Storm Stories

Wilmington’s pedestrian safety problems fall unevenly across the city. Its pedestrian plan found that most crashes involving people on foot occurred in areas with higher concentrations of minority residents and higher poverty rates than the county average. On the Northside, those risks are part of a broader question about how a city built around driving...

Lyft rideshare data shows Spanish-language riders in New Hanover County are 75% more likely to be women, and their trips are more likely to end at schools, workplaces, and grocery stores. Meanwhile, 70% of Latinos surveyed across North Carolina rely on a personal vehicle to get around — with over half of the 3,397 respondents...

Vanessa Gonzalez is an immigration attorney in Wilmington. Many of her clients live in southeastern North Carolina. The federal offices deciding their cases do not. In this episode, Shoresides learns what that distance means in practice—and how transportation barriers may connect to health. We also speak with Kevin Chen of the Union of Concerned Scientists about...

Poet Delthea Simmons had a license, a car on its last legs, and a hometown she loved. What she didn't have was reliable transportation—so she organized her shopping, her work, and eventually her exit from Wilmington around rideshare apps. In this episode, Shoresides asks whether her story is part of a pattern. Lyft driver Jace...

Across the country, communities are confronting a new challenge: what happens when the growing demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure collides with local concerns about land, water, energy and quality of life? North Carolina is at the center of that debate, with at least 20 proposed data center projects across the state. In Edgecombe County, residents...

Inclement weather exposes our transportation options—and where we most need to go. In the case of Wilmington, NC, as winter storm Gianna hit, data showed residents used the Lyft ride-share app to meet some of their most critical emergency needs. In this episode, Shoresides talks with Sarah Conlisk of Lyft about the data and how...

Send a text Data showing that the community surrounding Portia Mills Hines Park has the lowest life expectancy in Wilmington is stark. But what does that reality look like up close—and what’s being done about it? In this episode, Shoresides speaks with Dr. Mayra Galeano, the chief medical officer at a clinic close to the...

Send a text “New Hanover County has one of the highest shares of households without vehicle access in North Carolina—about 6 percent—according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey,” transportation expert Andrés Otero wrote in an article for WHQR last year. “People without access to a car often include college students, older...

Send a text Recently, the Wilmington StarNews and Cape Fear Collective dug into Wilmington, N.C.’s life-expectancy gap. It turns out there are similar disparities regarding the city’s pedestrians. “Wilmington consistently has one of the highest annual pedestrian crash rates in NC. From 2011–2020,” says the 2023 Walk Wilmington Pedestrian Plan. The majority of crashes involving pedestrians...

Send us a text In this episode, Shoresides talks with Vanessa Gonzalez about what it means when people looking for help can’t easily tell the difference between a real attorney and a convincing impersonator — and why immigration law, with its limited pathways and high stakes, is a particularly easy place to run the con....

Send us a text North Carolina’s latest congressional map is part of Republicans’ efforts nationwide to gain more seats in the House of Representatives ahead of the 2026 election.  Right before Thanksgiving, federal judges ruled against local advocacy groups and voters who have challenged the map on the basis of racial gerrymandering. This decision, along...

Send us a text Ahead of the 2026 Election, North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers — at the request of President Trump — have passed a new congressional map intended to squeeze out one more Republican seat in Congress. The new map will also make it more difficult for northeastern Black voters to elect their preferred candidate....

North Carolina’s Black Belt is a cluster of northeastern counties known for its rich soil and history. And now, it’s the site of one of the most enduring issues in the state: redistricting. But this isn’t the first time that the region has been redistricted to disenfranchise Black voters. In this episode, we go back...