Damon Seils’ Consequential Council Model Gets Results – and Wins Big at the Polls

Posted on November 8, 2023 by patrick

We are the people we’ve been waiting for.

When I wrote my “Fundamentals of Carrboro” blog post, I shared this Barack Obama-ism to point out how most of the things we want to see happen in Carrboro are under the control of the Town Council, and that while there are state and federal programs and resources that can be leveraged, none of them are any use to us if we don’t take votes at the local government level, and then follow up with more action after key votes.

As Damon Seils’ service as Mayor comes to a close, I believe that he has understood this better than anyone in Town, and that we will look back on his final term and consider our current elected board to be “the Consequential Council.”

I had a conversation with Damon when he was transitioning from Town Councilor to Mayor and he told me something like this: “we spend a lot of time listening to and receiving reports. That’s useful, but our time as a group is valuable, and I want us to use more of that time to make decisions that move the town forward.”

Key Votes of the Consequential Council

The 2021 to 2023 Town Council is a testament to the decision-oriented governing style he envisioned, and the results include:

The vote to approve the final plan and funding to construct the 203 Project, successfully completing a 34-year old quest to build a library in Carrboro
The votes to review key drafts and ultimately adopt the final Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan, the town’s first ever holistic policy document for the Town’s future
The vote to adopt a strategy to build affordable housing on Town-owned land
The votes to re-open public engagement on the long-stalled Bolin Creek Greenway alignment and approve the Creekside alignment as the path to take into engineering design and construction
The votes to bring forth the first Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) amendments to eliminate residential parking requirements and adjust Planned Unit Development (PUD) regulations

Any two of these votes would be major decisions in a single council term, but on top of these, the Town Council also managed to process and reach resolution a community discussion about the future of the Fidelity Street cemetery.

Perhaps most importantly, Mayor Seils’ governing approach demonstrated that the Town Council could make decisions with transparent processes in four months or less for multiple policy actions that overlapped, with the Greenway and parking policy actions being the most recent example.

A Referendum Election on Consequential Election and Swift, Timely Governing

As the fall election season began, three candidates emerged that are aligned with Mayor Seils’ decision-oriented governing approach and policy agenda, including one candidate and incumbent Town Councilor who both had significant, direct involvement in the Carrboro Connects plan. All three candidates were clear and unequivocal supports of the Town’s affordable housing strategy, the completion of the greenway, and the use of the Carrboro Connects plan to update our land use rules.

Two other candidates emerged who expressed concerns about stormwater and skepticism of or outright opposition to the votes and policy agenda described above.

Last night’s election was a clarion call for continuing the success of the Consequential Council, with the Carrboro Better Together candidates receiving roughly 80% of the votes in the election. Mayor-Elect Barbara Foushee, who has been a strong supporter of the initiatives described above, ran unopposed and received 97% support from Town residents.

The Opportunity for More Consequential Councils

With these results, Mayor-Elect Barbara Foushee and the incoming 2023 – 2025 Council should be feel a strong wind at their backs to continue the policy agenda that the 2021 – 2023 Council has developed and supported, and even more importantly, to feel confident that they can move forward with the speed that that the current council has proven can work in town.

If our new council is successful, we will be able to remember the 2021 – 2023 Town Council as the FIRST of MANY Consequential Councils. May we be so fortunate.

One More Consequential Opportunity: Taking Administrative Action On BCG That Reflects Broad Consensus

As the current council completes its last few meetings in November, there is one more opportunity to do something small but meaningful that can act as the cherry on top of the big ice cream sundae of their accomplishments.

Now that the Town Council has adopted the Creekside alignment for the Bolin Creek Greenway, there is no reason to wait to update regional plans to reflect this. The DCHC-MPO’s long-range Metropolitan Transportation Plan currently omits the Bolin Creek Greenway due to the gag order on discussing the project that persisted in recent years.

The DCHC-MPO Metropolitan Transportation Plan instead contains one of the alternative alignments that we now know only reached the plan because our engagement processes prior to Carrboro Connects privileged the opinions of wealthy, mostly older white homeowners over everyone else. Getting the BCG into the DCHC-MPO Metropolitan Transportation Plan is crucial because it is the gateway to federal funds that can help us complete the greenway.

The Town Council should instruct Town staff to immediately reach out to DCHC-MPO staff and request that they initiate an Administrative Modification of the MTP to remove the alternative Seawell School Rd alignment and to put the BCG Creekside alignment in the MTP instead.

We have had a 2021 Town Survey, the BCG engagement process, and now an election with pro-greenway and anti-greenway candidates that have all showed 70% to 80% support. There’s no need to have lengthy discussion or additional public engagement to make this change. I hope we can see this as a consent agenda item before December 5^th.

Congratulations to Mayor-Elect Foushee, Councilor Posada, Councilor-Elect Fray and Councilor-Elect Merrill. We have high hopes for you and are grateful for your willingness to serve.

An Open Letter to Fellow Carrboro Parents: This Year’s Election Is About a Plan to Make Our Kids Move Away

Posted on November 1, 2023 by patrick

If you’re a parent of a child under age 18 in Carrboro like me, I have some weird news to share: Carrboro has a plan to make our kids move away. Nobody thinks of it that way, and I don’t think anybody really intended to make this the plan for our town, but make no mistake – this plan has existed for some time, and it is WORKING.

