Bury The Power Lines

Despite Durham's limited budget and ever growing priorities, here's why it should bury more downtown power lines.

tl/dr

1. The Unique Challenges of Retrofitting Density

2. The Solution: Bury Them

   1. Start With The Cost

   2. Identify Priorities

   3. Cost-Benefit Analysis

   4. Install the Canopy

3. Conclusion / Recommended Action

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I was recently with a journalist working on a development analysis in the Little Five Points area of Durham when something bothered me. This stretch of North Mangum, just to the North of “The Loop” that defines the downtown, is a focal point of infill with half a dozen condos and apartment developments built this century. But the streetscape is weird and relatively uncomfortable.

The source of these problems has a common denominator that’s not immediately obvious: the power lines.

There are other problems present, too, such as the intractable problem of the NCDOT one-way street that acts as an intermittent freeway, but all of the other problems can be traced to the presence of above-ground powerlines, which require power poles spaced about every 100’ that take up random space on the sidewalks and prevent tree canopies from being planted beneath them. These made the streetscapes inconsistent, with no pattern of amenities: the usual planned benches, trash cans, and bike racks were either not there or randomly present. The organic human additions—legal but unplanned—like coffee tables and outdoor seats, were completely absent. And, for the most part, it lacked anything that could be confused for a tree canopy.

In most of America and most of Durham, overhead power lines do not cause problems like they do here. That’s because in most of America, and most of Durham, there is space for overground utilities and amenities such as trees. But in the urban form, there isn’t room. And it’s ugly. And that bothered me. Here, otherwise, solid development was hindered by a less-than-great public realm. It just seems like a wasted opportunity.

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THE UNIQUE CHALLENGES of RETROFITTING DENSITY

Although obvious exceptions exist, most American urban areas aren’t dense or tall. There are true glass-tower downtowns in places like Atlanta and Dallas, but for the most part, the South has one hundred “Mayberry” Main Streets (like Mangum) for every skyscrapered city center. And our Mayberry Main Streets pretty much all have their power lines above ground. Recent booms in southern cities make the opportunity fresh, and messy.

It’s fresh because these areas are undergoing urban development for the first time.

It’s messy because these streets often lack space for all desired improvements, and local administrators have no history or experience dealing with these problems.

On the set of Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry had no powerlines. In the real world, it would have.

THE SOLUTION: BURY THEM

These are solvable problems, but let’s get a few understandings on the table:

1. Costs aside, powerlines are better underground. They are protected from natural disasters, like hurricanes, are less dangerous to humans, and are less likely to get hit by construction activity. That’s why new subdivisions mostly bury their mains. It looks better, too.

2. It is extremely expensive to bury power mains, and it is outrageously expensive to bury them post hoc.

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START WITH COST

A utility company engineer gave me a ballpark estimate on what it costs to bury the three-phase lines shown in the photo above. He did this contingent on my commitment that the range was not anything binding, and it did not come from him.

His source claimed that it would cost between $1000-2000 per linear foot to bury power mains.

That’s expensive and would likely not include incidentals such as private re-hooks, re-paving, surveying, flagging, digging, backfilling, repair, right-of-way landscaping and contingency.

In other words, it costs a lot, and it’s probably going to cost more than a lot. Thus, the prioritization of corridors is critical. Clearly, Durham can't afford to bury mains on streets unless they are special and have high pedestrian use.

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IDENTIFY PRIORITIES

After 23 years of working in Durham, I am intimately familiar with most downtown streets. I have a clear vision of which streets are heavily foot-trafficed, which have small businesses, and which have potential for placemaking.

The blocks I recommend for burying are in red (and lesser priorities streets in pink). Some, like Mangum and Duke Street, will become quite livable when roads switch to 2 way. All of them can be more than great - they have the potential to be places.

Red corridors are recommended for burying. Pink is less critical but advised. In total, it is roughly 4.5 miles.

The above schematic identifies ten streets and a total of 4.5 miles. At the aforementioned multiple, the tab for these improvements is about $25-50m.

a close-up of the eastern priorities within Downtown North

COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS

With a schematic plan and budget, policymakers can conduct a cost/benefit analysis.

This mostly ponders what else we could use $25-50m for, such as housing, police, festivals, or bike infrastructure. The costs have to be known before they can compared and valued. What else can $25m purchase?

After weighing alternatives and benefits, we can ask:

• Is that too much? Is that too much to invest in a downtown with property now worth x?

• Will burying mains increase the quality of life enough to justify higher property values, tax revenues, and sales tax receipts? Is there a payback to the investment?

• Is this more or less important than those other services and infrastructure?

• Will it improve unquantifiable things, like the joy of arriving downtown under a yellow foliage canopy of Mangum in October? Perhaps we can even form natural ceilings for future Octoberfests?

• What other unquantifiable benefits might the great burying deliver?

It’s really common for local governments to weigh costs independent of benefits (and vice versa), which is dangerous and doesn’t end well. It explains why we end up with so few projects and the few that do get built seem to be heniously priced.

Still, eventually, urbanism needs public investment. Because urbanism is relatively new in the South, we’ve rarely been faced with these problems. Cities like New York operate on a Japanese principle called Kaizen, which means constant improvement. People move in, things change, and bike share shows up out of nowhere. Change is constant, so it might as well be a vessel for betterment.

Cities hit the natural limits of infrastructure, as we have on Mangum, at which point change is required. New York is hitting that limit all the time, and acting on it. Newly booming places like Durham lack a culture of incremental action, so needs like streetscaping can be back-burnered for decades, often never getting addressed at all.

On Mangum, where Scott Harmon and Center Studio have been developing a range of condo projects for more than a decade, there is a new street life created by the space formed between the new urban buildings. But it is irritating to me how the powerlines hinder the treescape. Under each line is a strategically chosen dwarf tree designed to never grow above the power line. That will save money on maintenance and prevent situations like Duke Energy’s great bi-annual butchering of the oak trees on Gregson (see below), but they’ll never grow to form a true canopy. That opportunity is lost.

The Great Bi-Annual Butchering of the Oaks. The trees now share a haircut with Crusty the Clown.

via Julie Orr Design - the dwarf trees under the powerlines can never fit the canopy desired for comfort, coolness, beauty, or climate.

INSTALL THE CANOPY

If we bury the lines, we can immediately follow with the seeding of a grand tree canopy. That might take 30 years to form fully, but it will fully form. Let’s look at some epic street tree canopies, how they feel, and what they do for their cities.

treecanopybmp.org shows that a well-planned street tree design can cover most, if not all, of the street. Aside from keeping asphalt and concrete cool, it lowers the heat island effect and - often forgotten - is beautiful. There is some value in entering and existing downtown Durham under an epic street tree canopy. It’s not calculable, but it has value.

courier-journal, a nearly complete street tree canopy, forms a tunnel that can, at times, feel underground. In blooms, this can be magical.

Tulsa, OK, by Daniel Jeffries. The widths here are similar to Mangum/Roxboro 2-way pairs.

CONCLUSION / RECOMMENDED ACTION

I recommend that Durham City Council direct staff to present an actionable plan to bury the lines on these 4.5 miles of street. I cannot claim to know much about infrastructure funding to understand the funding mechanisms. Maybe it’s general bond issues, DOT grants, BID district, or sales tax recapture mechanism for the downtown district.

I do know that the power-line free streetscape within the downtown Loop is pretty great and allows citizens and businesses to multi-purpose the public right-of-way, creating human experiences that simply are not possible today—on Mangum, Rigsbee, Foster, Corporation, Morris, Duke, Geer, Morgan, Main and West Chapel Hill— because of the power lines.

We can fix this, and we should.