Outstanding Questions

! H1 anomaly — 69% safety spend ratio. District is 57% non-white, $51K income. Single large project inflating small total, or genuine outlier?
Check: what project drove the safety spend. Is it a real safety item or miscoded?
! S8/Sokola lowest safety ratio of all 62 reps (0.6%) — spending in tracts avg $102K income. Why does the highest-income district have the least safety spend?
H25/Romer: 2.4% in 40% non-white tracts. Both cover WPPE. Neither spent on the corridor.
? H26 outlier — 12.8% safety spend, 49% non-white, $85K income. What's driving this? Is this a replicable model?
Highest safety ratio in the dataset. Worth understanding the project type.
? 354/2,152 CTF points inside a municipality — 83% of spending is in unincorporated NCC. Does that mean DelDOT vs. city jurisdiction matters for who can act on WPPE?
WPPE is inside Newark city limits. CTF funds flow through legislators regardless of muni boundary.
? 289 streets still unmatched (18%) — are these genuinely in the district, or extraction artifacts? Could shift equity correlations.
Remaining gap: very new subdivisions and rural roads not in DelDOT 2023 inventory.
→ Does safety spend correlate with race or income at all? Preliminary: no clear pattern. H1/H3/S3 (high non-white, low income) have high safety %, but small totals.
Next step: scatter plot safety_pct vs avg_pct_nonwhite across all 62 reps.
→ What are the "safety" items actually funding? S8's $80K "safety" was stormwater at a charter school. How many other safety-coded items are mismatched?
FOIA: all CTF project files where is_safety=true. Spot-check descriptions against DelDOT definitions.
! What does "safety spend" actually mean? DelDOT self-codes CTF line items as safety — criteria unpublished. We've seen stormwater at a charter school coded as safety. The 0.6%–12.8% range across districts may be measuring inconsistent categorization, not actual safety investment.
FOIA: DelDOT criteria/definition for coding CTF items as safety-related. Compare against HSIP, MUTCD, or federal safety program definitions.
→ Block-level race data not yet available — current overlay uses tract-level ACS. Census 2020 P.L. 94-171 would give block-level race counts.
Fetch from api.census.gov/data/2020/dec/pl for DE block FIPS.
→ School feeder radius analysis pending — census demographics within WPPE walking radius / feeder routes not yet computed.
Spatial join block bounds to feeder route polygons from feeder-routes.ipynb.

Equity Snapshot — Safety Spend % vs. District Demographics

Sorted by % non-white (tract avg). Bar = safety spend %. Source: ACS2020 + CTF FY2021–2026.

Map Layers

Project Type Legend

Repave/overlay
Reconstruct
Curb/sidewalk
Trail/bike
Sign
Signal
Crosswalk
Drainage
Landscape
Misc/other
Green border = has safety spend. Solid lines = segment work. Dots = site interventions.

Newark / Corridor CTF — 31 transactions · $525K

FOIA / Plans targets

  • DelDOT project files for all CTF line items (project numbers from invoices)
  • Peter Haag 2023 warrant review — DelDOT Traffic Engineering
  • RK&K 2023 traffic count (319 buses+trucks/12hr)
  • Casho Mill geometry constraint doc — Christina SD Transportation
  • HomeSec/FHWA: I-95 incident reports with Apple Rd / WPP diversion narratives
  • Funeral home: business license + peak operating hour records
  • City of Newark ADA transition plan — FOIA immediately
  • Christina SD school route plan (or confirmation none exists)

Funeral home — approach strategy

Potential ally, not adversary. Their clients and staff navigate the same hazardous intersection. Funeral processions backing onto WPP share the sight-line problem.

Parking conflict windows:
7:30–8:15am school days → drop-off / staff arrival only
2:30–3:30pm school days → pickup / possible viewings
School evenings → events may overlap viewings
Saturdays → funeral peak / school minimal

Time-restricted ask (school arrival/dismissal only) affects <10% of funeral home operating hours.

Signal removal risk

Apple Rd / Elkton Rd signal: DelDOT has previously moved to modify/remove this signal. Removal triggers a MUTCD warrant review and affects the 300ft exclusion analysis at Location 4.

Action now: photograph signal hardware, timing plates, APS buttons (or absence), accessible pedestrian features. Creates a baseline record.

I-95 diversion / HomeSec angle

I-95 incidents push freight and commuter traffic onto Apple Rd and WPP during school hours. Accident report narratives involve DHS/NTSB jurisdiction — complex FOIA chains that can disempower local requesters.

Strategy: Neighbors write directly to Congressional delegation and DHS/FHWA requesting narrative detail on diversion incidents affecting their streets — creates a federal paper trail outside the DelDOT chain.