Next up for the Summer Camp Smart Commute Challenge is Triangle Day School (TDS), which offers summer camps for students ages four to fifteen. Eight weeks of camps run with various activities such as nature-based adventures, arts projects, STEM activities, literacy exploration, cooking & baking, and sports.
Located on Neal Rd. in northwest Durham, the lack of safe biking infrastructure makes it challenging to reach TDS on two wheels, especially with a kid. Luckily, a GoDurham bus route serves the American Village neighborhood just south of the railroad tracks and that same route goes right past Old West Durham! The closest bus stop to TDS is at Constitution Dr near Neal Rd. With some extra planning, time, and determination, TDS can be accessed from the 11B bus route, and the whole bus network, if you transfer at the Durham bus station.
Google Maps route from Old West Durham to Triangle Day School on the GoDurham 11B bus.
The 8 min, 0.4 mi walk from the bus stop is mostly sidewalk, but has a sidewalk gap near the railroad tracks.
Looking west on Neal Rd. from east of the railroad tracks.Looking west on Neal Rd. from west of the railroad tracks.
The downside is that while Google Maps estimates just a 9-minute drive from my house, the one-way bus trip will take 30 minutes. To then get to work from TDS on the next bus, it will take another 30 minutes to reach my office at Duke. This is infeasible for most people, even with some working/reading on the bus using the free wifi. And while I’m considering it an adventure, it is a sobering reminder of the transportation challenges that many face on a daily basis.
Google Maps route from Triangle Day School to the Engineering Campus of Duke University on the GoDurham 11B bus.
This week I’ll be biking my kid to the Museum of Life and Science for my Summer Camp Smart Commute Challenge. I’ve ridden to that location previously, both for a summer camp and just visiting the museum. It is readily accessible from Durham bike trails including the Ellerbee Creek Trail from Downtown Durham or the South Ellerbee Creek Trail from Watts Hillandale Neighborhood. See this old, but relevant map.
Bike Rack in front of the main building at the Museum of Life and Science.
I’ll probably take W Knox St. east from Old West Durham and then pick up the Ellerbee Creek Trail through Northgate Park, as shown here.
Camp Riverlea is a summer day camp in the Durham, NC area for children entering grades K – 7th. Camp Riverlea was founded in 1971 and continues to be a summer camp tradition for Durham children. At the time of writing, Camp Riverlea offers bus transportation, included in tuition, from three stops in Durham:
Hillandale Rd. This bus stop is located at the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church at 1737 Hillandale Rd., Durham, NC 27705. The stop is at the back of the church parking lot.
Duke (Crest St Park) The Duke bus stop is located at Crest Street Park, off Erwin and Fulton (which turns into Hillandale road). The park is near the VA and DCRI. If it’s raining, there is a pavilion for cover.
Forest Hills The Forest Hills Bus Stop is located in a gravel parking lot on East Forest Hills Boulevard, near the intersection with University Drive and behind the tennis courts.
Camp Smart Commute Challenge
As part of the Summer Camp Smart Commute Challenge, I will be biking my kid to the Hillandale Rd. bus stop. There are two viable paths to reach St. Luke’s from the Watts Hillandale / Old West Durham neighborhoods. If you cut through some private property from Arrowhead Drive you can get past the playground entrance to the parking lot where the Camp Riverlea but picks up. Normally I wouldn’t recommend trespassing, but the goat trails on the side of Hillandale aren’t a very good option either as they would require biking in the middle of the lane and delaying car traffic or walking along the paths in the shoulder and private property.
Indian Trail looking east across Hillandale Rd., near the golf course.
Hillandale looking South from St. Luke’sWooden footbridge from Arrowhead to St. Luke’s near the kids’ playground. This is private property so take heed.
There is a project to add a bike lane and multiuse path to Hillandale but your guess is as good as mine as to when that will be complete. Check out DCHC MPO Durham Project U-4726HN – it was started 9/29/2015 and now has an estimated completion in 2026 (11+ years!).
Screenshot of Durham transportation projects showing lots of delays including Hillandale Rd.
The Duke Faculty Club (DFC) Summer Camp is a day camp for rising first graders and up, who are ages 5 and up. Daily camp activities include games, sports, arts and crafts, and swimming. The day camp does not require the child’s family have a pool membership.
