U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joined Gov. Roy Cooper for a walk Tuesday along a busy Durham transit corridor that should get safer in the future thanks to $12 million in federal infrastructure funding.
Buttigieg is making stops around the country to highlight projects funded as part of President Biden’s infrastructure package. While many projects grab headlines — such as the $1.3 billion passenger rail line that broke ground Monday in Raleigh — most of the 57,000 projects approved so far are more modest, and sometimes long overdue.
“You’ve got a community here that has been left out of some of the historic rounds of transportation infrastructure investment,” Buttigieg said, standing in front of Antioch Baptist Church on Holloway Street. “We’re changing that and it’s going to matter to neighbors, it’s going to matter to businesses, it’s going to matter to the congregation of this church.”
The grant announced on June 26 is intended to improve safety and efficiency along Durham’s Holloway Street corridor, which is the city’s busiest transit route. It will improve 33 intersections — including Americans with Disabilities Act curb ramps and crosswalks — and upgrade bus stops with the aim of improving access to the city for residents without cars, and reducing the number of vehicle and pedestrian accidents.
The total projected cost of the project is just over $15 million, with the city providing about $3 million to match the $12,044,800 federal grant.
Stretches of the route walked Tuesday saw sidewalks give way to weedy gravel.
“People here deserve excellent sidewalks and transit service, all the other things that a good streetscape ought to have,” Buttigieg said. “The vision has been here for a long time, but not the money. We’re here to change that.”
It is the second day Cooper and Buttigieg have reviewed projects in the state. In addition to the passenger rail line slated to run from Raleigh to Richmond, Va., the two have also visited the groundbreaking of the Salem Parkway Multi-Use Trail in Winston-Salem, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s Transportation Institute in Greensboro, and a highway project in Raleigh.
“North Carolina has gotten a large part of this pie,” Cooper said. “So we’re glad to have Secretary Buttigieg here to just review some of the projects all across our state that are really going to help improve transportation.”
Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams said there are always more projects than money, but Durham was ready with an existing need when the grant program was established. “If you focus on what exists, you’ll identify really soon what’s most attainable,” he said. “Folks want to see these projects completed and … we have to deliver.”
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