Shoresides

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 lacking a driver's license, and a third reporting they are undocumented. In Wilmington, WAVE Transit may have part of the answer: RideMICRO. Shoresides investigates.

Credits Produced by Rend Smith. Field reporting by Aaleah McConnell and Day Camposeco. Ride data and analysis courtesy of Sarah Conlisk, data storyteller at Lyft. Photo by Day Camposeco.

Guests Lennin Caro, director, Camino Research Institute; Brianna D'Itri, public relations manager, Cape Fear Public Transportation Authority (WAVE Transit)

Survey figures are from the 2025 North Carolina Latino Strengths and Needs Assessment.

Learn more about the Coastal Journalism Hub: http://www.coastaljournalism.org/ This story was produced in partnership with the Coastal Journalism Hub, a collaborative focused on health and wellbeing in New Hanover County.

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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 the decline—and possible resurgence—of affordable intercity bus service, a possible remedy.

Photo by Day Camposeco.

Learn more about the Coastal Journalism Hub: http://www.coastaljournalism.org/

This story was produced in partnership with the Coastal Journalism Hub, a collaborative focused on health and wellbeing in New Hanover County.

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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 Jayce Esterline estimates that 60% of pickups on Wilmington's Northside are people getting to doctor's appointments, work, and groceries. And ride data pulled by Lyft's Sarah Conlisk, reviewed with Anna Casey of Cape Fear Collective, shows riders in Wilmington's lowest life-expectancy neighborhoods using the apps as basic transportation infrastructure—while riders in the highest use them to get to the airport.

Lyft provided ride data for this story; Uber did not respond to our inquiries.

Credits
Produced by Rend Smith, Aaleah McConnell and Nick Magrino. Ride data and analysis courtesy of Sarah Conlisk, data storyteller at Lyft. Photo by Day Camposeco.

Learn more about the Coastal Journalism Hub: http://www.coastaljournalism.org/

This story was produced in partnership with the Coastal Journalism Hub, a collaborative focused on health and wellbeing in New Hanover County.

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www.shoresides.org 

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 from across the community have come together to oppose plans for large-scale data center development. Many see echoes of an earlier fight that united local residents against a proposed industrial project in the 1990s.

In this episode, we hear from community members organizing to stop the projects, explore their concerns about environmental impacts and economic benefits, and examine how a local dispute fits into a larger national conversation about the future of AI infrastructure.

Guests:
David Batts, candidate for Edgecombe County Commissioner, District 6
Kevin Wilson, chair and co-founder, Edgecombe Neighbors for Data Center Accountability
Briyana Baker, commissioner, Town of Conetoe
Dr. Erik Nordman, professor, Michigan State University and director of the Institute of Public Utilities

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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 problem. She tells us what it's like to provide care in the community. The clinic is open to everyone, serving Black and Latino residents among others—and patients don’t need insurance. 

Learn more

• MedNorth Health Center: https://mednorth.org

Learn more about the Coastal Journalism Hub: http://www.coastaljournalism.org/

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“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 adults, and others who either cannot afford a vehicle or are unable to drive. In Wilmington, these groups make up a significant portion of the population. The same data also show that in both the Northside and Southside neighborhoods, more than a third of households have no vehicle access.”

In this episode, Otero talks with Shoresides about living without a personal vehicle—and what that experience reveals about how cities like Wilmington function for pedestrians and bicyclists. He also discusses what it would take to build a city that works for everyone, not just drivers.

Learn more

• Andrés’ Substack: https://andytalksurbanism.substack.com
• WHQR article: https://www.whqr.org/local/2025-04-28/walking-and-bicycling-in-wilmington-and-north-carolina-face-significant-funding-barriers-says-advocate

Learn more about the Coastal Journalism Hub: http://www.coastaljournalism.org/

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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 occurred in areas with higher concentrations of minority residents and higher poverty rates compared to the county average.”  

Abby Lorenzo of the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and Justin Carter, assistant director of engineering for the City of Wilmington, explain what’s called the “pedestrian high injury network" and what’s being done about it. 

Learn about this work and about the Coastal Journalism Hub at www.coastaljournalism.org

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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.

We also hear from Adonia Simpson at the American Bar Association Commission on Immigration, which has dealt with its own impersonation scams, and from Reuters investigative tech reporter Jeff Horwitz, whose reporting on Meta helps explain why taking down fraud can be harder than you’d think.

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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 with rulings in states like Texas, could be setting a precedent of more blatant partisan gerrymandering in the future. 

In this episode, I spoke with Sarah Michels, a reporter with Carolina Public Press. She covers state politics and elections, and has closely followed NC’s new congressional maps accused of racial gerrymandering.  

This is the third part of a series on redistricting in eastern North Carolina. 

Part 1 | Part 2 

Host / Producer: Layna Hong

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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. 

In this episode, we break down what’s happening and how it’s playing out in the courts. We talk to Chistopher Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. Then, we hear from two of the plaintiffs on the lawsuit against state Republican lawmakers for the newest map: Bob Phillips from Common Cause and Dawn Daley-Mack of the Northampton County NAACP. 

This is the second part of a series on redistricting in eastern North Carolina. 

Listen to the first part here 

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