A legendary Durham bridge still mauls trucks, though not as often as it used to

Durham’s renowned “Can Opener” bridge doesn’t open as many cans as it used to.

The number of trucks and RVs getting their tops sheered off by the low railroad bridge over Gregson Street at Brightleaf Square is now less than a half dozen a year, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation. That’s about half what it was a decade ago.

NCDOT thinks a new traffic light and digital warning sign at Gregson and Peabody streets helped, as did the N.C. Railroad Company’s decision to raise the bridge 8 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 claim as many victims as it once did: A drop in traffic.

The legend of the bridge will get more exposure this summer with the opening of The Can Opener, an outdoor dining space with a bar and five food trucks nearby. The owners say they’ve seen a handful of trucks lose their tops this spring, validating their choice of a name.

Indeed, with 12 feet 4 inches of clearance, the bridge is still a threat to many trucks and RVs. Box trucks are commonly taller than 13 feet and can be up to 14 feet tall in North Carolina without a permit. 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 were not so tall, and has been shaving off tops for decades. The collisions became so common that a steel crash beam was installed in front of the bridge to take the force of the impact.

The bridge clearance was still 11 feet 8 inches when Jürgen Henn went to work for Duke University in an office overlooking Gregson Street. Henn and his coworkers would rush to the window when they heard the sound of a truck hitting the bridge and often went outside to help clean up.

Curious what the collisions looked like, Henn, who works in IT, set up a camera and began recording. He called the website where he posts his videos 11foot8.com. The timing of the strikes was random, Henn says, but averaged about one a month.

NCDOT, railroad take steps to reduce crashes

To try to reduce that number, NCDOT installed the traffic light in 2016 that turns red when a truck that’s too tall trips a laser beam across the street. An LED message next to the red light reads “Overheight Must Turn,” warning the driver before the light turns green.

By NCDOT reckoning, the number of crashes dropped from an average of 8.4 a year before the lights went up to 6 on average in the 3 years after.

Then in 2019, the N.C. Railroad, which owns the tracks, used jacks to carefully lift the bridge’s steel beams and slide in new plates, providing 8 more inches of clearance. NCDOT’s numbers show crashes dropped to 3.6 a year on average between March 2021 and the end of May 2023.

“With the devices that we’ve thrown at it and the raising of the bridge, we feel like that’s been pretty successful,” said John Grant, NCDOT’s regional operations engineer. “It’s been relatively quiet for us. It has not been on our radar.”

Donald Arant, the railroad’s vice president for engineering, says the extra eight inches have made a difference.

“NCRR made an important investment in the Gregson Street rail bridge by increasing the vertical clearance,” Arant wrote in an email. “That investment has led to a significantly reduced number of recorded bridge strikes.”

Fewer trucks pass under the bridge

Henn isn’t so sure. He says NCDOT’s traffic light and warning sign helped some drivers who were paying attention, but that others fixate on the yellow caution light and hit the bridge anyway.

“When they see the light turn yellow, they floor it to make it through,” he said. “They’re not seeing the warnings, because they’re just focused on that traffic light changing and wanting to beat that light.”

As for raising the bridge, the result may be fewer serious crashes, Henn said, and more of what he calls “scrapers,” which hit the steel beam without losing their roofs. He amended the name of his website to 11foot8+8 and acknowledges that the number of collisions has gone down.

But Henn thinks the reason is that fewer trucks are using Gregson Street. Based on NCDOT’s traffic counts, he says the number of vehicles passing under the bridge dropped from 13,000 a day in 2019 to 8,000 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

After a rebound in 2021, the number dropped again to about 7,500 last year, something he attributes to the opening of Interstate 885, the East End Connector, a highway that gives people an alternative to driving through downtown.

“That was the intent of the East End Connector. That thing is working well,” Henn said. “The truck crashes were really only an almost negligible side effect of the actual problem, which is the high traffic volume along this stretch of Gregson Street.”

Henn has recorded 9 crashes since Jan. 1, 2023, most recently on May 22 when the driver of Ryder box truck passed under the traffic light after it turned red. The driver slowed as the steel bar peeled back his roof, stopped briefly, then continued, letting the bar finish the job.

Nine crashes in nearly a year and a half compares to about a dozen a year before the pandemic, Henn says. His conclusion: Less traffic = fewer crashes.

Henn doesn’t fault NCDOT or the railroad for trying. In fact, he thinks they’ve done more than enough to try to prevent a few truck crashes that are “completely avoidable and just boil down to sheer inattention by the drivers.”

He continues to record them, to track the trend, but admits the thrill is gone.

“I’ve seen enough of them at this point that it’s not exciting anymore,” he said.

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