Contact Open Durham Portal

[dsummersl]

We want the latest bicycle data, clean or no!

[dsummersl]

Sent the following to opendurham.nc.gov:

A timely set of pedestrian and bicycle accident reports in Durham would be amazing. The dataset published by the NCDOT is 3 years old (and I've heard only published bi-annually, and currently delayed). I maintain an app built by the Code for Durham group, based on the NCDOT data (https://github.com/BikeSafety/BikeSafety); we would love to have more recent data.

[dsummersl]

Correspondence thus far:

Thank you for visiting Open Data Durham, we love suggestions!

We have received your dataset suggestion and appreciate your feedback.  The Open Data team reviews all suggested datasets and continually updates the portal based on feedback, priorities, and available resources.

The Open Data Portal is a continually evolving service – thank you for making it better!

Best regards,
Durham City/County Open Data Team

Ian Henshaw
Business Development - US Market
+1.(919).633.0055
ian.henshaw@opendatasoft.com

Skype: ian.henshaw8

OpenDataSoft LLC
201 West Chatham Street
Cary Innovation Center - Suite 210
Cary, NC  27511  USA

On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 11:57 PM, <accounts@opendatasoft.com> wrote:
A user just submitted a message on one of the pages of your portal (/suggest).

User: Dane Summers
Email: dsummersl@yahoo.com
Message: A timely set of pedestrian and bicycle accident reports in Durham would be amazing. The dataset published by the NCDOT is 3 years old (and I've heard only published bi-annually, and currently delayed). I maintain an app built by the Code for Durham group, based on the NCDOT data (https://github.com/BikeSafety/BikeSafety); we would love to have more recent data.

[dsummersl]

Sent this along to Michael Stierhoff:

Hi Michael,

I lead the Bike Safety project with Code for Durham, our local Code for America brigade. You might remember that we met back in October.

The Bike Safety project visualizes bicycle accidents reported to local police departments with NCDOT data that is published every other year. Unfortunately, the data is scheduled to be published bi-annually, and it lags by at least two years. Currently, the data set covers accidents between 2007 and 2012. A new (delayed) data set through 2013 should be released late this Spring.

You had suggested that we ask for bicycle and pedestrian accident data reported to the Durham Police Department. And that, if we could come up with some reasonable reasons for the request, it would probably be granted.

Thus far we've thought of the following beneficial reasons to make the data public:

- Timely data would let citizens and city government to plan, make decisions, and take actions based on current accident trends.
- The data would allow the city/public to measure the effectiveness of infrastructure and policy changes.
- Anticipated accident reduction benefits:
  - Fewer calls to police, EMS, and Fire Departments.
  - Fewer traffic backups b/c of accidents.
  - Fewer injured residents.
  - Better insurance rating for the city, possibly the police department.

I asked the Bike Durham advocacy group to review this as well, and they suggested the following benefits:

- Current accident data could be helpful to the City and MPO as they develop new planning documents, as they input projects into NCDOT's project prioritization project.
- It would allow city staff to more readily and effectively respond to incidents that occur as a result of changes in safety, land use, development, density, traffic patterns, etc.

I’ve also already reached out to Beverly Thompson (Office of Public Appears) about making a FOI request, at Adam Martin’s suggestion (our Code for Durham organizer). I have not yet heard from her.

Ideally information would contain time and location information as well as any crash details that are readily available.

Let me know if there is anything else we can do to help you make the request. 

Thanks so much,

Dane Summers
dsummersl@yahoo.com
Code for Durham