Carrboro Open Streets a Fantastic Success, Also Highlights Work to Be Done

Posted on April 25, 2014 by patrick

Palm Sunday weekend was great. The sun was shining, the allergy meds held the pollen in check, and Carrboro’s 2nd Open Streets event was about as picture perfect as it gets. Before I go into details from Carrboro Open Streets, a quick definition:

What Is An Open Streets Event?

Originating in Colombia in South America, and first called Ciclovia, an “Open Streets” event is one that closes city street space normally allocated to cars and gives it to people on foot, bicycle, skateboard, inline skates, a wagon- pretty much any non-motorized vehicle, for several hours at a time. With an emphasis on community, physical fitness, and green transportation, it is common to have bicycle riding and bicycle maintenance instruction, as well as fitness classes from martial arts to zumba, yoga and aerobics.

Within the United States, Open Streets events have taken place pretty much everywhere- New York City, Madison, WI, Minneapolis, Austin, Honolulu, Los Angeles, and smaller communities such as Roanoke, VA, Clearwater, FL, and locally, Durham and Carrboro.

Also, since these events are designed to highlight the benefits of bicycle transportation, I want to share how we got there, which I think illustrates some of the problems that the Open Streets movement is trying to address in the first place.

Getting to Carrboro Open Streets 2014

In the week leading up to Open Streets, DC made it clear that DC wanted not only to ride the balance bike AT Open Streets, but that DC also wanted to use it to GET to Open Streets. Seeing as DC wanted me to bring my bike as well, this presented a non-trivial problem for us. How were we going to cross key streets on the way to the Open Streets zone safely? When I walk and DC ride as a duo, if any sudden danger element intrudes on a situation, such as a distracted driver, I can literally snatch DC off the balance bike if I have to. Fortunately, we have never needed to do this, but when you’re walking your own bike across a street, this is not going to happen as fast, and in such situations, seconds count. DW was also heading to Open Streets, but she would be arriving via her own bike later, so parental tag-teaming was also not an option. There were at least five crossings where cars do more than 25 mph regularly between our house and the Open Streets.

Taking the Bus to Carrboro Open Streets

We settled on a two-part solution. Part 1: Chapel Hill Transit to the rescue! Realizing that the bus could get us pretty close to the Open Streets event, this cut down our set of complicated two-bike crossings from five down to two. DC waited on the sidewalk while I loaded my bike into the rack on the front of the bus, and then I carried DC’s balance bike onboard.

Once we got off the bus, we still needed to cross two streets where cars take corners too fast, because many of Carrboro’s curbs are far too gentle to calm traffic effectively. DC follows directions well, but is not yet skilled enough to cross streets while surveying the environment for safety threats and acting defensively without my help. So we settled on “the Fox and the Chicken” method, based on this old riddle, where I left one bike on the ground, put DC in my left arm and one bike in my right hand, and crossed the street. We then crossed back with just DC in my arms, and then got the second bike and repeated the child-in-one-arm-bike-in-the-other move. Then we went to the next intersection and did it. Again. Without the bus, this would have been 30 street crossings to reach Open Streets. We managed to do only six. I recognize that most people don’t have children in the age bracket that are beyond a stroller and not yet proficient in crossing a street on a bike; however, the fast-turn corners in town present different variations of this problem to everyone, but particularly our senior citizens and small children.

We Made It! Carrboro Open Streets 2014

Having successfully reached Open Streets without getting in a car, we immediately started checking things out. There was an outdoor climbing wall that looked like great fun and already had a line to try. Folks from the Recyclery offered to take our photo together with our bikes. We were told how we could get discounts to the Carrboro Farmers’ Market if we stopped by on our bikes. Another person invited us to a fitness class.

Neighborhood Loop Bike Parade

Someone announced that a kids bike parade/neighborhood loop ride was starting in a few minutes, and we decided that sounded like fun.

