Tab Combs stands at the entrance of her neighborhood, Little Ridgefield. The Hickory Road resident points out how an existing path from Cleland Drive down the street would connect with a new side path proposed by the Town of Chapel Hill.
“We’re about 20 feet from the outside edge of Fordham Boulevard, and we’re standing where the existing path intersects with Ridgefield Road,” Combs says before pointing toward thick vegetation across the street. “The proposal would have the path shoot straight across to the other side there, parallel with Fordham.”
Walking toward the intersection with Hickory Road on the way to Combs’ house, Kim Stahl, who also lives in the Ridgefield neighborhood, brings up the difference in safety from beside Fordham and where they stand.
“The fear we were feeling standing at the intersection with Fordham is just not there [anymore],” she says. “It’s quieter; it’s completely safe and never a danger.”
This difference in proximity to motorists is a key reason why members of the Little Ridgefield neighborhood have opposed the plans of a paved greenway along Fordham. Both Combs and Stahl say they’re concerned over the safety of those using a path crossing Ridgefield Road at its intersection because of how quickly drivers turn off from Fordham. Stahl says the current path’s design, and its users’ tendency to stay to the right side while walking to Hickory Road, has not led to any safety problems in the past.
“I drive in on Ridgefield [Road]; that’s how I commute,” she says. “There have been several times where someone was hugging the curb and not crossing. I’m glad that it was not the [awful] situation it could’ve been.”
The neighborhood is proposing an alternative plan where pedestrians and bicyclists continue their typical method of traveling down Ridgefield to Hickory Road and using Hickory to reach Willow Drive. If the town officially declares Hickory Road a shared street, users of the greenway could travel the existing street system with updated pedestrian and bike lane markings.
Combs says the amount of bicycle traffic on her street, which is already a marked bike route by Orange County, clearly shows the popularity of the street for alternate modes of transportation while remaining very safe.
“I’ve done some informal counts while out walking my dog in the evening,” says Combs, “and you can easily see two dozen people riding their bikes in a half-hour window at the end of a workday. We know there is a lot of bicycle traffic through here.”
The shared street design is now one being considered by the project manager Bill Webster, who works for Chapel Hill’s Parks and Recreation department. Having worked on other greenways for the town before, he says he believes through signage, raised pedestrian crosswalks, and other methods, the town could make the gap between the paths safer.
“I think the safety issues are addressable,” says Webster. “That doesn’t mean there’s no chance anybody would ever get hurt, because somebody could get hurt no matter how well-designed a facility is. But I don’t think there’s anything about this project that’s so outrageously dangerous that it’s unconscionable to build it.”
Webster says this project is part of the town’s broader vision of building multi-use paths to improve connectivity between areas within Chapel Hill. The goal of the Fordham side path would be to eventually connect neighborhoods with the Blue Hill District, which has its own sidewalks and paths complete. This project earned funding from the state’s Department of Transportation thanks to a grant Chapel Hill applied for a few years ago.
One challenge Webster says the side path faces if built along Fordham Boulevard is how construction will eliminate the natural buffer of trees between Hickory Road residents’ properties and the thoroughfare. To meet state standards, there must be a substantial buffer of land between the path and the parallel road, meaning it would be closer to residents’ homes than the road. Webster says community members expressed their disappointment at public meetings about the project over the lack of a natural buffer to block the sounds of traffic.
“We would be able to replace some of it,” he says. “We’ve also [told] landowners we would be willing to put in fencing that would help with protecting properties from the noise of Fordham.”
While he says the neighborhood’s alternate plan of a shared street is an option for the project, Webster says he believes a downside is how greenway users would have to navigate away from Fordham and back to reach the connection to Willow Drive.
“If you are on foot, it would be a fairly significant detour to walk up [Ridgefield Road], go through the neighborhood, and then come back to Fordham. I’m just not sure how successful that would be from the perspective of a pedestrian. I personally don’t think it would affect bicycles much, but pedestrians I’m not sure.”
Combs and Stahl feel differently, which is why they signed a petition the neighborhood plans to submit to the Town Council at its November 13 meeting. Combs says she hopes it will lead to a town representative visiting Ridgefield and Hickory Roads to see how effective a shared street would be.
“What we’re asking the Town Council to do is to take a closer look at the situation the neighborhood is dealing with and do a little bit more due diligence,” Combs says, “[instead of] putting all this money into a project that we don’t think is necessary and we think will increase the risk of a collision between a motorist and [a path user.]