First: We Need to Have Empathy for Our Children as Young Adults

Think of your favorite pictures of your children. No matter their age, you likely have some pictures of them under age 10 that absolutely make you melt. The joy on their face the first time they ate an ice cream cone. A loving hug with a grandparent. Our kids will always be our babies, and it’s both fine and loving to think of them that way.

But now use your imagination a bit and try to picture them at ages 19, 20, 23, 26 and 28. What is their life like? What are their hopes and dreams? Do they have a job doing something that speaks to them? Where do they live? Do they live close enough that you see them as much as you’d like to?

That last question is going to be partly answered by this election. But let’s unpack the plan to make our kids move away first, and then talk about voting.

Carrboro Runs On A “Send The Kids Packing” Operating System

Maybe your phone is an Apple device with iOS. Or perhaps it’s an Android OS phone. Carrboro’s operating system for building homes and businesses is called the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO). When you see the word UDO, think “BuildingOS.”

Here’s how it works: the Research Triangle Region of North Carolina, where we live, has been one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country for a long time. This creates a ton of demand for housing as new people move in and those already here have children who grow up and move out on their own.

Most of the UDOs communities in the Triangle, from big cities like Raleigh to small towns like Hillsborough and Clayton – have allowed a lot of housing to provide homes for newcomers, and importantly for parents – new households formed by those who grow up here. But not Carrboro.

In Carrboro, here’s what we’ve done instead:

1: Carrboro has built little housing in general

As the Carolina Chamber documented this year, in the 2010s, Carrboro welcomed the fewest new residents in any decade since the 1970s.

2: Of the housing that has been built in Carrboro, 84% of it has been for the wealthy

In the last four years, the Town has allowed only two residential buildings that are NOT single family homes to be built. One is the CASA affordable housing building, which has 23 apartment homes in the Town Limits (most of the project is just over the town line in Chapel Hill); the other is a single duplex somewhere in town. 84% of all homes built were single family homes. From a building permits perspective, 98.5% of building permits were for single family homes.

With such limited buildings, housing prices in Carrboro rose by over $200,000 for a single family home in JUST THREE YEARS. Notice by how much less prices rose elsewhere in Wake and Durham counties, which built more housing. Even the non-Chapel Hill/Carrboro portions of Orange County had much smaller price increases.

And in the period where barely any apartments or duplex homes were built, look what happened to rents from 2019 to 2023. Up $327 per month:

When housing gets so expensive so quickly, who moves in and who does not?

In the past decade, while only 25% to 35% of growth came from retirement age residents in Wake, Durham, and Alamance counties, nearly two-thirds of all population growth in Orange County came from retirees.

This means that if our children want to try to live near us as young adults after high school or college, it’s going to be economically VERY DIFFICULT for them to do so. Look at the comparative resources of different age groups in our society:

The Carrboro UDO “BuildingOS” is Working Effectively to Move Young People Away

In addition to not building much housing, Carrboro has created very few job opportunities for young people in town, and the chickens are coming home to roost. Even while Orange County’s population has grown by nearly 15,000 residents in the past decade, we’ve lost 33% of our young workers under age 29 in that same time period.

So Our Town’s BuildingOS Stinks – Is There Anything We Can Do?

YES! The great news at this moment in Town history is that for the FIRST TIME ever, the Town has a comprehensive plan called Carrboro Connects that is designed to repair and replace our broken BuildingOS or UDO with new, improved and updated regulations that will make it possible for more people and jobs to call Carrboro “home,” INCLUDING OUR CHILDEN, if that is what they want to do.

How Will the Carrboro Connects Plan Help Our Kids Stay Local?

First, the Carrboro Connects plan aims to remove barriers to building housing in general, and promote a greater variety of smaller homes such as apartments, duplexes, triplexes, and other buildings that are most likely to be affordable to our children when they are in their 20s.

Second, the plan recommends things like removing parking requirements, which could make it easier for us to create new job opportunities downtown and in the parking lots at Carrboro Plaza and the Shoppes at Jones Ferry shopping center. Got a kid who’s interested in STEM? Wouldn’t it be great if there were STEM job opportunities in wet lab buildings in Carrboro, and not just in Durham and RTP?

These positive outcomes will become our more likely future when the Carrboro Town Council makes enough changes to the Carrboro UDO so that it promotes the goals of the plan, and not the trendlines in the charts above. We probably need to make at least 50 to 100 changes to the UDO to get the outcome we need. The current council has adopted the Carrboro Connects plan, gotten started, and made the first two UDO changes last week.

Okay, This Sounds Great! But It’s Election Season – Are There Candidates Running Who Support Implementing the Carrboro Connects Plan?

YES! Four candidates out of the six running for public office support the Carrboro Connects plan instead of sticking with the send-our-kids-packing status quo. Those candidates are:

For Mayor: Barbara Foushee

For Town Council:

Catherine Fray
Jason Merrill
Eliazar Posada

Each of them either directly participated in the development of the Carrboro Connects plan, voted to approve it, or supports its completion.

Each of these candidates understand that we have this fundamental choice in front of us:

Our status quo accepts changing the PEOPLE who live in town to be older, wealthier and whiter – to avoid adding new buildings in town.

