By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- Plans to split transportation away from Durham's Public Works Department are moving ahead, with the transportation staff set to become a full-fledged department on Jan. 1, officials said Tuesday.

The move will consolidate the Durham Area Transit Authority, long-range road and transit planning, taxicab regulation and parking management under the leadership of the city's present transportation manager, Mark Ahrendsen.

Officials believe the reorganization will improve the city's ability to deal with transportation issues at the same time it frees Public Works to focus more on regulating stormwater-induced pollution, City Manager Tom Bonfield said.

The announcement came a year and four days after Bonfield first said he wanted to consolidate the management of DATA, parking and taxicabs under a new department.

The original idea was that a reorganization would help officials better supervise Durham's bus system.

But as the months went by, it became clear to the manager that the plan was flawed for proposing to leave the long-range planners in Public Works.

That prompted skepticism from some members of the City Council, as the planners play a key role in working the state and federal bureaucracies to land money for road and transit projects desired not just by Durham, but by other cities and counties in the western Triangle.

Though there's precedent locally in the transportation arena for splitting planning and administration, it's just as common in large cities to keep those functions under one roof. In the end, Bonfield decided that was the way to go.

The original plan "just wasn't deep enough to be fully effective," he said, adding that his "learning curve" since coming to in the summer of 2008 included seeing how officials here have made transportation planning "an integrated city responsibility."

The new department will fit within the city's existing budget and staffing, Bonfield added.

Parking management is the one function the new department won't be inheriting from Public Works. It's now under the aegis of the General Services Department.

The reorganization should give Public Works leaders more time to focus on maintenance in addition to stormwater regulation, officials said.

Though the department is already active on stormwater issues, Durham's effort is "really still in the infancy stages" compared to what's common in some other parts of the country, Bonfield said.