DFC is accessible from NC 751 (which is good for drivers, but bad for everyone else) or from Science Drive through Duke’s campus. The campus can be accessed from the south, east or north fairly safely, making Duke Faculty Club a destination one could bike to. There is also a GoTriangle bus that goes down Erwin Rd, which could be used to reach the camp, but it isn’t very frequent, and it would still require a 0.7 mile-long walk at the end.
My first route of the Summer Camp Smart Commute Challenge is the longest – 5.25 miles from Old West Durham to West Point on the Eno Park. The route utilizes West Ellerbee Creek Trail, neighborhood streets, and a short sidewalk segment in front of the new Northern High School.
Schoolhouse of Wonder has camps in Durham, Wake, and Orange counties. In Durham, they have a locations at Eno River State Park at Cole Mill Access and at West Point on the Eno Park. With the recent construction of Northern High School on N Roxboro St., West Point on the Eno Park is now reachable by bike for a lot of Durham! To get there you can use either segment of the Ellerbee Creek Trail to get north of I-85, and then you get on neighborhood streets from the new bike facilities along Stadium Dr.
The keys are a new stoplight across N Roxboro St. at Wellington Dr. and a new sidewalk along the east side of Roxboro at the edge of the Northern High School Property. While I don’t normally recommend riding on the sidewalk (and it is technically prohibited by city ordinance for adults in Durham), in this case Roxboro is too fast of a street to use during the morning commute. This sidewalk really should have been an off-street cycle-track or multi-use path.
So, as pledged, I will try this out on June 12th, post some pictures on X, and update this post if necessary. Is this this a place you’d bike to? Let me know in the comments.
Update: Complete!
While it’s fresh, here are the sketchy bits:
Ellerbee Creek Trail at Guess rd. has a HAWK signal, which confuses drivers and can be deadly, but wasn’t busy at 7:45a. Might be bad in evening rush hour?
Birmingham and Winston had nice traffic calming speed bumps!
Holt School rd. – narrow lanes, no shoulder, has a hill. For some people I’d recommend the sidewalk on the west side of the road
Wellington light to cross Roxboro – has car and bike detector loops and beg buttons. Using the sidewalk at the edge of Northern High School is the key to linking up to Old Farm rd. and Seven Oaks rd. (Do not use Argonne or Chateau)
I’m fortunate to have a neighborhood school just down the road. During the school year, we pedal our way to the elementary school nearly every day, and it’s a great start to my short bike commute to work. This summer, we’re upping the ante with a pledge to cycle or take a bus to each summer camp at least once.
Transportation Considerations for Summer Camps
While I’ve come across many posts, shared spreadsheets, and Social Media threads about summer camps in Durham, none seem to focus on transportation. While I wouldn’t choose a camp based solely on bike-ability, I understand that some parents face real constraints, such as bus routes, work schedules, lack of car access, and financial considerations.
My pledge will include the following camps: Schoolhouse of Wonder at West Point on the Eno, Duke Faculty Club, Camp Riverlea’s bus pickup spot, Museum of Life and Science, and Triangle Day School.
Motivation: Document Obstacles Tethering People to Their Cars
Every Wednesday during the school year, a few parents and I lead a group ride to school we affectionately call the BikeTrain. Inspired by the Alameda BikeBus of @CoachBalto, our version is a short ride on safe neighborhood streets from Oval Park to the EK Powe Elementary school.
On school year evenings, commutes for activities are a mixed bag. While we have groceries, restaurants, and piano lessons a stone’s throw away, karate and soccer practice are a different story, with distance and dangerous roads as the main obstacles.
During the school year, I don’t use my car a lot, but summer presents more transportation needs. Our summer solution has mostly been carpooling and sharing the driving load with other families, but this involves a lot of coordination, scheduling, and logistics. This summer I want to document some routes for those interested in car-free options. I’ll attempt to bike or bus in the spirit of BikeTrain every Wednesday!
Join the Journey
I’m on the lookout for fellow parents willing to switch up their commute. Walk, bike, or carpool to summer camp even once and share your experience! Write about it, capture it in photos, or record some video clips. Can you cover any other camps? We’d love to hear about it in the comments. Let’s change gears on the summer camp commute and skip the drop-off queue!