Helmet Check Before Kids Bike Parade

I did not get the gentleman in this photo’s name, but he did an excellent job leading the ride from Weaver St down Lindsay, down Poplar, and up Oak. He also gave the kids a short lesson in how to properly tighten a helmet and even adjusted a few helmets that needed tightening to be fitted correctly. Volunteers at each of the intersections watched for cars and stopped them as needed. As short as the loop was, it was still the first time DC and I have ridden on neighborhood streets together, which was a big deal for us.

Bike-On-Bus Practice

After the neighborhood bike loop, we ran into some friends in front of the Chapel Hill Transit “Mobile Mural” bus, which was there to let people practice putting bicycles in and out of the bike rack.

While chatting, DW joined us and then and got to try the bike-on-bus rack, which she reported was very helpful in allowing her to get used to how the bike rack worked without the pressure of wondering if everyone on the bus was waiting for her. CHT Operator Akalema was helpful and encouraging, and gave good advice that CHT operators are “not in there waiting impatiently for you to hurry up. We know how long it takes to get the bike secured, and we want it to fit in well just like you do.”

Bike Decorating and Obstacle Course

Weaver Street Opened

We then took DC by a craft table where there were all sorts of stickers, pipe cleaners, etc. DC’s bike was well-decorated within 5 minutes. DC then tried his hand at an obstacle course that featured riding through cones, up a ramp, and over the rungs in a bumpy rope ladder.

Self-Powered Smoothies

Next we got in line for the crowd-pleasing Blend-Your-Own-Smoothie on a bike stand. We picked strawberries, while others near us in line picked coconut milk, pineapple, and blueberries. I tried to let DC do the blending but the adult bike spacing between the seat and pedals was just a little too long for DC’s gait. I cranked the pedals for about 45 seconds total, stopping every now and then to see how pureed the drink was, until it was indeed, smooth.

Soon after we got lunch at Weaver Street Market and watched the cheerful Bulltown Strutters play up and down East Weaver Street and on the lawn.

Overall Take-aways

Later at home, DW and I were talking about the event, and we both had a few take-away moments from Carrboro Open Streets. DW noted the complete lack of the typical unhealthy food being served at a street festival- no fried dough, no corndogs, etc. Sure, anybody who wanted to get cookies, ice cream, or other fattening food doesn’t have to look far in Carrboro, but with the health/activity focus of the event, we agreed that this made sense. She also appreciated getting to see certain types of fitness classes that she might try another time.

DC was thrilled to “win” a frisbee for completing the bike obstacle course, and reported that getting to honk the horn of the Chapel Hill Transit bus was another favorite moment.

For me, my favorite part was the simple joy of having a significant stretch of pavement in town where I could let our child ride free a bit and generally not worry that DC was one distracted driver away from catastrophe. Thanks to Carrboro Open Streets, DC spent more time than ever on a bike last weekend, and experienced some considerable confidence gains in learning to ride.

The other recurring theme was the number of Carrboro residents I ran into who said in one way or another, “we should do this every week!” While it certainly would be unusual to have many of these activities every Saturday morning (Bike Blender Smoothies in December, anyone?), I think there’s definitely a potential upside to conducting a Carrboro Open Streets event more frequently than once a year.

What Next for Carrboro Open Streets?

To me, Carrboro Open Streets has implications for both transportation and tourism. I’ll start with the latter.

I spoke with Alderperson Randee Haven O’Donnell for a few minutes, and Randee pointed out that some of the folks surveying Carrboro Open Streets participants were finding that non-trivial numbers of people were coming to Open Streets from outside Carrboro, as local tourists from the Triangle region. Now that there’s a hotel in town, maybe we should consider pairing two to four Carrboro Open Streets events to be on the Saturday mornings that follow 2nd Friday Artwalks. This allows a visiting tourist to pair two city culture events in a one-night visit. It also allows visitors to experience the Carrboro Farmers’ Market as well.

On the transportation front, the more I read and the more I use bicycle facilities in our own community and others where cyclists are completely separated from vehicle traffic, the more I realize how critical such facilities are to getting the large portion of the population that would bike if it was safer and FELT safer. I freely admit that adding more facilities like this to downtown is challenging, but I think we should try to identify opportunities downtown (and throughout the town) for more bike/ped-only segments in the transportation network.

