GoTriangle offers Duke another four to six weeks to sign light-rail agreement
“A day after a Durham City Councilman suggested using eminent domain to take land needed for the Durham-Orange Light Rail project away from Duke University, the GoTriangle president and the chairwoman of its board of trustees offered an olive branch Tuesday — the possibility of a four- to six-week extension of the Feb. 28 deadline for Duke to make a commitment to the project.
In a letter to Duke President Vincent Price, GoTriangle President Jeff Mann and Ellen Reckhow, chairwoman of GoT board of trustees, chastise the university for not mentioning its concerns about vibrations and electromagnetic waves years ago, when an environmental impact statement was being prepared.
“The lack of a cooperative agreement with Duke creates significant challenges for the Light-Rail Project,” Mann and Reckhow wrote, “effectively nullifying two decades of work.”
But their letter quickly turns conciliatory. It points out that electromagnetic interference, or EMI, has not been shown to create problems elsewhere in the country, but pledges to pay for monitoring and, if any EMI is detected, to pay for a magnetic-field canceling system, which it says is readily available.
Mann and Reckhow express their confidence that the rail line can be built and operated without causing any vibration that exceeds Duke’s standards for other construction near the hospital.”
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Krueger, Sarah. WRAL News 4 MArch 2019.