The Carrboro Connects Plan accepts adding buildings in town, making them more numerous and varied – to avoid changing the PEOPLE who live and work in those buildings, allowing more people who already love Carrboro to stay here, and making it easier for our kids to stick around.

Barbara Foushee, Catherine Fray, Jason Merrill and Eliazar Posada have swept every endorsement of consequence because they understand this is our principle challenge as a community. I give them my unequivocal, most enthusiastic endorsement! See the other endorsements they have received below.

Meet the Carrboro Better Together slate!

Please support these excellent candidates by voting for them early ahead of Election Day! Information on early voting in Orange County can be found below. Remember – this year, for the first time, a photo ID is required to vote!

Two Things The Carrboro Comprehensive Plan Must Do

Posted on October 1, 2021 by patrick

On September 17^th, the Carrboro Connects committee and planning staff released its preliminary draft of the Carrboro Comprehensive plan. At 196 pages, it is a lot of material to absorb. I hope to take a closer look in the days and weeks to come and share more thoughts on detailed sections.

But there are two key things that I hope the Carrboro Connects committee, town and consultant staff, and elected officials will work to address before the final draft is released for a public hearing in November.

Must-Do #1: Describe Goals in Clear Language That Avoid The Need for Interpretation, and Confront Tradeoffs

What do I mean? On page 151, here is the Vision for the Land Use Chapter:

“Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources that promote the diversity, values, and character of the Town.”

Let’s unpack this. “Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources.” So far so good.

Next: “that promote the diversity, values…[of the town]” Good. Diversity’s meaning is clear.

Values? This could be open for lots of conflicting interpretations, but at the beginning of the document, the Plan makes itself abundantly clear about its values: “The plan is built on a foundation of race and equity and climate action.” (page 2, top left)

Finally: “…character of the town.” And now we have a problem.

What constitutes “the character of the town” may vary widely, depending upon who you talk to. The phrase is frequently used in public comments opposing the development of new buildings in town at public hearings, by asserting that the character of the town is best expressed in the heights of existing buildings. Others may find that the character of the town is found in the ability to live a life on foot here, a relative rarity in the United States, and particularly in North Carolina. Others may find the town’s character in its live music venues, or in the lively conversations that happen among groups of friends on the Weaver Street lawn/patio.

What if the working definition of “character of the town” assumed in the plan actually prevents the promotion of equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources? Does that mean we commit to inequitable and unsustainable use of land if we can’t satisfy this elusive “character” requirement?

This plan says it’s about climate action. Here’s Greta Thunberg at Davos:

“We must change almost everything in our current societies”

It’s not “…we must change almost everything in our current societies that promotes many elements of the status quo that we are used to…”

The Carrboro Comprehensive Plan will only live up to its full potential if it finds ways to evaluate tradeoffs in its Vision statements. Here’s a slightly different version of the land use vision that does more to affirm the plan’s foundational values at the top of the hierarchy of values:

“Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources that promote the diversity and values of the town, valuing outcomes that are informed by the character of the community, but not constrained by it.”

Must-Do #2: Practice Yoda Planning: Do Or Do Not. There Is No “Consider.”

On page 154, you can find strategy 2.2 : Preserve and promote the availability of affordable housing along key corridors and
nodes that are transit-accessible, walkable and bikeable.

Good! Very clear. But then move down to the action step (a):

“Consider proactive rezoning for greater density near transit nodes and Park & Rides,
consider the reduction of parking requirements and consider priority growth and
redevelopment areas in accessible locations.”

This text is a recipe for not taking action. The Town is years, even decades- behind other progressive jurisdictions with less robust transit than Carrboro on reducing parking requirements. Most thriving places have simply eliminated them; this is a basic best practice at this point. The plan should say things like: “reduce and/or eliminate parking requirements within 1/2 mile of downtown Carrboro by 6 months from plan adoption.”

On “considering” priority growth areas in accessible locations, not affirmatively doing so is almost missing the point of doing a comprehensive plan. The Chapel Hill 2020 plan designated Future Focus areas. The Durham Planning department identified Compact Neighborhoods for development. We certainly should come out of this planning process with priority growth areas. In this case, the plan should make a statement like: “Identify priority areas for growth and update the Future Land Use Map upon adoption of the plan.”

Conclusion

Comprehensive Plans are for setting direction and priorities. The more tradeoffs we address and resolve in the plan, the more clearly decisions will be made later. The more equivocation and planning for future study we do, the slower we move towards the foundation of race equity and climate action that we claim is so important. Wherever possible, we should specify actions over considerations. I hope that when the next draft is almost ready, one of the final things the Carrboro Connects team will do is screen each strategy and sub-strategy to get these two things right.

The Chelsea Theater’s Future is In Question. Is The ArtsCenter the Answer?

Posted on November 15, 2017 by patrick

This evening I caught the Herald-Sun article announcing that Chapel Hill’s Chelsea Theater may be near the end of its run. Having seen many films there and having given my spouse Chelsea gift certificates for many birthdays, this is a gut punch and a sad reckoning for arthouse and related films in Chapel Hill / Carrboro.

The article states:

“Now in the last year of our current five-year lease, with only a handful of months to go, we must make some serious choices about the future of the Chelsea Theater,” the release said. “Given the advancing years of the current owner it might be difficult committing to another five year lease. And yet there may be some interest in continuing the legacy of the Chelsea.”