See you all at the next Carrboro Open Streets!

Pedestrian Crashes and Vehicle Speeds in Carrboro, 1997-2012

Posted on March 28, 2014 by patrick

Recently, the Carrboro Transportation Advisory Board brought a proposal for a “Slow Zone” in downtown Carrboro to the Board of Aldermen. A Slow Zone is an area in which traffic calming measures are deployed and speed limits are lowered to 20 mph to reduce the number of bike and pedestrian crashes.

Does this really matter for pedestrian safety? I decided to look into the data for Carrboro, and here’s what I found.

The Highway Safety Research Center in Chapel Hill has a queryable database for all sorts of crash data, including pedestrian crashes. I ran a query for Crash Severity and Estimated Driver Speed where that data was reported for Carrboro from 1997 to 2012, the full dataset.

The database counted the following number of pedestrian crashes by severity:

Killed: 2 deaths
Disabling Injury: 20 injuries
Evident Injury: 33 injuries
Possible Injury: 37 injuries
No Injury: 3 non-injuries

Considering that when nobody is injured, a report is much less likely to be filed in the first place, I threw the “No Injury” category out due to the small number of responses. While the number of pedestrians killed was also small, the gravity of the consequence led me to leave this category in the next step of analysis.

I then took the midpoint of the ranges of each speed reported for the various types of crashes. This means that for crashes coded “Zero to 5 mph,” I put the speed down as 2.5 mph. For “16 to 20 mph,” I put down 18 mph. You get the idea.

Then, using the number of crashes of each type, I created a weighted average speed in Excel for every type of injury that pedestrians experienced from cars reported in Carrboro from 1997 to 2012. The bottom line:

For those Killed, the average speed of the car involved was 38.0 mph
For those experiencing Disabling Injuries, the average speed of the car involved was 28.2 mph
For those experiencing Evident Injuries, the average speed of the car involved was 17.1 mph
For those experiencing Possible Injuries, the average speed of the car involved was 11.2 mph

There’s no mystery here- the slower the speed of the car involved in the crash, the less harm to people on Carrboro streets.

I’ve been following this discussion online as it pertains to New York City, where incoming Mayor Bill DeBlasio has realized that more people die due to traffic than crime in NYC, and the goal of #VisionZero – no traffic deaths in New York City, has become one of their key policy priorities for quality of life in New York. The graphic accompanying this post is based on NYC data, which shows that New Yorkers are NINE TIMES more likely to die when struck at 30 mph than at 20 mph.

Clearly there’s a link between vehicle speed and pedestrian crash severity in Carrboro as well.

I encourage everyone to check out the TAB’s discussion of the Slow Zone(PDF) before the Aldermen, and if interested, to view the data behind this post at the link below.

Carrboro-Ped-Crash-Data-1997-2012.xlsx

Orange County Wants Your Ideas For The Southern Orange Library Branch

Posted on March 24, 2014 by patrick

I was thrilled a few days ago to get a message from Orange County Library Director Lucinda Munger, announcing two upcoming public input sessions for the Southern Orange County Library Branch, now planned to be built in downtown Carrboro.

It’s great to hear that this project is moving forward and that the staff is thinking about how to make it a public resource that reflects the community. I asked Lucinda if she could expand a bit more on what type of input they’re seeking, and here was her response:

This is really the community’s chance to tell us about what they want this to be like: – what it feels like when you first walk in, what should it look like and what types of activities does the community want to see at this library that will service the not just Carrboro, but the Southern portion of the County. Also, they will be asked what do they think about the proposed site – pros and cons. Plus, the library will be starting an continual online conversation thru the Friends of the Carrboro Library Facebook page, www.facebook.com/OCSouthernBranchLibrary, and an online survey – with the same questions as at the meeting – beginning March 25.

