Storyline
How Carrboro came to be served by Chapel Hill’s buses: the town’s refusals and referendum defeats from 1971 to 1976, the 1977 route past its apartment complexes paid for with the University, the 1978 deadlock and cost formula, and the F route and year-round service of 1979.
In briefCarrboro shared in Chapel Hill's short-lived town buses of 1971, but its voters turned down bus taxes in 1971, 1973 and 1976. In 1977 the aldermen joined the University in paying for a Chapel Hill bus route past Carrboro's apartment complexes. After a 1978 deadlock over costs, Carrboro and UNC agreed on a lasting formula, and in 1979 the F route reached North Carrboro and service ran year-round. On the fourth try, in November 1980, Carrboro voters approved a property tax for the buses, as ridership on the town's routes grew and a new J route split the crowded C route. In 1984 Chapel Hill chose a builder for Carrboro's bus shelters, and Carrboro won federal money for its first park-and-ride lot. The lot opened at Plantation Plaza in March 1986, with Chapel Hill Transit's C bus stopping there.
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Early in 1971 Carrboro agreed to pay 15 percent of any loss on a town bus service run by Raleigh City Coach Lines, Chapel Hill paying 85 percent. The buses ran from late March until the subsidy ran out on April 30, and on May 4 Carrboro voters turned down a bus tax, 530 to 196. In September 1972 the Carrboro aldermen agreed to a January referendum with Chapel Hill on the proposed Chapel Hill-Carrboro-UNC system, then twice refused to hold one, the second time despite a petition with 361 signatures. After residents petitioned for a hearing, which drew more than 100 people in January 1973, Mayor Robert J. Wells broke a tie to call a referendum, and on May 5, in the University's exam week, voters turned down joining the system. In January 1974 the aldermen created a public transportation commission, chaired by Harriet Imrey, to weigh a third referendum; by October it was split three to three on calling one.
In January 1975 a new group of Carrboro citizens, students among them, met for the first time with a bus system as its chief aim. On February 17 the aldermen voted 3 to 2 to aim for a referendum in the fall; Imrey had hoped for a spring vote, since the 1973 referendum had failed narrowly after many students left for the summer. On October 6, at a meeting Wells called, officials of the two towns agreed that their town managers would estimate the cost of running Chapel Hill's buses into Carrboro on a franchise basis. Wells said Carrboro could not run a system of its own; Carrboro Community Coalition candidates called the move timed for the election, which Alderman Fred Chamblee denied.
On February 4, 1976 Mayor Ruth West broke a 3-3 tie against an April referendum on a tax of up to 10 cents per $100 to bring the buses into Carrboro, saying Chapel Hill had made no firm proposal, and Alderman Robert Drakeford, who had drafted the plan, quit the transportation committee. On February 9 the Chapel Hill aldermen adopted terms for the talks, under which Carrboro would pay a share of costs not met by fares figured from its tax base and get two seats on the Chapel Hill Transportation Board. Two days later Carrboro's board voted 3-2 to hold the referendum on April 20, provided the towns could agree on terms. Students Active for Rational Transportation worked with the Carrboro Community Coalition to bring students to the polls, while Allied Citizens for a Responsive Government, with former Mayor Wells among its members, came out against the tax. Voters defeated it, 770 to 620, the town's third bus referendum defeat; the Daily Tar Heel credited a heavy turnout of property owners and a light student vote.
In January 1977, at Alderman Ernest Patterson's request, the board set up a committee to study a bus service paid for jointly by Carrboro, Chapel Hill and the University. Patterson estimated that 3,000 to 5,000 University students lived in Carrboro. On April 18 the aldermen voted 4-2 to put $13,500 toward extending the Chapel Hill buses to the town's apartment complexes, with the University paying most of the estimated $42,700 cost. The Carrboro route began on August 22, 1977, running on weekdays past most of the apartment complexes and on to the UNC medical center by way of Cameron Avenue. In September, with the route carrying about 1,400 riders a day, the board enlarged its transportation committee to study early-morning, evening and Saturday runs.
In a letter of January 6, 1978 UNC Vice Chancellor John L. Temple declined to pay 70 percent of added night, Saturday and rush-hour service on the C route, saying the University would not fund service in Carrboro unlike what it paid for in Chapel Hill, where night service was by shared-ride taxi. Carrboro's aldermen then agreed to pay the whole cost, about $7,050, of the morning trips added in the fall and more frequent peak-hour service for the spring. Carrboro paid $20,500 and UNC $30,200 for the C route in 1977-78, and the service ended with its contract on May 10. Chapel Hill then asked $52,000 for the same service against Carrboro's offer of $23,000, and on July 10 its aldermen refused Carrboro a franchise to hire a private company to run two routes between the towns, citing the need for a single bus system. The next day Carrboro's board voted to break off talks unless Chapel Hill and the University agreed to a lasting formula for sharing costs by each town's use, and Alderman Doug Sharer said Chapel Hill had made itself a transportation monopoly.
On September 6, 1978 the Carrboro aldermen accepted the University's offer of $72,000, ending a four-month deadlock. Existing C and N route service would be paid 70 percent by the University and 30 percent by Carrboro, added service would be split equally, and neither side could change the formula alone. The contract signed on September 15 kept the buses running through the academic year and added two evening hours on the C route, with UNC paying $72,540 and Carrboro $24,443 and another $3,163 for the longer hours. On January 8, 1979 the F route began running on North Greensboro and Hillsborough streets, which the Daily Tar Heel said gave many North Carrboro residents bus service for the first time; Carrboro and the University split its $17,342.56 cost. That September the board moved to year-round weekday service, which had run only nine months a year; the change raised Carrboro's cost to about $65,000, but a federal grant held its share near $35,000. In October, after ridership on the crowded C route rose nearly 60 percent, mostly from the new Tarheel Manor apartments, the aldermen voted to keep paying their part of the extra buses added in August.