The theater is asking interested parties to reach out to the theater via email.

Cutting to the chase, unless there is some deep-pocketed film aficionado interested in taking over the labor of love that has been Bruce Stone’s stewardship of the Chelsea (and previously the Varsity), then there is one obvious organization to ask if they are interested in stepping into the breach: The ArtsCenter.

It wouldn’t be the first time an arthouse theater has gone the non-profit route to stay in business. The Coolidge Corner theater in Brookline, MA made the move in 1989. A/perture Cinema in Winston-Salem did, too, in the past 7 years.

What’s different from both of these other situations is that these locations were stand-alone operations without other infrastructure that they needed to develop to execute their plans. The ArtsCenter already has a box office, online ticket sales, a wine/beer permit, and people who know about running a theater, not to mention a non-profit board in place. Clearly there’s a space question to be managed, but 300 East Main has a few spaces that aren’t fully leased and maybe there’s a temporary opportunity that could be figured out while larger programming questions about the ArtsCenter’s footprint downtown could be managed.

So what’s in this idea for various parties?

For the ArtsCenter, it presents an opportunity to open up a new fundraising and stakeholder channel around arthouse films like the two theaters above, in addition to embracing a new level of film engagement.

For Carrboro, it’s a potential downtown economic development opportunity that fits with the town’s brand that is authentic, artistic, and independent.

For film fans, it’s a chance to put their money where their mouth is and support the Chelsea as the community institution it is. Our household currently buys tickets to ArtsCenter events a la carte. I’m certain that if the ArtsCenter made this move, we’d become members, and I bet others would, too.

What do you think?

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!

CB21 Exclusive: Jones Ferry Rd Mural Design Released, Public Hearing on Sept 1

Posted on August 22, 2015 by patrick

Randee Haven-O’Donnell, Michael Adamson, Damon Seils

While CityBeautiful21 is normally in the business of reacting to and commenting on news developments in Carrboro, today I have the opportunity to break some news – the design for the proposed mural on the wall near the Jones Ferry Rd and NC 54 interchange is being released in this blog post!

This week I had the opportunity to connect with Michael Adamson (MA), a longtime friend of Carrboro who has been shepherding the mural process along over the last two years, with significant contributions from BOA Members Randee Haven-O’Donnell and Damon Seils. Here’s what he had to say.

CB21: First, where is this mural being proposed?

MA: The mural would be painted on a large wall facing NC 54 beneath the Collins Crossing (formerly Abbey Court) apartments near where the on/off ramps meet Jones Ferry Rd. Here is a picture of the area from Google Streetview:

Rightmost wall face, facing off-ramp, is the proposed mural location near Jones Ferry Rd

CB21: Tell us a bit about how the idea of a mural at this location got started.

MA: It wasn’t my idea. My daughter Catherine Adamson, who lives near the mural wall and commutes by it twice a day, said to me, “Dad, a mural would look really good on that wall.” She suggested I take it on as a project. That was in September, 2013. I brought the idea to Art Menius (then director of the ArtsCenter) and Jacquie Gist (Carrboro alder). They smoothed the way to working with the Carrboro Arts Committee and the very fine muralist, Michael Brown. This was a complex project from the beginning because so many stakeholders were involved. The wall belongs to the North Carolina Department of Transportation so they have final say. And we wanted as much public input as possible, especially from kids who live in the neighborhood.

CB21: This intersection functions as a gateway to Carrboro for folks coming from places due west, including Snow Camp, Saxapahaw, or even further away in the Triad. (Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point) Was there a message about Carrboro you hoped to send through the artwork in this location?

MA: There are really several messages. One is the message of the process itself. We are sending a message to school children and their parents that we care about them. We want them involved. We went to the local schools closest to the mural site and engaged about 160 third graders in drawing self-portraits. They looked in a mirror and drew themselves. Michael Brown used those portraits as the basic material from which he created the mural image. No child can be identified from their portrait in the mural because the elements of the images have been mixed. But the children know that they inspired the art. That is the message to them.

There is another message to the other citizens in Carrboro and in surrounding communities. The Town logo, which is at the center of the mural, tells everyone that this is Carrboro and that Carrboro cares about kids. Carrboro also cares about diversity and this comes through in the fact that the portraits look like the kids, in all their variety and uniqueness. We wanted every person who looks at the mural to see someone who looks like them. The mural is a human rainbow.

CB21: You reached out to schoolchildren to generate material for the mural. How did they arrive at the idea of doing the self portraits?

MA: Michael Brown is a former school teacher so he knew that it is a common art class assignment for kids in 3rd grade to draw themselves. It’s a valuable exercise… part of learning about your own identity as you are growing up. He suggested to the art teachers at Carrboro Elementary School and Scroggs Elementary School that their kids might be involved in a project that would benefit everyone. Both teachers enthusiastically joined the project and the kids had a lot of fun. Michael Brown taught lessons to the kids… lessons about the history or portraiture and the basic elements of art. So the kids benefited directly and their art will live on for many years, seen by the passengers of more than 25,000 cars per day that pass the mural site.

CB21: Clearly there’s some math here. 100+ kids and you can’t fit all the portraits on the wall. Was it hard to pick ones to go in the final image?