Here are the days and times for the meetings:

Tuesday, March 25: 6 to 8 p.m., Hickory Tavern, 370-110 E. Main Street, Carrboro
Saturday, April 12: 12 to 2 p.m., Town Hall, 301 W. Main Street, Carrboro

I’m definitely hoping to attend one of the meetings, and will be sure to post the link to the online survey when it is available. Come out and support your community library, and share your vision for the future!

North Carolina Carfree Commute Map 2012!

Posted on March 19, 2014 by patrick

Recently I started following @shanedphillips on Twitter after reading a terrific guest column he wrote at Planetizen. Shane lives carfree in Los Angeles and blogs at www.betterinstitutions.com. I’ve added him to my blogroll today- please check out his writing.

He is also hashtagging this month as #marchmapness on Twitter as he is creating carfree commute maps for various states. I asked him about NC, and he whipped this map up in less than a few hours. Thanks, Shane!

For Carrboro, three of the four primary Census Tracts that make up most of town have non-car commute rates of over 20%. If you zoom in you will see that there is a big change in non-car commuters from Census Tract 107.05 to Census Tract 107.06, where non-car travel drops from 24.9% to 6.4%. My first read on this was “well, the F bus goes up North Greensboro St and Hillsborough Rd, but then turns back south on Old Fayetteville Rd- that should explain it.”

But look again- while transit commuting falls from 7.6% to 4.8%, the real drop in non-car commuting comes from the loss of Bike and Pedestrian commuting. In 107.05, over 17% of commuters walk or bike to work.. But in 107.06, only 1.6% of commuters bike, and nobody walks. Also interesting is that if you go one Census Tract *further* away from the employment center of Chapel Hill / Carrboro, bike commuting actually *increases* to 2.6%.

To me, this is an indicator of how powerful proximity to a significant mixed-use destination can be on transportation choices. The Census Tracts closest to downtown Carrboro and Chapel Hill have very significant numbers of people commuting without cars.

What do you see of interest in this great tool that Shane created?

Carrboro #Sneckdown Photos from Previous Storm

Posted on February 9, 2014 by patrick

As we wait for the latest winter weather event to roll in, with possibilities of more heavy snowfall, I wanted to put up some of the #sneckdown photos I took last time. Here’s what I saw. First, let’s look at an aerial photo of the intersection of Davie Rd at West Poplar Avenue. Both roads are one car lane in each direction; Poplar Avenue also has a bike lane in each direction. But look at how much pavement the pedestrian must traverse to reach the sidewalk on the other side of Davie when walking east/west on Poplar. For perspective, the white bars are road marking stop lines; each is about one car width. The green line representing the pedestrian path is probably 4-6 times the width of a car.

Davie at Poplar Sneckdown Aerial

Now let’s see what happens when mother nature drops some snow on this intersection:

Sneckdown Groundview at Davie and Poplar

As you can see, a large swath of this area remains relatively untouched by all but a few car tires. The ability of a limited number cars to take this turn at high speed was prioritized over the safer crossing of pedestrians when this corner was engineered, and if we want to maximize walkability in town, we need to correct mistakes like these.

Filling the curb out through the red triangle in the first photo in this post would be a great step forward. The corner could be rounded a bit if that would help, but we want cars to turn right slowly here, not quickly into the path of pedestrians.

My second #Sneckdown site was a no brainer- this #Sneckdown is actually painted on the street! See below, West Main St at West Weaver St:

Sneckdown Aerial: West Main at West Weaver St

Perhaps the worst offending intersection in town for providing an accelerated corner on one of our critical streets, the area above in red should be paved and raised, because while the actual number of intersections here is low, the vulnerable condition that the white triangle of paint supplies to pedestrians deters greater walking activity at this intersection. Here’s a photo from the storm:

Sneckdown at West Main and West Weaver

Once again, a large berm of snow demonstrates how a pedestrian mid-intersection island would be welcome here as a perceived safety and actual safety improvement. The road diet on Main St has been a big improvement for pedestrians and cyclists on this corridor; getting a refuge island of some type here would be another great step forward.

In the meantime, keep your cameras at the ready if the weather shapes up to be snowy on Tuesday into Wednesday. We could have more #sneckdown photo ops!

