BY ROB SHAPARD : The Herald-Sun
rshapard@heraldsun.com
Sep 22, 2004 : 7:20 pm ET
© 2004 The Durham Herald Company

CARRBORO -- If they lived up to their pledges, hundreds of people around Orange County left their cars in the driveway on Wednesday, or at least did less driving than usual.

For Ginger Blakeley, that meant leaving her home in Carrboro about two hours before a doctor's appointment at UNC Hospitals, instead of leaving about 20 minutes early, as she would have if she'd been driving.
For Scottie Seawell, it meant hopping on a bus in Carrboro with her mother, then seeing her off from downtown Chapel Hill, where her mother caught a second bus to Durham.

For others, it meant looking for carpool buddies, scrutinizing bus schedules, or breaking out bicycles and trying to keep ties or skirts out of the tire spokes.

They were participants in the local version of Car Free Day, which was promoted Wednesday in cities and towns across the United States and internationally. The Carrboro-based Village Project organized the event in Orange County, and the city of Durham's Bicycle and Pedestrian Division took the lead on the other side of the county line.

About 810 people signed up on the organizers' www.gocarfree.com Web site to either go without their cars for the day or go "car lite," using their cars as little as possible.

There also were 974 pledges made through the SmartCommute program at Research Triangle Park, said Patrick McDonough, chairman of the Village Project committee that led the car-free effort. McDonough lives in Carrboro and works as a transit planner in RTP for the Triangle Transit Authority.

"I think it's a terrific response," said James Carnahan, chairman of the Village Project's board. "We have a beautiful day, and I'm ecstatic."

Blakeley started walking from her Carrboro home just after noon, and caught a Chapel Hill Transit bus on Hillsborough Road. She expected to get to her appointment at about 1 p.m., roughly an hour early. Although she often takes the bus, she probably would have driven her car to the appointment for the sake of convenience, if not for Car Free Day.

"The [transit] system itself is absolutely wonderful," said Blakeley, who was the only passenger on her bus until it got closer to downtown Carrboro. "They're almost always on time. Very polite bus drivers. Clean [buses]. And I'm amazed that it's free.

"As a matter of fact, I almost feel privileged to ride the bus," she said. "You're just sitting up here, looking down on the traffic, not worried about anything."

Blakeley said she'd like to see more people use public transportation in the name of reducing air pollution and congestion on the roads.

Seawell and her mother, Dorothy Graham, cited similar reasons for taking the bus on Wednesday, with Seawell adding that she was glad to avoid driving on U.S. 15-501. Graham lives in Durham, and she came over Tuesday night to visit her daughter.

Graham parked her car near Duke Hospital in Durham and took a Triangle Transit Authority bus to Chapel Hill. She was taking buses back to her car, and Seawell was along for the ride over to Chapel Hill.

They both were going "car lite," since Graham would drive her car home from its parking spot in Durham, and Seawell had to drive her children to school Wednesday morning because they missed the school bus.

Chapel Hill Transit Director Mary Lou Kuschatka said her agency wouldn't know whether there was a significant increase in ridership on Wednesday, until the numbers were this morning.

Kumar Neppalli, Chapel Hill's traffic engineer, said his office hadn't noticed any significant change in traffic patterns on Wednesday. But he said his office didn't make any attempt to check specifically whether Car Free Day had an effect.

It didn't really have an effect on the lifestyle of Kent Snavely, but that's because he doesn't own a car, and takes the bus or rides his bike.

"Every day is car-free day," said Snavely, a Weaver Street Market employee who was tooling down the Libba Cotton bike path on Wednesday. "I don't need a car. I can use the bus, or I can ride my bike pretty much anywhere."

The Triangle Transit Authority's McDonough takes buses from Carrboro to RTP an average of three times or so per week. He drives his car if he has several meetings outside the office. Otherwise he takes a Chapel Hill Transit bus to South Road at UNC, then a TTA bus to his office.

On Wednesday, he rode his bike to downtown Chapel Hill, and got on TTA's 403 bus, which also was occupied by Mayor Kevin Foy, who was on his way to a meeting in Durham.

McDonough went to the Car Free Day event in downtown Durham, then took a TTA bus to RTP.

City of Durham staff members reported getting an additional 100 or so pledges for Car Free Day at their morning event, to go with the 1,784 pledges that McDonough mentioned.

Carnahan said he rode his bicycle to the post office on Wednesday, but he drove his van a short distance to Weaver Street Market to drop off a Village Project display. Otherwise, he planned to keep his van parked.

He said he hoped that, if people took the bus on Wednesday who weren't used to taking public transit, they would find some things they liked about it -- and also some areas that need improvement. He said that perhaps trying to go car-free or car-lite would get some people thinking about smaller changes they could make to at least reduce their car use.

"We are so casual about it because it's so easy," Carnahan contended. "We'll just hop in the car, instead of shifting gears a little bit and saying, 'Can I combine this errand with another errand later in the day?' This is an opportunity for people to learn what [transit] is there, and to work on how we can make it better."