MA: There are 7 portraits in the mural. These are composed of elements from the self-portraits of the 160 children who participated. This was in no way a competition. We did not want children to be singled out or judged on the basis of their art work. After all, these are 8 and 9 year old children. So it’s not about competition. It’s about having fun and doing the best art you are capable of. Some children will recognize an element in the mural that seems to come from their own art work. But there is no way to trace the final mural image back to any particular child.

CB21: Muralist Michael Brown, who has a tremendous body of work on local walls in the area, is involved. Tell us about his role.

MA: Michael Brown is the creator of the mural. He used the children’s self-portrait art as his inspiration, but he is the real source of the mural. Michael Brown and I have a great working relationship. I think that’s precisely because I have no artistic talent. I don’t pretend that I can contribute to the art itself. Michael Brown lets me take care of guiding the project through the process. Michael Brown did all the presentations to the Carrboro Arts Committee where the final image was decided on. And he will do the actual painting of the mural. We wanted to involve the children in the painting as well as the image creation process, but that was not possible at this site due to safety concerns. We hope that in the next phase of the mural we can have everyone in Town involved in the actual painting.

CB21: How is this project being funded?

MA: The mural has been granted $8,000 in funding from the Carrboro Tourism Development Authority.

CB21: On September 1st there is going to be a public hearing at the Carrboro Board of Aldermen meeting. What input are you and others involved in the mural process are you seeking?

MA: Well, first of all we want to make everyone aware of the project. The hearing will give folks a chance to learn about how the image was created and ask any questions they have about the art itself as well as the process of putting paint on the wall. People who come to the hearing can speak to the Board of Aldermen and express their opinion about the project and the art itself.

Public art has a purpose. That purpose is to stimulate people who see it to think and feel. And when people think and feel, that can cause controversy. Maybe some people will not like having a mural at this location. Maybe some people will not like the art work. It is rare to have any piece of art that is liked by everyone. The Carrboro Arts Committee reviewed the project and selected the particular image that we are proposing. And that committee is very representative of the arts community and the Carrboro community as a whole. But everyone has a right to their own opinion and a right to express that opinion. So we want folks to speak their minds. If you like it, say so. If you don’t, say so.

CB21: This is the first phase of the Carrboro Mural Project, but there are two more phases to come in the future. Tell us about those.

Yes, this first phase, which includes the Town logo, faces NC 54 and will be seen by many thousands of people every day. It is a simple, low resolution image that can be viewed as you pass by at the speed limit, which is 45 miles per hour.

The next phase of the project will be on the adjoining wall which faces Jones Ferry Rd. We don’t know exactly what image will be on that wall. It is also going to be viewed by moving traffic at a distance, but the cars will be moving slower and will be closer to the image, so perhaps we can have more detail in that image. The big difference with phase 2 is that there is a grassy lawn area in front of the wall. We hope this will make it safe to have regular citizens (and not just professional artists) involved in applying paint to canvas. The whole Town could be involved in painting.

And the third phase of the project will be on the wall along the Jones Ferry side walk. This will viewed by people standing still just a few feet from the wall, so we can have very high definition art on that wall. We hope to “panelize” that wall so that it can hold 25 go 30 separate art projects. And hopefully each of these can be designed and painted by citizens of Carrboro.

We hope that the first phase will be painted this Fall. In coming years, the other two phases will become reality so that Carrboro will be known for the very fine public art that graces the Jones Ferry gateway to the town.

CB21 Commentary:

In closing, I’m grateful to Michael Adamson for taking the time to discuss the mural, and I encourage CB21 readers to attend the public hearing On September 1st at Carrboro Town Hall. Personally, I support the mural for a variety of reasons, but the primary reason is that it represents the expression of a core value in this town: the notion that within everyone is the capacity for art, and that Carrboro is a place that gives everyone the opportunity, space, and freedom to be a contributor to that culture. Anyone wanting to find out more can visit the Carrboro Mural Facebook Page. Without further ado, here is the final mural image by Michael Brown! (Click to enlarge!)

Final Carrboro Mural Image

Key Take-away From Summer Streets: It’s Time For Autumn Streets

Posted on July 22, 2015 by patrick

Sunday, July 19th, from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm, Carrboro held its second “Summer Streets” (Herald Sun article) event, in which the block of Weaver St between Main St and North Greensboro St was opened to people and closed to cars. For the umpteenth time in the decade and a half I’ve lived here, the Town closed this portion of Weaver Street with no visible negative impacts to traffic or downtown in general.

As usual, people came out and enjoyed a calm public space, kids drew with chalk, and everyone generally had a grand time relaxing, even with 100-degree heat index temperatures. People did yoga, hung out in folding chairs just talking, and one of our Aldermen even held “office hours” for the second time during such an event.

What does opening a street to people do for a town? Stuff like this:

Kurt Stolka and his 3-year-old son walked around Weaver Street after playing a game of soccer in the street.

He said when there is traffic on Weaver Street, “I just can’t feel calm letting my kids play. You have to constantly keep an eye on them.”

But the Summer Streets program helps parents like him relax, he said.

Carrboro Summer Streets: Safe, Happy Kids Dancing on Yellow Lines

Kurt is absolutely correct. I took the picture to the right at the 2012 Carrboro Music Festival. I was able to take this photo because I did not have to hold DC’s hand in a vise grip in downtown Carrboro to provide protection from the greatest danger to children, cars. Why is this so important? Sure, I can take DC to Wilson Park, Carrboro Elementary School, McDougle School, or MLK Park and take advantage of any of the stuff there in the same way, but none of those places have the amenities of downtown in terms of food, commerce, and culture.