Carrboro Parking Summit: Questions for Attendees to Ask

Posted on January 31, 2014 by patrick

If you’re attending the Carrboro Parking Summit as a citizen or member of the media, it is possible that at some point during the event, you will hear someone claim that Carrboro needs to build more parking downtown.

If you do, here are three great questions to ask anyone making that suggestion:

You are advocating that we build more parking spaces in Downtown Carrboro. Where should those parking spaces be built?
Who should pay to build those parking spaces?
How much should it cost to park in those spaces?

I look forward to hearing how it goes.

Rare Opportunity Today: Carrboro and Chapel Hill #Sneckdown Photography!

Posted on January 29, 2014 by patrick

It’s near midnight on January 28th as I write this. As everyone wakes up on the 29th, we will have a rare opportunity in the Triangle to see how the snow reveals which parts of our intersections are not needed to allow cars to move freely. Clarence Eckerson of Streetfilms (see 3-minute video below) has pioneered the art of taking film of leftover snow and plowed roadways to show where intersection treatments for pedestrians could be improved, while keeping traffic moving at lower and friendler-to-pedestrians speeds.

This type of photography has gotten its own Twitter hashtag this winter, combining “snow” and “neckdown”- the term for narrowing a roadway at an intersection, into “#SNECKDOWN.” Here’s a screen capture of a great example from a few days ago in Massachusetts:

So keep your camera handy on Wednesday and document our local #sneckdowns! Who knows when we’ll have this chance again…

A Few Things to Think About When Planning for Downtown ACCESS, Including Parking

Posted on January 18, 2014 by patrick

Carrboro Parking Deck At Sunset from Weaver Street Market Lawn

Carrboro Parking Deck (center, beyond The Station) At Sunset from Weaver Street Market Lawn

The Carrboro Board of Aldermen has pledged to take up downtown parking as one of their major issues to work on in 2014. Before they kick off this effort, I’d like to offer a few thoughts on how to frame this issue in a way that leads to a larger toolbox of potential solutions to get more people and wallets downtown.

Why is Getting Parking Right in Downtown Carrboro Critical?

Carrboro values local businesses and a local living economy. There is a limited amount of land in our downtown core, where most businesses that come to Carrboro want to be – and every surface parking space we add in the downtown core is a lost opportunity to put a more compelling use on it- another local business, more residential units, or a community facility such as a library. If one of our homegrown businesses wants to expand, and we are locking up an increasing amount of land as parking, the likelihood that business will find a bigger space to move into in Downtown Carrboro is reduced. At a certain point, the degree to which we commit to adding parking puts a de facto upper bound on how big a local business sector we can develop in our downtown, and businesses that want to expand may have to move out of Carrboro altogether.

Nobody wants this to be the case. So what can we do?

Strategy #1: Put People First. Stop Defining Parking Spaces As A Goal, Start Defining Parking Spaces as One Way Among MANY to Provide ACCESS for People

There’s a section of the memo the Town Staff prepared for a meeting in May 2013 that I think is particularly well-put together. It states:

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.

Some downtowns that are marginal business locations absolutely require free parking because they have no transit service, no arterial bike lanes and separated bike paths leading to the town center, no sidewalks to adjacent neighborhoods, and low residential densities immediately outside of downtown. They may also be located in communities that are not growing. If foot traffic is absent, then creating greater access for cars from greater distances is often perceived as critical. Frankly, this line of thinking often leads to the downtown being a bit of an old-timey sub-regional tourist destination with a proliferation of antique shops.

But the scenario in the prior paragraph is not Carrboro- in fact, Carrboro, the densest town in North Carolina, is in many ways the antithesis of this. Carrboro is a place people WANT to do business, and the numerous development proposals and construction downtown provide ample evidence this is true. Carrboro has excellent bicycle network connections to downtown, a decent sidewalk network, and a transit network that produces over 1000 weekday boardings in between Cliff’s Meat Market and Carrburrito’s.

