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Durham, N.C. – The City of Durham will receive $ 1 million after winning a national competition to find ways to deal with the toughest issues facing US municipalities.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the news on Monday at the Bloomberg Philanthropies US Mayors Challenge.
This initiative consists of a one – year competition that asks municipal leaders across the country to discover and test ideas for dealing with urgent issues.
Durham has been among nine cities to receive this money, which will help find solutions to problems such as homelessness, the opioid crisis, mobility, climate change and economic opportunities.
The Bull City has been chosen as the winner for its innovative approach to bring residents and visitors to alternate mode to the city center.
The goal of the Durham City leadership was to reduce traffic congestion to the city center by providing incentives for residents to use public transit, according to a press release issued by the city.
"Durham wants to shape future growth based on people mobility options, not cars," said Mayor Steve Schewel. "The ideas developed as part of the Mayors Challenge allowed us to divert frightening resources from car parks to a public transit system to pursue Durham's vision of shared economic prosperity."
The Mayors Challenge Selection Committee is composed of policy experts, artists, academics, business leaders and leaders of social innovation. The committee assessed city applications based on their idea vision, potential impact, plan, and potential for diffusion in other cities to select Durham as one of the nine winning cities.
"We are pleased with the results of our pilot program," Schewel said. "We are very grateful to Bloomberg Philanthropies for providing us with an additional grant of one million dollars so that we can test new methods to further reduce the number of cars in the city center. from Durham, an additional 5%, or approximately 800 vehicles, to help change Bull City's mobility habits with a view to making more efficient use of the existing transport infrastructure. "
This year's challenge was different because it included a six-month "test and learn" phase in which each of the 35 champion cities received a grant of up to $ 100,000 and technical assistance to test and develop support.
City of Durham officials used grant funds to partner with the Duke University Center for Advanced Hindsight, Downtown Durham, Inc. and several downtown businesses to test two strategies. to reduce traffic jams. Much of the city's strategy is to reduce the number of solo drivers traveling to downtown Durham by 5%.
- The first part of the plan is to create a personalized route for drivers that includes mapped options, time comparisons and benefits. Commuters who received the personalized route reported using travel alternatives, instead of driving alone, 12% more than employees who had not received it.
- The second, a GoDurham bus lottery, has created a game that makes bus racing a competition. Commuters who were invited to play reported alternatives of 19% more and reported higher happiness levels and lower stress levels during the pilot project.
The US Mayors Challenge builds on the success of past challenges sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies in the United States (2013), Europe (2014) and Latin America and the Caribbean (2016). Mayors Challenge winners include São Paulo, Brazil, with a program to increase farmers' incomes and reduce urban sprawl; Barcelona, Spain, for its work to build digital trust networks that support at-risk older adults; and Providence, RI, for a program to measure and reduce the "word gap" among low-income children during the pivotal years of brain development.
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