Back in May, WCHL reported that the Town was only going to hold three Summer Streets events, and to end them at 2:00 pm each time. This was due to concerns from “…local business owners inside Carr Mill Mall who don’t love the idea. They worry the street closures will keep shoppers away from the mall.”

Given the people-attracting quality a street closure can provide, I was baffled by these concerns. Fortunately, the latest Herald-Sun article reports:

“…[Carrboro Economic Development Director Annette] Stone said that after last month’s event, she sent out an email to business owners. She said she didn’t receive any negative responses and several businesses expressed support for the program.

Seeing as there appears to be broad agreement that there’s not problem here, let’s not take any more half-measures in managing what could be one of our community’s marquee public spaces- let’s set up an “Autumn Streets” program that starts the first Sunday in September and runs EVERY SUNDAY until the Sunday before Thanksgiving, from 8:00 am to 9:00 or 10:00 pm.

That would be twelve glorious autumn days to come downtown and relax, and twelve other great opportunities to try ways to program the block to engage residents. There are plenty of tourism co-promotion opportunities between UNC football games, 2nd Friday Art Walks, etc to take advantage of as well to engage visitors.

If you think this is a good idea, please email the Carrboro Board of Aldermen and let them know “I support weekly Autumn Streets!”

Transit Tourism Opportunity on Sunday 9/28: Carrboro Music Festival!

Posted on September 26, 2014 by patrick

Carrboro Music Festival

Well, it’s decorative gourd season, friends, and the weather looks perfect this weekend, AND the Carrboro Music Festival is Sunday. I expect to be over there by foot/bike/wagon or some combination thereof, but for Durhamites who feel like Carrboro is a long drive to hang out with 10,000 other music lovers taking in 180 local bands for free, then good news! For the first time ever, you can take Triangle Transit to get you to the festival, as long as you’re willing to do a little walking.

Route 400 leaves Durham Station every hour from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm on Sundays now, and drops you off on Franklin St in Chapel Hill at the Varsity Theater. Just walk due west down Franklin along maybe the nicest stretch of city street in NC, and you’ll arrive in the middle of all the music in about 15 minutes or so.

Buses head back to Durham from the Carolina Coffee Shop (directly across from the Varsity, where you got off) a little after the hour, with the final bus leaving at 6:12 pm.

Here’s a link to the Route 400 bus schedule. Download the Transloc App (Iphone or Android) to track buses in real time and locate stops.

Music starts at 1:00 p.m. so you can easily catch 4-4.5 hours of music before needing to walk back to Chapel Hill to bus it home. Have a great weekend!

Carrboro Town Staff Considers Replacing Fidelity St Bike Lanes with Car Parking

Posted on June 24, 2014 by patrick

Carrboro is a progressive town in many ways, but there are a few community characteristics for which the town really stands out- and one of them is Carrboro’s commitment to bicycle infrastructure. Carrboro is currently the only town or city in North Carolina meeting the American Bike League’s “Silver Award” standard and was home to the North Carolina Bike Summit just last year.

That’s why I was quite surprised to peruse Tuesday evening’s Carrboro Board of Aldermen agenda and find the following:

In an effort to better manage the Town’s parking resources, the issue of how to deal with the needs of longer-term parking for business employees arises. Some businesses have requested parking permits from the Town to allow all-day parking for their employees in public lots…The staff has been discussing two options that the Board could exercise in the interim to help with the immediate problem of employee parking. The first option was discussed at the April 15^th meeting and that is for the town to sub-lease out spaces in the Laurel and Weaver Street lots.. A second option that the Board of Aldermen could consider is to use Fidelity Street for permit-only, on-street parking, Monday through Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The street could hold an estimated 100 +/- vehicles. Permits would be issued to Carrboro business owners for use by their employees only.

This is a really bad idea for a lot of reasons that run the gamut from policy substance on bike lanes to policy substance on parking to symbolism to process. Before getting into all of that, though, here is the staff memo statement on the potential impact to the bike lanes on Fidelity St:

Allowing on-street parking on Fidelity Street would impact the bike lanes. Fidelity is a low traffic volume street and cyclists often utilize the traffic lane due to the width of the road and low traffic volume. The width of the street also encourages motorist to speed, therefore on-street parking may act as a traffic calming measure. The Town could paint the bicycle markings in the road, to increase safety. However, on-street parking does affect the Town’s overall number miles of bike lanes. Additional signage would be required to direct parking. The estimated cost of the additional signage is approximately $800.00 and street markings would cost an estimated $5000. This cost would be offset by the fees of the permits to park.

I think this is not stating the impacts clearly enough. What I think this paragraph is trying to say is that the proposal to allow on-street parking on Fidelity Street would REMOVE the bike lanes. The comment “The Town could paint the bicycle markings in the road, to increase safety” seems to suggest that after removing the bike lanes, the Town would paint a few sharrows on the street. As one of my colleagues recently tweeted after Streetsblog recapped a poor decision along these lines in Texas:

To avoid making this a very long post, I’m going to try to provide a quick rundown of a few detail-level reasons why replacing bike lanes with parking on Fidelity Street is likely a mistake, and move on to the two major reasons to try to come up with a better idea.