The key point here is that if we want local business to thrive, we want more PEOPLE to walk through their doors. A person could arrive at a local business on foot, by bike, by bus, by skateboard, by taxi, or by personal car. We should focus most of all on increasing ACCESS to downtown for PEOPLE (who carry wallets/purses/cash/credit regardless of how they arrive). By doing so, we can help local business thrive and still accommodate additional growth downtown.

Strategy #2: Recognize That Not Every Access Strategy Needs to Be Used by Everyone In Order for Everyone to Experience Better Access

Pick up a Chapel Hill Transit map and you will see that all of the bus service in Carrboro is south of Homestead Rd. Now, so is most of the population of Carrboro, but still- if you live in Lake Hogan Farms and are thinking about downtown access, I think the following is a pretty rational point of view:

“Well, I’d love to get downtown without my car, but I can drive all the way to downtown much faster than I can walk 15 to 30 minutes to a bus stop and ride a bus that will take me another 8 to 10 minutes to get downtown. My time is valuable and driving downtown makes the most sense for where I live.”

But what about the much larger group of people who live within the area served by the CHT bus routes that touch downtown Carrboro? I think this is also a pretty rational point of view:

CHT Bus Heading to Garage by Flickr User bendertj

“Well, I’d love to get downtown without my car, but I’m going to a show at the ArtsCenter that probably ends around 10:00 – 10:30 pm and the last time the F bus leaves downtown is 9:20 pm, so I’ll drive even though I like using the F bus to go to UNC during the week.”

Adding one more parking space somewhere downtown adds storage space for one more car downtown, and adds access for one to perhaps a maximum of four or five other people in most cases.

Running a bus route later provides additional access to hundreds of people who live along the route. While not everyone in those neighborhoods will suddenly stop driving downtown and taking the F bus at night, in a town like Carrboro, more than a few of them will.

And the spaces that were used by those who are now taking the later bus- are freed up for the Lake Hogan Farm resident above who doesn’t have the same opportunity to use the F bus.

The same is true for biking and walking trips to downtown. 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.

Strategy #3: The People Who Drive Downtown Most Often (and Stay the Longest) Represent the Biggest Potential Pool of Parking Spaces to Free Up: Employees

When it comes to freeing up parking spaces in Downtown Carrboro, Annette Stone, the town’s Economic Development Director, recently noted:

“Then there are the unintended consequences of catching people in our enforcement net that we didn’t intend,” Stone said. “We are trying to prevent people from parking, riding and walking out of down town, [but] we are catching our employees that are down there. It just shined a big light in our face of what we have had to deal with.”

While this is a problem, it is also an opportunity, as people who come to downtown five times a week to work are the ones for whom a change in habits would have the most impact in freeing up parking for shoppers, diners, and show or concertgoers. So why might employees drive to downtown Carrboro despite having some alternatives to driving alone to get there? It’s fair to say that restaurants are one of our larger evening job categories. Here are the dinner hours for several downtown restaurants. See a pattern?

Sample of Restaurant Dinner Hours in Downtown Carrboro (Friday/Saturday nights)

ACME: 5:30 – 9:30 pm
Venable: 5:30 – 9:30 pm
Tyler’s: 5:00 -9:00 pm
Elmo’s: morning – 10:00 pm
Carrboro Pizza Oven: lunch – 10:00 pm
Amante Pizza: lunch – 11:00 pm
Glass Half Full 5:00 pm – 10:00 pm

The last CW bus departs downtown Carrboro at 9:05 pm on weeknights, including Fridays. On Saturdays, the last CW leaves downtown at 5:48 pm. For the F bus, the last departure is at 9:20 on weekdays, and the bus does not run on Saturdays. The weekday J route has departures as late as 11:35 pm (GREAT!) but on weekends, the JN route does not touch downtown Carrboro.

The key point is that with most restaurants having shifts end somewhere between 9:15 pm and 10:30 pm, any employee that doesn’t live in a few select spots along the J route who might take the bus to work will not do so- because there is no bus to take them home. The town should work with Chapel Hill Transit to explore how any contemplated night and weekend service improvements that may be coming in the next few years could make sure this employment market is served by any schedule adjustments.

