Durham’s famous “Can Opener” bridge doesn’t open as many cans as it used to.
The number of trucks and trailers that have their tops ripped off by the low-lying railroad bridge over Gregson Street in Brightleaf Square is now fewer than half a dozen a year, according to the North Carolina Department of Transportation. That’s about half of what it was a decade ago.
NCDOT believes a new traffic light and digital warning sign at Gregson and Peabody streets helped, as did the The NC Railroad Company’s decision to raise the bridge eight inches several years ago.
But the guy who has filmed 183 collisions with the bridge since 2008 has another theory about why it doesn’t cause as many victims as it used to: a drop in traffic.
The legend of the bridge will gain more exposure this summer with the opening of The Can Opener, an outdoor dining space with a bar and five food trucks next. Owners say they saw some trucks lose their tops this spring, validating the name choice.
In fact, with 12 feet, 4 inches of clearance, the bridge is still a threat to many trucks and trailers. Box trucks are generally over 13 feet tall and can be up to 14 feet tall in North Carolina without a license. Bridges built by NCDOT have clearances of at least 16 feet on interstate highways and 14 to 16 feet on other roads.
The railroad bridge opened in the mid-1920s, when trucks weren’t as tall, and has been scraped for decades. Collisions became so common that a steel beam was installed in front of the bridge to measure the force of the impact.
The bridge’s clear height was still 11 feet, 8 inches when Jürgen Henn went to work for Duke University in an office overlooking Gregson Street. Henn and his co-workers would rush to the window when they heard the sound of a truck crashing into the bridge and often came out to help clean up.
Curious to know what the collisions were like, Henn, who works in IT, set up a camera and started recording. He called the website where he posts his videos 11foot8.com. The timing of the attacks was random, Henn says, but they occurred on average once a month.
NCDOT and railroad take steps to reduce accidents
To try to reduce this number, NCDOT installed the traffic light in 2016 that turns red when a very tall truck triggers a laser beam across the street. An LED message next to the red light says “Overheight Must Turn,” alerting the driver before the light turns green.
By NCDOT’s calculations, the number of accidents dropped from an average of 8.4 the year before the lights went up to 6 on average over the next 3 years.
Then in 2019, NC Railroad, which owns the tracks, used jacks to carefully lift the bridge’s steel girders and slide in new plates, providing an additional eight inches of clearance. NCDOT figures show that crashes dropped to 3.6 per year on average between March 2021 and the end of May 2023.
“With the devices we dropped and the elevation of the bridge, we feel like this was pretty successful,” said John Grant, NCDOT regional operations engineer. “It’s been relatively smooth for us. It’s not on our radar.”
Donald Arant, the railroad’s vice president of engineering, says the extra eight inches made a difference.
“NCRR has made a major investment in the Gregson Street railroad bridge, increasing vertical clearance,” Arant wrote in an email. “This investment has led to a significant reduction in the number of recorded bridge collisions.”
Fewer trucks pass under the bridge
Henn isn’t so sure. He says the NCDOT traffic light and warning sign helped some drivers who were paying attention, but that others fixated on the yellow light and hit the bridge anyway.
“When they see the light turn yellow, they hit the gas to get through,” he said. “They’re not seeing the warnings because they’re just focused on the traffic light changing and wanting to beat it.”
As for raising the bridge, the result could be fewer serious accidents, Henn said, and more of what he calls “scrapers,” which reach the steel girder without losing their roofs. He changed the name of his website to 11foot8+8 and acknowledges that the number of collisions has decreased.
But Henn thinks the reason is that fewer trucks are using Gregson Street. Based on NCDOT traffic counts, it says the number of vehicles passing under the bridge has dropped from 13,000 per day in 2019 to 8,000 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
After a recovery in 2021, the number fell again to around 7,500 last year, something he attributes to the opening of Interstate 885, the East End Connectora highway that gives people an alternative to driving through the city center.
“That was the intent of the East End Connector. This thing is working well,” Henn said. “The truck accidents were actually just an almost insignificant side effect of the real problem, which is the high volume of traffic along this stretch of Gregson Street.”
Henn has recorded 9 accidents since January 1, 2023, most recently on May 22 when box truck driver Ryder ran under a traffic light after it turned red. The driver slowed down as the steel bar pulled on his roof, stopped briefly and then continued, letting the bar finish the job.
Nine accidents in nearly a year and a half, compared to about a dozen in the year before the pandemic, Henn says. His conclusion: less traffic = fewer accidents.
Henn doesn’t blame NCDOT or the railroad for trying. In fact, he thinks they’ve done more than enough to try to prevent some truck accidents that are “completely preventable and come down to pure driver inattention.”
He continues to record them, to keep up with the trend, but admits the excitement is gone.
“I’ve seen so many of them at this point that it’s not exciting anymore,” he said.
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