of 5 days instead of getting two of them to stop driving downtown altogether. Either approach still reduces this group of ten’s collective demand for downtown parking by 20 percent. I doubt that there is any single strategy that will solve the downtown access issue, but a host of strategies that all temper parking demand by 3% here and 6% there can cumulatively have a big impact.
Identify the Ways That Parking Pricing Is Superior to Aggressive Towing, and Explain Those Benefits to Residents, Businesses, and Visitors If we charge for parking, and do it in a smart, technology-driven way, we get all of these benefits:

Gives visitors to downtown more choice in how long they shop
Costs taxpayers less to enforce than enforcing free 2-hour parking
Prevents all-day Park & Ride Parking to UNC in town lots
Makes it possible to find a lot with many open spaces online or by smartphone
Makes it more likely that visitors to downtown find a space easily
Reduces cruising for parking which leads to increased congestion and emissions downtown
Generates potential revenue for improvements that expand bicycle, pedestrian, and bus access to downtown
Helps generate revenue for businesses with parking when their business is closed

If you want more details about any of the benefits of Parking Performance Pricing, I wrote a detailed post here.

I hope you can attend the meeting Thursday evening- see you there!

New American Community Survey Shows Bike Commuting Explosion in Carrboro

Posted on January 5, 2016 by patrick

Bike Corral on Weaver St (photo courtesy Carrboro Bicycle Coalition)

There’s big news for Carrboro in the latest American Community Survey Data – bike commuting has really taken off in town in the last five years.

The most detailed, statistically reliable information we have on how people commute to work is now part of the American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS collects data every year, but has the greatest validity and reliability in its 5-Year Estimates. In December 2015, the Census Bureau released the 5-Year Estimates for 2010-2014, allowing for the first time ever a comparison to the 2005-2009 5-Year Estimates.

Here’s what the data tells us:

Workers age 16 or older living in town increased from roughly 10,100 to 11,900 between the 2005-2009 and 2010-2014 periods.
Percentages for travel mode to work in 2010-2014 were mostly similar to 2005-2009, with bicycle travel being the big change:
- Drive alone travel to work rose from 60.6% to 61.6%
- Carpooling fell from 13.0% to 11.2%
- Public Transportation fell from 14.1% to 12.5%
- Walking fell from 3.0% to 2.8%
- Bicycling increased from 2.9% to 5.2%
- Working from Home increased from 4.9% to 5.4%

The increase in people riding bikes is notable because it is a 79% increase in cycling over just five years’ time! This is a big deal. When one thinks about the cities around the US that have some of the best bike infrastructure, Portland has a bike commute share near 7% and Minneapolis is around 4%. While college towns tend to run higher than other types of cities, it is still encouraging to see how many more people have felt comfortable riding around town.

Why Did This Happen?

The Census data does not tell us any reasons why Carrboro residents are increasingly choosing to bike, but my theory is that after many years of adding bike lanes here and there, the road diet on West Main St that was completed in summer 2013 was a real game-changer because it linked FIVE different bike lanes that previously functioned as islands with a high Level of Traffic Stress section in the middle that was a big deterrent to biking. See the graphic below for details.

Pre-Road-Diet: West Main St Bike Network Gap

I saw a significant increase in my bicycle usage after this segment went into place, as I felt less at risk from cars in the road dieted version of West Main than the original configuration.

The bottom line: investing in bike infrastructure works. As the Town of Carrboro continues to expand the bicycle network, and solve pinch points and troubling sections where “Interested But Concerned” cyclists feel unsafe, we will continue to see these great results.

Since this data was gathered the Smith Level Rd project, with brand new bike lanes up to BPW Club Rd and Carrboro High School, has opened, and the climbing lane for bikes under NC 54 along Jones Ferry Rd will also be complete in 2016. This suggests we still have room to grow. I think 8.5% bike commuters is good target for the 2019 ACS. Let’s see if we can beat it.

Do you have a different theory for why people are riding bikes more than ever in Carrboro? Please share it in the comments!