A Half Dozen of Reasons NOT to Remove Bike Lanes from Fidelity Street

The Town spent years waiting to repave Main Street with last year’s road diet, completing the “missing link” of bike lane coverage in town, linking facilities on Hillsborough Rd, West Poplar Ave, West Main St past the 605 building, Jones Ferry Rd, and yes, Fidelity Street. Now that we’ve linked all these facilities together, let’s not undo the linkage!
Removing bike lanes from Fidelity Street would be in direct conflict with the Two Guiding Principles (see Chapter 5) of the 2009-adopted Carrboro Bike Plan: “Assure safe and convenient bicycle access to all areas of the Town” AND “Promote bic ycles as a viable and attractive means of transportation.” Also not to be missed in this chapter is the plainly-stated Implementation Policy: “Provide bicycle facilities along all collector and arterial streets.”
Issuing parking permits for Fidelity Street only to employees of Carrboro businesses is more or less the removal of an open, all-resident resource (bike lanes) to provide a closed-benefit resource to a mix of residents and non-residents. (leased parking spaces for employees only) The likelihood of the town FILLING Fidelity Street with cars is unlikely when the majority of parking in town will remain free AND be closer to all the employers. Remember, even if only 25% of the spaces are full and the town doesn’t recoup the cost of repaving the street for a several years, the residents still lose their bike lanes.
It’s not clear the town has tried any real Transportation Demand Management (TDM) efforts with their own employees to address this issue; the fact that some of the materials in this item talk about Parks/Rec employees parking in the Weaver Street lot and sometimes even the Greensboro St lot suggest that more could be done here. There are at least 100 parking spaces at Wilson Park, which is about a 3-minute bus ride from the Century Center on the F bus. If the town really wants to promote parking space turnover downtown for local for-profit businesses, then a zero-cost step in the right direction would be encouraging non-law enforcement Town employees who work downtown to park at Wilson Park and take a 3-minute bus ride to and from downtown. I’m not sure how much parking at McDougle School is fully used during the day, but that is another right-on-a-bus-route location where downtown employees could be encouraged to park. Either of these approaches expands capacity downtown without dismantling a part of the bicycle network. Are there any incentives for town employees to carpool or vanpool to Carrboro? Does the town assist employees with bike purchases up to a certain amount? Maybe the town is doing these things already. If they’re not, they should try them.
Best practices in urban parking management literature often encourage curb pricing to promote short-term (1-3 hour) turnover and move long-term parking to decks. Carrboro presently encourages short-term parking in its deck and the Fidelity proposal puts long-term parking on a curb. It would be wise to consider if having our incentives flipped from the best practice position makes sense.
Random parking supply interventions without an overall strategy today are tomorrow’s grandfathered deals that set bad precedent. Let’s avoid doing these things.

But there are two BIG reasons why NOT to remove bike lanes on Fidelity Street and replace it with parking.

Carrboro Needs to Approach “Parking Problems” as “Access Problems”

The worst thing about this proposal is that it suffers from the “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” syndrome. The staff text is built on the assumption that since complaints have been lodged about long-term parking for downtown employees, they must be solved by creating new parking spaces. This orientation is part of the problem. Instead, the questions that need to be asked are:

Can we get some or all of the employees in question downtown without a car? Yes or no?
Can we do things to convert some of the “no” answers in question 1 to “yes” answers?
Can we better manage parking that already exists, downtown or outside of downtown?

These questions will widen the solution set if pursued in earnest.

But here’s the other big reason to keep bike lanes on Fidelity.

The Future Growth of Cycling in the US (including Carrboro) Depends on the Expansion of Facilities That Don’t Require BRAVERY to Ride On

If we really want to expand bicycling in Carrboro, we have to grapple with the fact that the biggest barrier to this outcome is reducing both real and perceived danger to people riding bikes from cars. Roger Geller’s excellent piece on the Four Types of Transportation Cyclists breaks down Portland, Oregon’s population into the following groups by their proclivity to bike for transportation (as opposed to recreation) purposes, and puts 60% of Portland’s population into a category he describes as “Interested But Concerned,” which he describes as follows:

About 60% of the population. These residents are curious about bicycling…They like riding a bicycle, remembering back to their youths, or to the ride they took last summer on the Springwater, or in the BridgePedal, or at Sun River, and they would like to ride more. But, they are afraid to ride. They don’t like the cars speeding down their streets. They get nervous thinking about what would happen to them on a bicycle when a driver runs a red light, or guns their cars around them, or passes too closely and too fast.

Geller goes on to emphasize:

No person should have to be “brave” to ride a bicycle; unfortunately, this is a sentiment commonly expressed to those who regularly ride bicycles by those who do not. There are many cities in modern, industrialized nations around the world with a high bicycle mode split. They have achieved these high levels of bicycle use through adherence to various cycling-promoting policies and practices. But, one thing they share in common is they have substantially removed the element of fear associated with bicycling in an urban environment…In these “fearless” cities septuagenarians are able to ride alongside seven-year-olds safely, comfortably, and with confidence throughout the breadth of the cities[1]. Making bicycling a more widespread and mainstream means of transportation in Portland will require substantially addressing concerns about personal safety.

