#godurham

Before you enjoy the fruits of the voting process tomorrow — the in-line small talk invariably centered on how long/short said line is, the thrill of a quickly-but-cleanly-inscribed bubble, the sticker that makes an otherwise mundane Tuesday outfit really pop — before all that, one quick question: How will you get to the polls?

Driving?  A classic choice — be a good neighbor/coworker and offer to carpool.  If you can’t hitch a ride, and your polling place (which you can find here) isn’t within walking distance, you still have a few options from the private sector: Uber is offering a discount of up to $10 for a one-way ride to precincts on election day; Lyft has a similar promotion of 50 percent off rides to polling locations (up to $5).  But neither of those will suffice for round-trip service free of charge, which brings us to the subject of this post: good old-fashioned public buses.

For the second straight year, GoDurham will be completely fare-free on Election Day and, in a decision announced just last week, so will GoRaleigh.  While it’s not a perfect solution, free day-of public transit is increasingly becoming a tool to help lower the barriers to voting: Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Tampa, and Minnesota’s Twin Cities are among the major metro areas to implement this change; in North Carolina, Asheville, Burlington, and Greensboro have also taken the plunge.

So what will this look like for voters in the Triangle?  Using Google Maps, I’ve compiled guides that show all the polling locations in both Durham County and Wake County, the nearest bus stop(s) for each polling place, and the bus lines that serve them.  After clicking those links, you can search the top bar for your polling place and quickly see if public transit is an option for you.

A few points of emphasis:

Polling places (houses) are either shaded blue (meaning they have a bus stop within 0.5 miles), purple (the closest bus stop is between 0.5 miles and 1 mile away), or black (no bus stops within 1 mile).

For a more specific gauge of the distance from curbside to ballot-casting, you can use the ruler icon (under the search bar, the icon to the far right) to see the distance in feet/miles.

Whenever possible, I’ve included fairly close stops on alternate bus lines to provide maximum travel flexibility for travelers.  The polling location should list (next to “Buses That Stop Nearby”) all lines that drop off in the area; the description for each bus stop shows the lines that specifically stop there.

While I could validate much of the GoDurham data using this PDF, I typically deferred to results from Google Maps and the TransLoc Rider app (which bus riders should download to coordinate their trips to the polls in real-time).

In Durham, the city’s buses serve the polling locations fairly well: forty-four of fifty-seven precincts (77 percent) have bus stops within a half mile, and in both 2016 and 2017, those precincts accounted for roughly 72 percent of Election Day voters.  The hit rate drops steadily as one moves outside the city to the county’s more remote areas — two of the completely unserved locations are in Bahama, and another is technically over the border into Chapel Hill.  And while it’s not super surprising given America’s urban/rural voting patterns, the Durham precincts that are closer to the city center and are thus transit-accessible tend to have more Democratic voters: In the 2016 general election, among voters at those forty-four polling places with a bus stop nearby, nearly 75 percent backed Hillary Clinton, while only 52 percent of voters at the county’s remaining precincts did.

The story in Wake County is a bit more complicated, largely due to the county’s sprawl and coincident drop in effective mass transit.  In total, just 107 of Wake County’s 204 precincts are feasibly connected to the bus system; moreover, a decent portion of those are covered by GoCary or GoTriangle, neither of which appear to be offering free rides on Tuesday.  The end result?  Only about 37 percent of voters can take advantage of the free rides with GoRaleigh.  It’s a good deal if your polling place is inside the beltline (twenty-nine of thirty-one precincts are well-covered, and the remaining two are less-than-fifteen-minute walks from a bus stop); outside, your proverbial mileage may vary.

Regardless, as more municipalities start to adopt this policy, and as Durham and Wake Counties maintain these policies for future elections and optimize their transit options, we can hopefully explore and answer more detailed questions: Does offering free rides actually affect turnout?  How about if GoDurham tweaked the locations of its stops and, say, extended its 3B line two blocks further out Highway 98 so that passengers could get dropped off right at the door of the East Regional Library?  Or what if the free rides also encompassed one day of early voting, so that all citizens could choose an early voting location that’s mere steps from a bus stop?  After all, a free ride only provides convenience if it takes you where you want to go.

But first comes tomorrow’s election, and no matter the outcome, it seems a safe bet that the debates we’ll face Wednesday morning will far overshadow these marginal musings.  With that in mind: Polls are open Tuesday from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m, and bus schedules for all area lines are available on the GoDurham website.

Since 2010, the fare-free Bull City Connector has pinged from downtown Durham to Duke University, connecting the VA medical center, Duke's campus, shopping, dining, and government services.

Now, amid funding changes and a study of Durham's transit needs, there's uncertainty about the service's future.

That uncertainty comes on two fronts.  First, Duke University has announced plans to cease funding for the route beginning in fiscal year 2018.  Second, GoTriangle and GoDurham are reexamining all of their routes with potential changes in mind.

GoTriangle is currently taking public comments as part of its transit study, and the Durham City Council will likely be briefed on that study before the end of the year.

GoTriangle and the city say no decisions have been made to alter or discontinue the BCC, but concerns remain over how the service will look going forward.  These concerns stretch back to 2015, when several stops (including Durham Station, the BCC's busiest stop) were eliminated in the name of efficiency, while more stops were added near Duke.

"That's what I kept hearing about these changes: we want to be more efficient.  But are we throwing away effectiveness for efficiency?" asks Nikki Brown of the nonprofit SpiritHouse, who documented hazards on the route after the 2015 changes.

SpiritHouse took those findings to the Durham Human Relations Commission, which issued three recommendations last year: restore service to Durham Station, restore service to clinics at Duke South, and "focus on serving the Durham community, not primarily Duke."

"We're still concerned about the changes that were made in 2015," says HRC chairwoman Diane Standaert.

At the time, BCC riders were slightly older than the overall GoDurham ridership, 52 percent of BCC riders earned less than $15,000 per year, and 57 percent were African American.  Most used the service to get to work or school, as well as appointments at the VA and Duke Hospital.

Terry Bellamy, the city's transportation director, says the route, stops, and operating hours will be considered in the context of the larger bus system.  "The question we're asking the public as we do the study is where is the service demand?" Bellamy says.  "So much has happened in the last two years that there could be changes in demand."

In the past, the city has covered about two-thirds of the $1.1 million annual bill for the BCC, with Duke contributing the other third.  However, this fiscal year the university cut its funding in half, to $175,000, and indicated that would be its final allotment.

Phail Wynn Jr., vice president of Durham and Regional Affairs at Duke, says the university began funding the BCC in conjunction with grants to get the system running.

"It was never intended to be an indefinite commitment," Wynn says.

Now, the BCC isn't providing Duke students and faculty with adequate service, Wynn says.  "To operate these new needs would probably triple the cost of the route.  We found it would actually be cheaper for Duke to go ahead and run our own shuttles from the campus to downtown and back."

Standaert and Brown would like to see the service better serve riders who really need a fare-free bus.  Brown questions why the route doesn't go to lower-income neighborhoods in east Durham or to N.C. Central.

"Are we being equitable?" Brown says.  "Are we being the people that we say we are?"

Asked whether the BCC could be discontinued, Bellamy says it's too early to tell: "We don't know the answer to that question yet.  That's what the study process will tell us. I really want to hear from a lot of the users."

A survey on GoDurham's short-range transit plans can be found at GoDurhamTransit.org.