Mid-September 2018 Lime updated their pricing model for pedal bikes in Durham. The new price is $1 to unlock plus 5¢/min, and with the EDU discount it is 50¢ to unlock plus 2¢/min.
There are currently two companies operating in Durham (Spin and Lime). Ofo was a third operator that was the last to start and the first to pull out of the Durham market. I have taken look at the costs, details, bikes, and apps. Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have corrections or additions!
Reporting Problems
For bike relocation requests or to report a bike that’s in need of repair, here is the contact information:
LimeBike and Spin offer a 50% education discount to those who register with an EDU email address. This discount applies to both pay-per-ride and subscription models. For Spin, the pay-per ride cost becomes 50¢ per half hour. For Lime, there is an extra 2¢/min charge. The LimePrime and Spin Unlimited subscriptions are also discounted as outlined in a section below. Note, when signing up for Spin don’t use the Facebook button to log in, rather enter an EDU email address if you have one to qualify for the 50% discount.
Regular Price Pay-Per-Ride
Spin charges $1 per 30 minutes of ride time (half price with EDU email). For Lime there is an extra 5¢/min charge (2¢ with EDU discount).
Subscriptions
The monthly model is pretty simple for Spin – a number of months with unlimited 30-minute rides for a fixed price. One month unlimited is $29 ($14 with EDU email). A 3-month plan is $59 ($29 with EDU email), and a 12-month plan is $99 ($49 with EDU email).
With an EDU address, the Spin Unlimited plan provides unlimited 30-minute rides at a good price.
For LimeBike there appears to be a monthly price of $29.95 ($14.95 with the EDU discount). Rather than being unlimited like Spin, this plan includes 100 ‘free’ rides, and then above 100 in a month each ride is 14¢ each.
Reloading Pay-Per-Ride Balances
For Spin and LimeBikes there are ‘bonuses’ awarded when reloading your balance:
Spin’s bonus is $1 extra for every $5 reloaded. So effectively every 6th ride is free.
LimeBike’s bonuses are ‘1 free ride’ when you add $10, ‘3 free rides’ when you add $20, or ’10 free rides’ when you add $50.
Summary
Spin is cheaper or equal to LimeBike for pay-per-ride and subscriptions. Spin also offers the best reload bonus, especially if you have the EDU discount.
Referrals Rewards
Spin offers a free ride up to $10 when you refer a friend with your personal code. Presumably this is a single ride up to 5 hours in length?
LimeBike offers 3 free rides for you and 3 for the person you referred. Presumably these are all 30-minute rides.
If you appreciate this guide, please use my referral codes:
Lime’s Bonus Bikes are marked with a moneybag icon in the app.
LimeBike offers free rides on so-called ‘Bonus Bikes’. If you ride that bike for at least ten minutes, they make your ride free. I noticed most of the ‘Bonus Bikes’ help relocate underused bikes to new locations where they may see more traffic, without relying on LimeBike employees to shuttle bikes around in vans. It’s not clear how to tell which specific bike in a cluster of bikes matches up to the Bonus Bike on the app map besides renting one and hopefully getting lucky.
Bike Quality and Features
The obvious difference is color (Orange for Spin and lime green for LimeBikes). All bikes have 3-speed twist shift, lights, fenders, a basket, a step-through frame, kickstand, bell, etc. Some LimeBikes have an adjustable cell-phone mount on the handlebars. None of the bikes come with helmets. The handlebars are a bit different on the bikes: I find the Spin bars to be pretty narrow for me, and I like the swept-back LimeBike handlebars best.
A Warning for Tall Riders
Not all LimeBikes are created equal: some have ‘normal’ seatpost clamps and long seatposts which fit me well, while others have a simple seatpost lever (see photo) and short seatposts. I have also had a few of the ‘normal’ seatpost LimeBikes where the seatpost was jammed all the way down, so beware and raise the seat before you rent! Spin seems to have the longest seatposts, and on some of their bikes you can extend the seat beyond the 2″ safety margin line or remove the seat entirely (time will tell if we see these orange bikes vandalized and seatless).
Some LimeBikes have a simple seatpost lever with short seatposts which aren’t good for tall riders. Check before you rent!
There is a third party app called Transit which allows one to check many transportation options at once. Right now it supports all local bus systems, Spin, Uber, and directions for biking and walking. Get it below and see these articles for moreinformation!
Transit: Apple, Android