Webster says the Fordham Boulevard Side Path project has no current timetable beyond its design stage.
While I understand the desire of the neighborhood residents to retain their natural buffer I do not think they are taking into consideration the safety factor involved for pedestrians and cyclists to detour away from the visibility of being able to continue on a safe path that parallels a high traffic area back into a sparsely traveled private neighborhood. Regardless of how the paved path might travel I would choose to walk along the highly visible stretch of 15-501 rather than detour back into a less visible area for my own personal safety.
There’s no lighting on this particular stretch of Fordham, nor is there anything in the sidepath documentation to suggest lighting is part of the plan. There are streetlights on the neighborhood street, however (which is a public road, not a private one). The lighting on Hickory isn’t great, but it’s gobs better than the non-existent lighting along the current extent of sidepath (Cleland to Ridgefield) and along Fordham.
I am sure that lighting can easily be added to this project if necessary. I run a bright headlight on my bicycle during my daily commutes up and down the Fordham Boulevard corridor, and I’m looking forward to the build-out of this side path project.
It’s important to understand that this 1/2 mile section is a small part of the town’s long range plan to build a continuous multi-use path on both sides of Fordham Boulevard (similar to the Meadowmont paths on East 54) from Southern Village all the way to Europa Drive, connecting the fast growing Glen Lennox and Blue Hill Districts, and the GoTriangle bus transit routes. Like motorists, most trail users will simply prefer the shortest distance that a side path offers.
Unlike the existing Ridgefield intersection photo in the article, the proposed side path design does much to improve visibility, which is the primary safety element for both motorists and trail users. Routing it through narrow neighborhood streets instead introduces numerous conflict points, including additional intersections, driveways, and curb-parked cars, which obscure visibility. We all want to think that our neighborhoods are safe places to walk, jog or ride a bike, but if that were the case, we would not have “Drive Like Your Kids Live Here!” signs all over town.
The speed limit on Fordham is 45mph. A vehicle turning onto Ridgefield has already passed through the planned sidepath before it can decelerate significantly. I know. I do this turn every day. I’d rather have any potential conflict points be on the 25mph neighborhood street than at 45mph. Statistically, someone is much more likely to survive.
This facility cannot be safely built as a straight through path with the narrow existing ROW, but I guess the bar now is whether it’s unconscionable to do, as if there aren’t viable alternatives. The sad part is that when bikers and pedestrians start getting hit at 45mph, the people like me who turn into this neighborhood will be blamed, not the poor design
Really JB?
You tout your concern for safety here, yet fully admit that you take this turn into your own neighborhood at 45 mph “every day”. What’s worse is that you feel so entitled to drive like this, that you believe you should somehow not be held liable for plowing your vehicle into a cyclist, dog walker, baby stroller, or another neighbor exiting Ridgefield in their vehicle. Blaming a potential victim for your reckless behavior is is both unconscionable and sad.
Um.. no, William. I take this turn every day. I never said I take it at 45mph. I choose to slow down and risk being rear ended by the following traffic. Have I seen others plow through the planned sidepath at speed? Sure. Every day.
The question remains, which option is safer?
William, are you familar with Vision Zero? It means “humans shouldn’t die on our roadways.” It’s rooted in the idea of safe systems, which sees roadway crashes & their consequences as stemming from a wide range of factors–not just user error. The biggest factor leading to crashes is poor infrastructure design. The dominant paradigm of roadway infrastructure design in the US today assumes that all users of a facility are perfect, and any crash that takes place on that facility is due entirely to whatever mistake immediately preceded the event. Humans aren’t perfect, however, and Vision Zero pushes us to rethink our infrastructure to account for this fact. Rather than holding users (motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists, etc) liable for the consequences of bad design, Vision Zero principles say: design facilities that are safe even when users make mistakes.
The sidepath as designed does not take natural human fallibility into account, and thus fails to meet Vision Zero principles. You may feel inconvenienced by not being able to continue straight down this particular section of Fordham Blvd. But that route puts vulnerable road users into the path of fallible motorists driving on a facility that is set up for failure. As a cyclist, I’d rather use the safer route than the more direct one.
Also, it’s certainly worth mentioning: the proposed sidepath has safety challenges that cannot be addressed given the current configuration of Fordham Blvd. BUT the town has long-term plans to reconfigure Fordham into a multimodal blvd. Let’s wait until then, when pedestrian and bicycle accommodations can be properly integrated into the corridor design, rather than spending all the funds now on a design that’s not likely to improve safety (and might worsen it) compared to the existing shared street facility?