The path to expanding bicycling as a pleasant and convenient choice in Carrboro (and well, most anywhere) is the path that develops infrastructure that is as safe as possible AND feels as safe as possible to people age 7 through 77. For the “Interested But Concerned” group, bike lanes are significantly better than no bike lanes, and Protected Bike Lanes are better still. Recent research has found Protected Bike Lanes have significantly increased bicycling where they have been built in several US cities.

Carrboro’s upcoming Jones Ferry Rd project will incorporate a Protected Bike Lane under NC 54 as part of the design. We need more facilities like these, not fewer.

Right now both the “Interested But Concerned” and more aggressive “Strong and Fearless” riders (see Geller’s typology) both have a choice that meets their needs on Fidelity – bike lanes for the former and riding in traffic for the latter. Removing the bike lanes damages the bike network for the largest groups of users.

So let’s work on access issues for employees who work in downtown Carrboro, and let’s give them choices to get downtown- to free up parking spaces for paying customers at our local businesses. But let’s not do it at the expense of our award-winning bike network that we’ve worked so hard to build.

Thanks for reading.

The Dream of Places Where Young Children Walk Freely

Posted on June 1, 2014 by patrick

Sidewalk in Park Slope, Brooklyn

In September of 2013, our family took a 1900-mile road trip up and down the East Coast to see an old friend get married and visit family. Along the way, we decided to spend a few days in New York City. I wanted to take a city vacation and see some of the public space, transit and bicycle improvements in NYC under Janette Sadik-Khan‘s management as Director of Transportation that I had become familiar with via Streetsblog.

DW liked the idea, and DC heard there would be carousels and was sold. While we had an enjoyable 7-hour visit to Manhattan, we spent most of our time in Brooklyn, where none of us had been before.

Driving on Hudson Parkway and some of the roads from Connecticut into Manhattan and finally Brooklyn left me a little white-knuckled, but after finding a place to park the car for a few days, I stepped out onto the sidewalk and instantly felt my blood pressure go down.

In Park Slope, where we were staying, with a few exceptions, the sidewalks are 10 to 18 feet wide pretty much everywhere, the main streets have two lanes of traffic plus on-street parking on both sides, and the minor streets have one lane of traffic and on-street parking on both sides.

Typical Intersection in Park Slope, Brooklyn

Quickly I realized that the physical environment generally put a much greater distance between DC and moving cars than we experience here in Carrboro. With the wide sidewalks, you already have a lot of safe space to walk, but then the parking lane adds another buffer the width of one car, about 8 additional feet, from moving traffic.

The blocks also have very few curb cuts/driveways to watch for traffic in between cross streets. This environment does a lot to reduce vehicle speeds, and we witnessed parents all over the place in Park Slope who let kids under five years old ride scooters down the sidewalks or walk freely without holding their hands, even on the busier avenues. Older kids (the ones below I’m guessing were 7-10 or so) were often walking to school by themselves.

Kids Walking to School, Park Slope, Brooklyn

I find that one of the most persistent sources of mental stress as a parent is keeping DC safe from traffic, everywhere. Talking with other parents, I know I am not alone in this, and we are right to be worried. Motor vehicle crashes are far and away the leading cause of death among children aged 0-19 once you get past prenatal problems and congenital birth defects. Put another way, within the realm of things parents can do something about, cars are the most deadly threat their children face.

While Brooklyn and NYC have tremendous amounts of pedestrians, and also their own challenges in terms of pedestrian and bike safety that advocates such as Twitter user @BrooklynSpoke are working hard to remedy, the basic amount of walkable, mostly safe urban fabric they have to begin with is enviable.

My key take-away from Brooklyn was that between the sidewalk size, street trees and parking lanes buffering the traffic, along with large public spaces such as Prospect Park and the DUMBO waterfront area, if we lived there for a month and DC began to understand how things worked, we could be a good deal less focused on holding his hand to keep him away from a potential distracted driver making a 42-mph mistake on a 35-mph road.

While we would not be able to discard vigilance entirely, we would spend more time in areas that our brains classified as “Safe zones” and less time in places where the dominant thought is “let’s walk, but watch out.” We’d spend more time focused on enjoying each other’s company and less on the threat posed by traffic.

Southern Village Greenway

Recently DC has started to really enjoy using a balance bike, and the only disappointment with this is that the number of facilities around where I can really safely let DC go is limited. The Morgan Creek Greenway in Southern Village is one such place, and I’m very grateful it was built into the community when SV was designed.

I know Carrboro has made a lot of strides to improve on-road bicycle facilities in the form of bike lanes, but as cities such as Copenhagen, Portland and even New York City are showing the rest of the world, the ability of the bicycle to become a truly significant community transportation choice greatly expands when there is a network of facilities for biking that are separate and safe from car traffic. Carrboro already has two such facilities in the Libba Cotton Bike Path and Frances Shetley Greenway. I’ll say more about these facilities in a future post, and why their benefits to the town are so important.

We also have an opportunity in the recent “Slow Zone” proposal for Downtown Carrboro, which would limit traffic speeds within the greater downtown core to 20 mph or lower. I hope to write more about the Slow Zone proposal in the coming weeks. In the meantime, as you’re driving around town, give a self-imposed max of 20 mph a try. It’s not that much of a change in your travel time, and is safer for everyone.

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