Of course, extending the service span (the total extent of hours covered during the day and evening) of the buses would be used by some diners as well. However, the reason why getting the employees to shift from driving to another mode is so powerful is that employees leave a car parked downtown for 4 to 8 hours at a time, whereas a diner/shopper may park for 1-3 hours and then turn over a parking space to someone else.

Something that can be done even faster is promoting ridesharing to work in downtown Carrboro among downtown employees. The ShareTheRideNC website provides an easy-to-use portal to help workers who may have similar schedules, work near each other, and live near each other- figure out how they could coordinate commuting to work together.

Strategy #4: Consider the Power of Many Small Changes

Finally, I think the most important thing to recognize is that improving access to downtown Carrboro will be most successful with several strategies all helping a little. 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.

2014 should be an interesting year when it comes to this issue, and I look forward to seeing what happens next.

Interim County Manager Recommends Downtown Carrboro Location for Southern Orange County Library Site to Move Forward

Posted on November 3, 2013 by patrick

Carrboro Cybrary (Photo by Carrboro.com)

For anyone who has been following the discussion of where the Southern Orange County Library will be located, the County Commissioners will pick up the discussion thread again on Tuesday evening, November 5th. The library discussion is Item 7 in the 468-page PDF (55 MB!) agenda, and begins on page 369. The meeting will be held at 7:00 p.m. at the Central Orange Senior Center, located at 103 Meadowland Drive in Hillsborough.

At this point in the process, there are three sites under discussion, all located in Carrboro:

1128 Hillsborough Rd
401 Fidelity St
120 Brewer Ln

A quick perusal of the item shows that Carrboro Town Manager David Andrews sent a letter to Interim County Manager Michael Talbert on October 23 that states:

In response to your letter from October 1, 2013, and in particular in response to the inquiry on the Town of Carrboro’s interest in ‘swapping’ property located at 1128 Hillsborough Rd (Shetley Property) for the site of MLK, Jr. Park, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen have not taken an official position as to whether they will or will not support such an arrangement. However, initial conversations with members of the Board indicate that there is not currently support for such an action.”

Elsewhere in the document the County report indicates that the County staff believes that some type of a land swap is needed to make the 1128 Hillsborough Rd site feasible for a library location. On page 370, County staff also expresses the following concerns regarding the 401 Fidelity St site:

There is significant exposed weathered rock crowning in the center of the most logical building site for a potential library structure and associated parking, indicating sizable potential subterranean rock formations. County staff requested a legal opinion from Carrboro with regard to associated liabilities involving development adjacent to a cemetery-specifically related to the County’s interest in rock blasting that is probable should this property be chosen for library development. The Town Attorney provided an opinion. (See Attachment E within Attachment 1 -10/23/13 David Andrews letter) There are strong concerns from Orange County staff that probable blasting adjacent to a cemetery exposes the County to significant liabilities that will not only drive up the cost of the project, but may cause concerns with residents and stakeholders in Orange County. County staffs’ experience is that rock blasting and removal adds significant cost to a project ranging from a 5-15% increase of a project’s overall cost. Potential liability costs associated with disturbing existing cemetery burial plots adjacent to the building site through a probable rock blasting process are incalculable.

Given these circumstances, but also undoubtedly influenced by the Twitter-reported enthusiasm among County Commissioners and complete unanimity among the Carrboro Aldermen that the Brewer Lane site is the best, Interim County Manager is recommending:

1) Receive and discuss the letters from the Town of Carrboro;
2) Eliminate 1128 Hillsborough Road and 401 Fidelity Street from further consideration for a Southern Branch Library; and
3) Direct staff to conduct further Phase 1 Site Criteria Analysis for 120 Brewer Lane and provide follow-up information to the Board.

For many of the reasons enunciated in my March 2013 post on this issue, this is absolutely terrific news. It is also exciting to see from the October 21 Chapel Hill News article that Library Director Lucinda Munger is already considering how to tailor potential programming for a library at 120 Brewer Ln to serve nearby children and families, as well as close-by community resources such as the Skills Development Center and The ArtsCenter. This is inspired thinking and I look forward to hearing where her efforts lead.