On February 12, 1980 the Carrboro aldermen replaced the town's transportation committee with a citizens' Transportation Advisory Committee, appointed by the board, to study public transit, bicycle paths, thoroughfares and sidewalks. On July 22 they voted 5 to 1 to ask voters on November 4 for a property tax of up to 10 cents per $100 valuation for the buses, which the town had paid for with federal revenue sharing for about three years. Supporters pointed to a University survey that found about 70 percent of Carrboro's adults were UNC students or employees, and Student Government planned to urge students to register and vote. That August, to relieve crowding on the C route through the apartment complexes, Chapel Hill Transit split it in two: a new J route served Jones Ferry Road and the southern part of the N.C. 54 bypass, and the C route the northern bypass and West Main Street. Chapel Hill rented two buses from Charlotte's transit system to carry the August rush until 16 new buses arrived, which would bring its fleet to 38. August ridership on the Carrboro routes was up 41 percent from a year earlier, against 2 percent on the Chapel Hill routes, while ridership on the campus routes fell 27 percent. On November 4 Carrboro voters approved the bus tax, 1,723 to 1,552, after three earlier bus tax referendums had failed in off-year elections; officials credited the heavy student turnout of the presidential election, while the opposing Carrboro Association of Taxpayers said it would keep fighting higher taxes. By July 1981 the town had levied 4.5 cents of the allowed 10 cents, paying for C and J routes along Jones Ferry Road with buses every nine minutes at rush hour and evening service to midnight.
On January 12, 1982 the Carrboro aldermen unanimously passed a resolution against the $11,000 for Chapel Hill Transit drivers' uniforms that the Chapel Hill Town Council had approved on November 4, 1981, and had Mayor Robert Drakeford write to Chapel Hill objecting to the use of Carrboro's payments for bus service; drivers opposed to the uniforms had gathered signatures from 1,192 riders and 36 drivers before the council vote and 5,495 in a second petition after it. On January 9, 1984 the Chapel Hill Town Council chose Cleora Sterling Corporation of Chapel Hill to build bus stop shelters in Carrboro over two lower bidders from Durham and Greensboro, whose bids did not meet the federal grant's rules on minority business participation; Carrboro had asked for wooden shelters like the one at Carr Mill Mall. That March Mayor Jim Porto learned that the town would receive an Urban Mass Transportation grant of about $106,000, $86,700 of it for a $168,000, 182-space park-and-ride lot near the N.C. 54 and 54 Bypass intersection on Telo Shopping Center land and the rest for a transit planner; the owner would grade and drain the site under a 10-year lease. The lot, which the Daily Tar Heel called the first of its kind in Carrboro, was to have a bus pull-off and shelter and to ease traffic in downtown Carrboro. The 182-space lot opened at Plantation Plaza on N.C. 54 on March 26, 1986, dedicated for Carrboro's free use for ten years, and Chapel Hill Transit's C bus began stopping there at noon. Eighty percent of its cost came from an Urban Mass Transportation Administration grant and the rest from the shopping center's Florida developer, and a $7,500 bus shelter was left for the town to build later.
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Update to the Town of Chapel Hill's transit development program, covering 1981 through 1986 and published by the town in 1981. It sets out local transit and transportation planning for those years.
The Town of Chapel Hill's transit development plan for 1979 through 1984, dated July 1979 on the cover and published by the town. It covers buses, Chapel Hill Transit and local transit planning.
Survey report on how riders and residents viewed the Chapel Hill bus system, prepared by Gorman Gilbert and James F. Foerster for the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina in 1975. The final report of a transit evaluation project, and it deals with public opinion on bus lines in Chapel Hill.
Feasibility study for public mass transportation in the Chapel Hill, Carrboro and University of North Carolina area, prepared in September 1972 by Kimley-Horn and Associates of Raleigh for the two towns, the joint transportation commission and the university student government. Seventy eight pages with illustrations. It records how bus service for the towns and the campus was first costed and planned.
Howard N. Lee (born 1934) tells his own story, from a farm childhood in Lithonia, Georgia, through college, army service in Korea at Camp Casey and the move from Savannah that planted him in Chapel Hill, to his election as mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969 and his later run for Congress and years in the state legislature. Published by Cotton Patch Press of Chapel Hill in 2008, 199 pages with plates.
Edwin Caldwell, Jr. reviews a life in Chapel Hill politics in a three-hour Southern Oral History Program interview recorded March 2, 2001, by Oliver White. A skilled organizer, Caldwell worked in the campaign that made Howard Lee the town's first Black mayor in 1969, ran for office more than once without winning, and became a local political power. The conversation also covers race relations, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board and the Church of Reconciliation. Published online in 2006 in Documenting the American South.
Interview recorded June 21, 2000 with Rebecca Clark (1915-2009), a Black Chapel Hill resident, for the Southern Oral History Program at UNC. Clark, educated in Chapel Hill's segregated schools, describes working life under segregation and the economic discrimination she met in it. Topics also include Lincoln High School, school integration, and Howard Lee, elected mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969. Interview K-0536 in collection #4007.
Howard N. Lee's account of his own career, published in 2021 by the North Caroliniana Society with the society award given to him that year, together with tributes from Angela Lee, Valerie Foushee and others. Lee became mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969, the town's first Black mayor.
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