Residents pressure Chapel Hill council to do more to protect cyclists, pedestrians
UNC student Ellie Heffernan went to the hospital after hitting her head on the sidewalk Tuesday night when her scooter nearly collided with a car on Hillsborough Street.
Her helmet split when she dodged to escape the driver, who had turned left into her path from the Union Apartments, she told the Town Council. If she hadn’t been wearing a helmet, it could have been worse than scrapes and bruises, she said, urging the town to mount a road safety education campaign.
“Drivers don’t know to look for pedestrians. This guy wasn’t even looking out for me,” Heffernan said. “He stopped, noticed he (may have) hit someone and sped off, and left me there in the road.
“Fortunately, two people were walking and came to check on me, but I also see a lot of people not wearing helmets, and that concerns me,” she said.
Council members spent nearly two hours Wednesday getting an update from staff and hearing from residents concerned about several crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists since Dec. 31. Last year, 16 of 24 pedestrians hit by cars were in marked crosswalks.
Since January, police have held 22 crosswalk enforcement operations, Chief Chris Blue noted. Three drivers were cited for failing to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk, one for driving more than 30 mph over the speed limit, and one for careless and reckless driving.
“We have ... grown increasingly concerned that while we work on those longer-term solutions, we continue to see disturbing driving behaviors in our community, with sometimes deadly consequences,” Blue said.
The hope, he said, is that increased enforcement, significant fines and potential liability will change some drivers’ behaviors.
Residents asked the town to do more, including to create a local anti-dooring law that would penalize drivers who fail to look for bikes and other cars before getting out of their parked cars. An anti-dooring petition submitted this week was prompted by a fatal Jan. 25 crash on West Franklin Street, in which a cyclist was thrown to the street when a driver opened his car door.
Crosswalk improvements, anti-dooring law
The council will have a chance to consider that in March, along with a possible “neighborhood slow zone” designation that neighbors can pursue, said Bergen Watterson, the town’s transportation planning manager. Blue cautioned that having an ordinance doesn’t mean there will always be a citation, but those crashes will be investigated.
Town staff also will work with the N.C. Department of Transportation to consider pedestrian improvements and potential changes to speed limits, she said, and with the Highway Safety Research Center to get better data about what’s happening and why. A school zone study this summer will look at crosswalks near other schools.
The town already has made smaller improvements, including flashing pedestrian signs installed Wednesday at the Estes Drive crosswalk where two middle-schoolers were hit and seriously injured in front of Phillips Middle School.
Additional flashing signs are planned at Estes Drive crosswalks near Somerset Drive and Granville Road, and more changes are coming in the spring as part of an Estes Drive connectivity project, she said.
Other changes could depend on NCDOT officials, since the state controls most of the town’s major roads and isn’t typically interested in projects that serve pedestrians and cyclists, Watterson said.
“We’re doing our best to improve the roads and the driving culture in Chapel Hill,” Watterson said, but the work that’s being done and will be done in the future is “not going to prevent crashes.”
“Humans are going to make mistakes, and crashes are going to happen,” she said. “The goal that we have is to make infrastructure and policy changes, so that crashes, when they do happen, they don’t result in serious injury or death.”
Identifying, funding town priorities
Several speakers said they no longer walk or bike in their neighborhoods, even though they felt safe doing so before moving to Chapel Hill. Others suggested the town take a less car-centric approach that could serve everyone.
Most U.S. car trips are less than three miles, said Alyson West, a Carrboro resident who works in Chapel Hill. Good housing and land-use policies are critical, as well, because that would help more people live closer to town, she said.
“These people would embrace town efforts to make it safe by bike, by walking or by transit. These people, like me, would gladly leave cars at home when they could,” West said.
Council members kept their comments short, but expressed support for working more closely with NCDOT, educating the public, and creating more bike and pedestrian connections. That could include “micro-connections,” which use less-travel roads, greenways, trails and public spaces, Council members Tai Huynh and Adam Searing said.
Council member Michael Parker urged the town to act quickly.
“If we view this as priority, just as we do with affordable housing, just as we do with transit, it should be immediately apparent to the council and the community at large how much we are spending on these efforts, so that we can make a judgment about whether they’re being adequately or inadequately resourced,” Parker said.
This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 8:39 AM with the headline "Residents pressure Chapel Hill council to do more to protect cyclists, pedestrians."
