By Jeff Havener
August 2026
Why Can’t Raleigh make its Streets Safer?
Raleigh has committed itself to eliminating traffic deaths. The city has studied crashes. It has adopted Vision Zero. It has redesigned intersections and lowered speeds. It has added pedestrian infrastructure.
However, if city leaders wanted to redesign Capital Boulevard or Glenwood Avenue tomorrow, they couldn’t. Those roads don’t belong to Raleigh.
Most Raleigh residents drive on roads every day assuming they belong to the city. Or the county. They don’t. They are largely owned and maintained by the state of North Carolina.
How we Got Here
In the early years of the Great Depression, North Carolina faced a transportation crisis. Counties were broke. Thousands of miles of roads remained dirt. The state was largely agrarian, and farmers couldn’t reliably get crops to market.
The system of maintaining roads county by county wasn’t working. The state did something few others would.
In 1931, it took them over.
And it worked. Their solution solved a massive statewide problem. It provided equity in funding for projects across the state, improving roads in poorer counties. It standardized design, that led to improvements in public safety. And it created economies of scale, that allowed dollars to go farther and do more to elevate the overall transportation infrastructure.
Most states built highway departments. North Carolina built a highway state.
It was a solution for the problems of 1931. But it also shifted decision-making from the local level to the state. And now, the roads carrying Raleigh’s growth may have different needs.
Where the System Shows Itself
Few states manage roads the way North Carolina does. The state maintains the vast majority of the roads in the state, one of the highest percentages in the nation. The system provided for consistency across the Tarheel state leading to the moniker, the “Good Roads State”. But what elevated standards statewide also limits flexibility locally.
Raleigh has long been one of the fastest-growing large metropolitan areas in the country, both in population and physical growth. With this growth came an increase in vehicle and pedestrian crashes. Raleigh leaders and advocates of alternate transportation methods realized that change was needed.
Introduced in 2022, Raleigh’s Vision Zero program aims for zero traffic fatalities. It does this by prioritizing human vulnerability as a localized public health imperative. At its core, Vision Zero begins with a simple premise: people will make mistakes, but our streets should be designed so those mistakes don’t cost someone their life.
Raleigh can analyze the crash data. It can set benchmarks for improvement. Raleigh can create and adopt a plan. But on many of the roads within the city, Raleigh cannot make changes alone.
There is shared responsibility, without shared authority.
The friction becomes visible in everyday, ordinary decisions. Designs for traffic signals, streets, and even crosswalks are largely negotiated between authorities with differing mandates and objectives.
A Simple Intersection
Right on red improves traffic flow, but creates conflict with pedestrians. William Christmas’s grid layout of downtown Raleigh created a city that was largely to be experienced on foot or horseback. Automobiles came later.
Turning right, a driver looks left, especially when merging into traffic. This action exposes pedestrians to the driver’s right. The result can be conflict. Transportation engineers have become increasingly aware of this as a safety concern in urban environments. The Vision Zero program identified several downtown intersections where limiting right turns on red could improve pedestrian safety.
Safety is a primary factor, but not the only one. The question is how those safety concerns should be balanced against the other purposes a downtown street serves.
Downtown Raleigh is both a transportation corridor and a destination. People drive through it, but they also live, work, shop, and walk there.
Which takes precedence? And who decides?
A Downtown Corridor
Questions about the purpose of the street extend beyond a single intersection.
Dawson and McDowell Streets are the main north / south corridors that move traffic through downtown. They move traffic efficiently with synchronized lights, wide lanes, and limited interruptions. This works remarkably well for motorists. But less so for downtown pedestrians.
Downtown Raleigh has changed and continues to do so. It is no longer a place people mostly move through. It has become a destination where people live, work, and play. Thousands of residents now live within walking distance of these transportation corridors and cross them frequently to reach the many restaurants, offices, parks, and entertainment venues that are emerging throughout downtown.
Those changing patterns of use raise a simple question: should these streets function primarily as highways, or as city streets?
Dawson and McDowell are state roads. They are a section of US-401, a federal highway, that is owned and maintained by the state of North Carolina.
A street designed to move vehicles quickly and efficiently is often at odds with one designed for people to spend time in it.
With Vision Zero, there is a discussion to add mid-block raised crosswalks in high-priority zones, including across Dawson and McDowell. These crosswalks are meant to aid pedestrians by increasing visibility, slowing traffic, and providing designated locations mid-block to safely cross. Adding these crosswalks requires the state’s Asset Management approval because they can impact vehicle suspension and snowplow operations.
Raleigh cannot make changes to streets in the city without agreement from the state.
This Isn’t Really about Roads.
It is about governance. Power. And who decides. State control and local priorities. It is about the sometimes competing priorities of mobility and placemaking.
It is also about institutional design. And how decisions made nearly a century ago still determine who can shape the places we live.
The value of a largely state-managed system is still there. Design standards are critical for safety. Equity across the state is still important today to elevate the state’s poorer counties. Continuity, consistency, and predictability across municipal and county lines help support and promote the economic well-being of the state.
As cities evolve, these benefits can come into tension with local priorities. Can a statewide system always respond to local needs? Is there a middle ground?
Our understanding of healthy urban design is much different today. And the NCDOT’s mission has evolved substantially over the last decade; they have adopted Complete Streets which includes Vision Zero principles and multimodal design, far more than they once did. The differences aren’t that one authority values safety and the other doesn’t. It is more a function of differing mandates, funding, and responsibilities.
North Carolina is a Dillon’s Rule state, meaning local governments exercise only the powers granted to them specifically by the state. This influences everything from how quickly a crosswalk can be installed to how a downtown corridor evolves over time.
Why does this matter?
Because streets are more than transportation infrastructure. They are where and how the city is experienced. They are the framework upon which cities are built. Every design decision influences whether people want to be there and whether they choose to stay.
We often think of parks and squares as our primary public spaces. Yet most people spend far more time on streets than in parks. Streets determine how we move, where we linger, whether businesses thrive, and how we experience a city. In many ways, the street is the most important public space a city possesses.
Developers often focus on the buildings themselves. However, some of the greatest value is often added outside the property line. Retailers, landlords, and tenants all understand this, even if they don’t know how to articulate it. If the public realm outside these locations feels unsafe, lacks amenities, or is otherwise unattractive, the private investment can be diminished.
Our system was built for a North Carolina that was rural. Agricultural. Disconnected. Today, the state is urbanizing, densifying, and growing rapidly. Becoming more connected.
The system that helped connect the state’s farmers to its markets helped build one of the strongest state‑maintained road networks in America. The system transformed North Carolina. But North Carolina is no longer the state it was in 1931.
The Question Today
A century ago, North Carolina’s local governments had a problem. The state had a bold solution. It took ownership.
In doing so, it didn’t just centralize roads. It centralized power over places. Roads are simply the most visible example.
The question is not whether the solution worked. It did.
And North Carolina emerged from the Great Depression better connected and prepared to grow. The question now is whether the challenges facing our cities today are the same as the challenges it was designed to solve.
The answer may not be found in today’s problem, but in the system created to solve yesterday’s.
The question is no longer whether the system worked.
The question is whether it still fits the North Carolina it helped create.
Always informative and enjoyable to read these articles, Jeff.