NEWS

Carolina Poll: Triangle residents find high quality of life, see growth problems

CHAPEL HILL -- Triangle residents like it here, but wish the area wasn’t so popular, according to the latest Carolina Poll.

Most (90 percent) of the 573 adults interviewed in the late-March public opinion poll rated the quality of life in the Triangle area as excellent or good. However, half (52 percent of all respondents, 63 percent of those who could cite a problem) said that growth issues – especially traffic – pose the biggest problems.

The telephone poll is carried out every semester by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Topics and coverage vary from poll to poll.

Residents of Orange and Wake counties were the most upbeat: More than 90 percent gave excellent or good ratings for quality of life. In Durham County, in contrast, only 78 percent gave the highest ratings.

Overall, 62 percent of respondents in the three counties volunteered to an open-ended question that growth was the primary problem. Nineteen percent said economic issues such as the job market, taxes and the cost of living were most important. Another 19 percent named social problems involving crime, racial inequities and educational services. Nine percent could not cite a problem.

Although traffic was the single most frequently mentioned problem – 38 percent mentioned it as the most important problem – slightly more than half of commuters (54 percent) said they spend 15 minutes or less going to or from work. Respondents in Durham County were marginally more likely to spend more than a quarter-hour on the road than others – 58 percent compared with 54 percent of Wake County residents and 49 percent of Orange County commuters.

Dr. David Moreau, professor and chairman of the UNC department of city and regional planning, said the results fit with national trends that are notable in the Southeast. Highway congestion is probably the most visible and frequent kind of frustration that Triangle residents encounter as more people travel more often, he said.

"It’s not just the population increase," he added. "Americans are traveling more per capita."

Atlanta offers the most extreme case, with the nation’s highest per capita average of 26 travel miles per day, he said. But the same kinds of growth and travel patterns are occurring in the Triangle. For example, newly developed shopping malls can lure shoppers to extend their travel routes as well as encourage people to use automobiles, said Moreau, who is researching travel behavior as a component of air quality.

Interviewing for the survey was carried out evenings March 17-21 by students in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and department of political science at UNC. Results are within 4 percentage points of numbers one would get from interviewing all adults in the three-county area.

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Note: Contact Dr. Robert L. Stevenson, director of the Carolina Poll and professor of journalism and mass communication, at (919) 962-4082. Contact Dr. David Moreau, professor and chairman of the department of city and regional planning, at (919) 962-4756.