Central Carrboro Traffic Went DOWN from 1997 to 2013

Posted on September 3, 2015 by patrick

More People are Riding Buses, Biking and Walking in Carrboro

Did you know that many traffic counts in Carrboro were lower in 2013 than in 1997? Yep. In 1997, Carrboro was home to roughly 15,400 people. By 2013, the Census reported that number as closer to 20,800.

Despite adding over 5,000 residents and seeing downtown job growth, there were fewer cars on the streets all over central Carrboro in 2013 than there were 16 years earlier!

You can see for yourself by checking NCDOT’s traffic count maps at the end of this post. But let’s take a look at all the counts that went down, and those that went up. Out of curiosity, I also looked up a walkscore at a nearby address.

Traffic Counts from NCDOT that declined between 1997 and 2013

W. Main St by Chapel Hill Tire/Akai Hana (4% decline; Walkscore: 83)

1997: 4,700

2013: 4,500

N Greensboro between Short and Poplar: (8% decline; Walkscore: 86)

1997: 15,200

2013: 14,000

Rosemary St at Chapel Hill / Carrboro Town Line: (20% decline; Walkscore: 85)

1997: 10,500

2013: 8,400

W. Main St east of Blackwood: (26% decline; Walkscore: 55)

1997: 5,700

2013: 4,200

West Main between Lloyd and Main/Rosemary Split (30% decline; Walkscore: 91)

1997: 24,200

2013: 17,000

Main St between Greensboro and PTA Thrift (25% decrease; Walkscore: 86)

1997: 12,500

2013: 9,400

West Weaver St between N Greensboro and Center St (29% decrease; Walkscore: 86)

1997: 9,200

2013: 6,500

Traffic Counts that stayed the same Between 1997 and 2013

N Greensboro St just north of Blue Ridge Rd (0% decline/increase; Walkscore: 13)

1997: 6,000

2013: 6,000

S Greensboro between Carr and Old Pittsboro (0% decline/growth; Walkscore: 85)

1997: 12,000

2013: 12,000

Traffic Counts that went up Between 1997 and 2013

North Greensboro St between Morningside Dr and Hanna St: (6% increase; Walkscore:34)

1997: 6,600

2013: 7,000

Hillsborough Rd between Dillard and Greensboro St: (6% increase; Walkscore: 35)

1997: 1,600

2013: 1,700

Estes east of N Greensboro: (11% increase; Walkscore: 65)

1997: 12,600

2013: 14,000

Hillsborough Rd between Pine and Main: (8% increase; Walkscore: 65)

1997: 2,500

2013: 2,700

N Greensboro St between Weaver and Main: (22% increase; Walkscore: 91)

1997: 9,000

2013: 11,000

Jones Ferry Rd between Old Fayetteville Rd and NC 54: (4% increase; Walkscore: 42)

1997: 10,600

2013: 11,000

NC 54 between Old Fayetteville Rd and NC 54/West Main St Intersection: (18% increase; Walkscore: 42)

1997: 15,200

2013: 18,000

So what happened?

Carrboro invested in other ways of getting around. According to the recently released DCHC-MPO Mobility Report Card, Carrboro:

Increased sidewalk mileage by 24% between 2005 and 2013, adding 7 miles of sidewalk- making it easier to walk around town.
Increased bike lane mileage by 24% in the same period, adding 3 miles of bike lanes
More than doubled its mileage of multi-use paths to 3.8 miles in total
Had buses go fare free in 2002 on Chapel Hill Transit. Many of the places with declines are along major bus corridors in Carrboro on the F, J, and CW routes.

The Mobility Report Card also describes Main Street in Carrboro as one of the region’s leading “Multimodal Corridors” – places with more than 25% of trips that are not drive-alone trips. Trips on Main Street in 2012 were 57% by car, 6% by transit, 27% by walking, and 10% by bike.

When you give people viable choices for travel beyond the car, they use them.

Source data found here:

1997 AADT Counts – Chapel_Hill-Carrboro-1997-aadt

2013 AADT Counts – Chapel_Hill-Carrboro-2013-aadt

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