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DURHAM – N.C. Department of Transportation engineers are preparing to allow Triangle Transit buses to take to the shoulders of Interstate 40 when the highway clogs up so they can keep to their schedule.
The experimental program is modeled on similar initiatives in 12 other states, Virginia and Georgia among them. DOT and local officials are expecting to launch it this spring.
“It’s a way to promote more bus ridership in advance of our big transit plans,” City Councilman Mike Woodard said Thursday after listening to a briefing on the effort.
As DOT systems engineer Meredith McDiarmid explained it, the basic idea is that Triangle Transit’s buses will be able to move out of I-40’s travel lanes onto the shoulder when prevailing speeds on the highway drop below 35 mph.
Once there, bus drivers will have to tailor their speed to keep it within 15 mph of the traffic in the interstate’s travel lanes. That means if other motorists are stopped completely, the buses will be allowed to move on the shoulder at 15 mph.
Buses will also have to give way to emergency vehicles and breakdowns that use the shoulder, McDiarmid said.
DOT will allow buses to use the shoulder on eastbound I-40 from U.S. 15-501 to Page Road, and on westbound I-40 from the Durham Freeway to U.S. 15-501, she said.
Workers will install special signs to warn other motorists that buses are able to use the shoulders there.
Other vehicles aren’t allowed to use the shoulder for normal movement. McDiarmid said police would keep an eye on things when the program starts to make sure people understand it’s a buses-only thing.
The experiment grows out of the state agency’s work with local governments and other interest groups on ways to combat the growing traffic congestion along the I-40 corridor.
So-called “bus on shoulder” programs began in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in the early 1990s. Officials there deem them a success and have since opened more than 300 miles’ worth of shoulder to area transit agencies.
DOT is targeting Durham County for its pilot project because I-40 here is largely free of “pinch points” that would force a bus back into the normal travel lanes, McDiarmid said.
The highway’s Durham shoulders are also all 10 feet wide, roomy enough to handle a bus.
She stressed that DOT officials had consulted Durham police about the program to make sure there were no law-enforcement objections.
That was good news to council members.
“I just have this vision of a bus trying to get back into a very congested, going-nowhere lane and a police car coming up behind them” to answer a call, Councilman Steve Schewel said.
“You are not the only one with that concern,” McDiarmid said. “When we asked Minnesota those questions, they said, ‘We don’t have a problem with that.’ Of course, those folks are really nice.”
She added that DOT officials think traffic on the Durham sections of I-40 for now is bad enough to meet the conditions for shoulder use only about 10 percent of the time.
“This section … does not stop every day and does not get below 35 [mph] every day,” she said.
Woodard stressed that he wants city, state and Triangle Transit public relations officials to work to get the word out to motorists, just because of the program’s new-to-North Carolina novelty.
“If you’re sitting on I-40 and all of a sudden here comes a bus on the right-hand side, that’s a different thing for us,” he said. “I encourage active communication on this.”
