Durham is planning bike lanes for downtown. You can have a say in what happens.
Durham cyclists can look forward to safer rides with bike lanes and traffic-calming features coming to three corridors in and around downtown
The corridors will get on-street bike lanes and connect downtown to nearby greenways and neighborhoods, making it easier for cyclists to get around.
The project will install the new lanes along
Foster, Corcoran and Blackwell streets: From Trinity Avenue to the American Tobacco Trail
Chapel Hill Street: From Pettigrew Street to Swift Avenue
Club Boulevard: From Broad Street to Washington Street
The project is part of the 2017 Bike+Walk Implementation Plan to make bike lanes and sidewalks priorities in the city.
“The facilities will provide a safe way for people to reach jobs, parks, schools and will also connect to Durham Station, the main transit hub,” said Erin Convery, the city’s transportation planning manager.
But first, the Transportation Department wants to hear from residents about what to include. Three meetings this month will seek public input.
Biking safely
There aren’t many bike lanes through downtown, said Mary Rose Fontana of Bike Durham, a local group that teaches people how to ride around the city and pushes for safer options.
She’s been living in the city without a car for about two years and rides her bike to most places, taking the American Tobacco Trail, or ATT, from where she lives near Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway to get downtown.
After the American Tobacco Trail ends at N.C. 147, the next opportunity to ride on a northbound bike lane isn’t until Trinity Avenue. The bike ride, partly without lanes, from the trail to Trinity Avenue in downtown Durham is about 25 minutes.
Having bike lanes to connect to the greenway trails and downtown neighborhoods would protect cyclists, she said. Most like her always think about the safest ways to get around and in downtown as there are few safer pathways.
“It is a little confusing at the end of the ATT as to where you can go because it ends,” she said. “There’s technically a downtown bike trail but it’s not clearly defined and it’s mostly the sidewalk portion of some of the streets so you’re competing against pedestrians, which is harder.”
Feeling safer is a significant need for cyclists in Durham.
“I do worry about my husband’s safety; I want to make sure he comes home,” Fontana said. “Most drivers don’t always think about if their spouse is going to get home because they’re biking and the road we live on isn’t designed for people to bike safely.”
The project overview
Durham residents will get to see and comment on preliminary designs for the corridors at the open-house meetings.
The corridors could include road diets, similar to the U.S. 15-501 road diet project a few years ago, which involved narrowing or removing car travel lanes to make space for bike lanes with buffers to separate cyclists from drivers.
Convery said the city has completed several road diets during resurfacing projects in recent years. One example is the busy Erwin Road where the vehicle lanes are narrow with added bike lanes, which the state Department of Transportation resurfaced three years ago.
She said the three corridors will also get traffic calming measures, such as raised crosswalks, to slow vehicle traffic.
Durham has several streets with added bike lanes and there are multiple projects happening this year including a bike lane vertical projection project on Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway from Hope Valley Road to Fayetteville Road.
Vertical projections add visual cues likes posts that signal to drivers that they shouldn’t drive or park in the bike lanes. These could also be added to the new bike corridors downtown.
The city has hired Raleigh-based engineering firm Mead & Hunt, Inc. to design the bicycle facilities on the corridors. The group is behind similar protected bike lane projects and traffic studies around the country including in Charlotte; Baltimore, Maryland; and Washington, D.C.
Meeting information
The three open houses will all be held downtown later this month.
- March 20: 5 to 7 p.m., Durham Armory, 212 Foster St.
- March 27: 5 to 7 p.m., E. K. Powe Elementary, 913 Ninth St.
- March 28: 5 to 7 p.m., Durham Coop Market, 1111 W. Chapel Hill St.
In addition to the open houses, the project’s team is engaging with downtown businesses where on-street parking may be impacted by the project, Convery said.
An interactive map will be available online starting March 10 where residents can comment on the project as well.
For more information go to durhamnc.gov.
This story was originally published March 7, 2025 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Durham is planning bike lanes for downtown. You can have a say in what happens.."