I hope the County Commissioners will take Interim Manager Talbert’s recommendation, and follow a path that a lot of citizens want to take, not to mention saving the county $20,000 to $30,000 in the process by not studying two sites with clear shortcomings.

Weaver Street Market GM Responds to Panzanella Closing Post

Posted on November 1, 2013 by patrick

A few days after my recent post on the decision to close Panzanella restaurant in Carrboro, I received the following reply from Weaver Street Market General Manager Ruffin Slater. I have reproduced it below in full, without any editing, with his permission.

Dear Patrick,

Thanks for your email. I appreciate you sharing how much Panzanella has meant to you and your disappointment over the decision to close. The Weaver Street board creates the policies that govern the co-op’s direction and outcomes, but the final decision was my responsibility so I want to tell you more about the rationale and process.

Since the recession in late 2008, fewer community members have been eating at Panzanella. When Panzanella’s lease came up in 2010, we decided to renew for three additional years with the anticipation that the number of diners would rebound. In spite of our efforts, Panzanella has 25% fewer diners today than we did in 2008. In the meantime, expenses have gone up, including rent, utilities, salaries and health insurance. The combination of declining customers and rising expenses means that Panzanella has been incurring significant losses.

With Panzanella’s lease coming up at the end of this year, we needed to decide between two difficult options: closing, which would disappoint loyal customers and displace staff; or making a multi-year lease commitment, which would risk incurring continuing losses. In making this decision, I tried to weigh the interests of owners and employees as well as Weaver Street’s long-term goals.

I very much appreciate that there are many loyal customers like you for whom Panzanella means a great deal. As Panzanella is part of Weaver Street Market, we look at the restaurant with a holistic approach: is the business model sustainable and does it benefit the co-op as a whole to continue? When Weaver Street opened Panzanella it was one of the few restaurants featuring local food. Now there are many choices. While this is great for our town, it means that Panzanella doesn’t play the unique role that it once did.

Since we renewed our lease three years ago, Panzanella has been trying to attract more diners. Over this period, sales in each of our Weaver Street stores have gone up each year, while sales in the restaurant have continued to decline. The upswing in store sales after a difficult recession tells us that the stores fill a need with our owners and customers. In contrast, the decline in Panzanella sales tells us that the restaurant fills less of a need than it once did.

In an effort to keep Panzanella open, we could have slashed expenses. Panzanella has higher costs than most restaurants because it uses higher priced ingredients and offers benefits such as paid time off and health insurance. However, this approach would have compromised our food offering and created a second class of employee within our co-op. We could have tried a different concept or changed locations, but this would have required an even bigger investment and even more risk.

In an effort to keep Panzanella open, we could have continued to subsidize the losses with revenues from our stores. This kind of cross-subsidy makes sense if it helps to accomplish the co-op’s broader mission. However, subsidizing Panzanella precludes other potential uses for those resources. We receive a lot of feedback about ways Weaver Street should improve, such as making the food in our grocery stores more affordable or filling positions in the co-op that have gone unfilled since the recession. At some point, it doesn’t make sense to continue to postpone progress on these goals in order to keep Panzanella open

After weighing all the factors I made the difficult decision that the responsible choice was to close Panzanella. In order to develop a positive transition path for Panzanella employees, it was necessary to make a definitive decision about closing and to develop a clear timeline. This allows us to concentrate time and energy in placing staff in other positions within Weaver Street or making a smooth transition to a new job. We have started that process and I’m hopeful that it will have a positive outcome.

Thanks for taking the time to express your feelings about Panzanella. Panzanella has made a great contribution to building community and to growing the interest in local food. It has been a wonderful restaurant and it sad for it to close.

Sincerely, Ruffin

Ruffin Slater, General Manager
Weaver Street Market
437 Dimmocks Mill Road Suite 10
Hillsborough NC 27278
P. 919.241.1767
ruffin@weaverstreetmarket.coop

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