Durham Weighs Transit, Cameras for Student Safety
The Durham County Board of Commissioners meets with city and school leaders to examine public transit partnerships, crossing guards, microtransit, and school‑zone and bus camera enforcement aimed at improving student safety and on‑time arrival. They wrestle with privacy, equity, and funding questions—including how citation revenue, sidewalk investments, and a looming statewide property tax cap could reshape local streets and school support. 44mins
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Original Meeting
Tuesday, August 11th, 2026
7976.126
Board of County Commissioners on 2026-08-11 9:30 AM - Combined BOCC/City/BOE Meeting
In This Video
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Anthony White reviewed Durham Public Schools’ crossing guard program, emphasizing priority locations like Hope Valley Elementary, describing the benefits of a contracted service model with All City Management to reduce administrative burden, and explaining how utilization data and safety considerations guided deployment of resources to protect students.
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Anthony White outlined Durham Public Schools’ exploration of school zone speed and camera enforcement programs, describing research with other districts and vendors, coordination with local governments and law enforcement to set violation thresholds and review processes, and a strong emphasis on data privacy and security.
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Anthony White and a speaker described a planned community education phase for new school‑zone traffic enforcement, including a 30–60 day warning period and outreach through multiple channels, and noted that resulting citation revenue would stay with Durham Public Schools to reinvest in student safety.
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A speaker explained that Durham Public Schools did not yet have a way to track how many students used public transit to get to school but planned to explore options with partners, noted from prior school leadership experience that many students relied on that service, and reported that targeted efforts such as a working-conditions survey had improved bus driver recruitment and retention compared with the height of the bus crisis.
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Commissioner Wendy Jacobs supported school‑zone enforcement and dedicating citation revenue to safety but raised concerns about camera data privacy and immigration‑related consequences, and a speaker reassured that data access would be tightly limited to the vendor and law enforcement with high security standards so families would not feel endangered by school‑zone cameras.
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Mayor Pro Tem Javiera Caballero emphasized that encouraging high school students to ride the fare-free, award-winning GoDurham system would build long-term transit ridership, while also urging Durham Public Schools to adopt strong privacy safeguards, council oversight, and clear data ownership policies for any new technology by drawing on recent city practices.
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Sean Egan, Durham's city transportation director, reported that GoDurham exceeded its 90% on‑time performance goal, highlighted the importance of increased bus frequency for high school students, and noted that service to Northern and Riverside high schools was upgraded from hourly to every 30 minutes to reduce disruptive wait times.
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Egan explained that GoDurham would increase Northern High School service to a bus every 15 minutes using Durham County transit plan funding and suggested using an enterprise fund from school bus and speed camera citations to support both crossing guards and needed infrastructure improvements around Durham Public Schools sites.
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Board of Education Member Gabby Rivero asked whether Durham Public Schools intended to replace yellow buses to Northern High School with exclusive reliance on GoDurham, and a district representative clarified that the goal was to keep school buses running while adding GoDurham as an optional alternative to reduce barriers to students arriving on time.
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Board of Education Member Rivero asked whether unused crossing guard funds could be redirected to infrastructure like speed bumps, and Sean Egan responded that the program was already oversubscribed with more than 20 candidate sites, emphasizing the need for additional revenue from school bus and speed cameras to fully fund priority crossing guard locations before considering other investments.
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Board of Education Member Rivero questioned how to prevent school‑zone cameras from causing unintended harm to communities, asking about limits on when cameras would operate and data protections, while a district representative explained that activation rules would be set with law enforcement and that vendors or police typically controlled access to captured images, prompting Rivero to express interest in Durham Public Schools retaining data ownership.
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A speaker outlined funding models for school-zone camera systems, explaining that vendors could either provide cameras at no upfront cost in exchange for a revenue split on citations or charge a subscription fee while Durham Public Schools retained all citation revenue, with the district still evaluating the pros and cons of each approach.
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Anthony White explained that vendors would provide established community engagement and bus-riding education playbooks that Durham Public Schools could use alongside its safe routes to school expertise, emphasized that success would be measured by student safety and on-time arrival rather than profit, and cited alarming national, state, and local estimates of school bus stop-arm violations to underscore the risks to students.
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Sean Egan shared San Francisco’s success in sharply reducing excessive speeding with safety cameras, emphasized the need for all-day protection around Durham schools, and described new sidewalk and intersection improvements funded by the Connect Durham 2024 bond as part of broader street safety efforts.
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Mayor Leonardo Williams urged focusing on student safety, on‑time arrival, and easing driver shortages when weighing camera use, another asked about federal funding opportunities, and Sean Egan clarified that federal regulations prevent using federally funded transit service as a direct replacement for yellow school buses.
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Mayor Williams asked about creatively stacking federal resources to enhance safety and ridership around schools without turning city buses into school transportation, and Sean Egan responded by highlighting the Safe Routes to Schools partnership in which federally sponsored funds flowed to Durham Public Schools to build staff who taught students pedestrian, bicycle, and transit safety as part of the curriculum.
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City Council Member Carl Rist debated funding school safety through camera citation fees, with one expressing discomfort about a revenue-driven model and proposing street closures near schools to protect students, while another stressed that any enforcement initiative was intended to prioritize safety and on-time arrival over profit.
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Sean Egan cautioned that fully closing streets in front of schools would be difficult on Durham’s already constrained, high‑volume road network and complicated by the many families who drive children to school, while another speaker suggested the broader need to create incentives for people not to use cars.
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Ellen Beckmann, transportation director for Durham County, reported that the county’s microtransit pilot had provided about 8,000 trips, including roughly 700 to Durham Public Schools sites on the outskirts, and explained that the jointly developed bike-walk plan was nearing completion but delayed by legal questions over who would be responsible for maintaining county sidewalks.
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DPS Superintendent Dr. Anthony Lewis explained that bus stop‑arm cameras would activate with the stop sign to reduce bias in traffic enforcement, and highlighted how reckless driving and construction were barriers to student attendance that had even forced high schools to move core classes out of first period because buses were not consistently arriving on time.
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