After spending more than two decades working with Go Triangle, John Tallmadge knows a lot about both the limitations and opportunities to improve transportation in Durham.
“We started in a real deficit, that is decades in the making, of building streets just for the drivers in their cars and the catching up is getting started. But there’s a long way to go to make sure that the streets are safe for everybody who’s using them,” said Tallmadge.
He now serves as Executive Director of Bike Durham and supports a $115 million bond which would go towards adding and repairing sidewalks, addressing unpaved streets, as well as undertaking repaving and resurfacing.
“Almost every one of these sidewalk projects is connected to a bus stop. There’s a bus stop right on the other side of the railroad tracks (on LaSalle Street). And people are trudging through the grass and over the railroad tracks. But there are other people who can’t maneuver that way, and it really shrinks their access to the community,” said Tallmadge.