|
|
|
Can City Council do bike lanes better?
A bill to funnel new bike lane proposals through City Council is being amended; critics say it's still adding unnecessary hurdles.
Can City Council do bike lanes better?
Last year, a bill to steer new bike lanes straight through City Council died out quietly, up against resistance from cycling advocates and the administration. Critics saw it as unnecessary red tape at best, a power grab at worst. But Councilman William Greenlee — who re-introduced the bill this spring and at a hearing yesterday managed to quell much of the opposition — says it’s a move toward transparency! And community input! And Council participation!
Except, all of those things kind of already exist. For four years now, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities (MOTU) has been adding bike lanes by piloting them first, installing temporary lanes and then doing traffic studies, according to Andrew Stober, chief of staff at MOTU. (The office is big on piloting: everything from changing bus stops to adding pedestrian plazas to installing garbage disposals. Stober calls it a “philosophy of government” that involves responding to needs, trying things out and keeping what works.) Community meetings and discussions with district Council members are already part of the process. For lanes on 10th and 13th streets in Chinatown, MOTU went door to door, provided bilingual information and collected more than 100 letters from residents and businesspeople.
Greenlee’s bill, which has been amended to apply only to lanes that replace a lane of traffic or parking, would formalize that process, which many agree is a good idea. But Council involvement will also slow things down, Stober says. “I’m not sure that, if Council had had to preapprove the bike lanes on Spruce and Pine, if that would have gotten through. What everyone saw afterward was there weren’t significant impacts on traffic, there were a lot of cyclists using it and the chaos people thought would happen never materialized.” Accidents on Spruce and Pine declined by 44 percent.
At a Council hearing Tuesday, Greenlee expressed skepticism about previous pilots: He said he’d heard in Chinatown the lanes were a “fait accompli.” (Part of the 10th Street lane was, in fact, recently removed following its pilot run: John Chin of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. said that the impact on businesses had been significant, claiming in one case that lanes had caused one shop's business to drop by 10 percent.) But Greenlee agreed to amend his bill to add an eight-month pilot process, thereby neutralizing much of the opposition on the spot. “As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “this is just being consistent” with governance of other changes to roadways.
Still, Sarah Clark Stuart, policy director at the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, has reservations. The best time to install a lane is when streets are being repaved, she says, on an (ever-lengthening) cycle of 15 or 20 years.
“The repaving process requires a lot of planning, and then contracts, then coordination with other agencies. … To overlay an ordinance on top of that process could hamper the ability of the city to include a bike lane in the repaving plan,” Stuart says. “If that opportunity is missed, you’ve lost that opportunity to paint the bike lane in for another 15 to 20 years.”
- ActiVman
- adventures
- Arts
- Ask A Man-About-Town
- Award Tour
- Awards
- Bad Idea Factory
- Beer
- Below the Curve
- Bikes
- Booze
- Brian Hickey
- BRT
- Budget
- Budget Fuss
- Business
- Casinos
- City Council
- City Hall
- CouncilMANIC
- CP Abroad
- CP in the Community
- Criminal Justice System
- Day Tripper
- Death and Taxes
- Delaware River
- Design
- DROP
- Drugs
- Dubious Distinction
- Elections
- End of Days
- Environment
- Fashion
- Film Fest
- Financial Meltdown
- FrackTrack
- Free Library
- Gambling
- Gay Stuff
- Get Lit
- Greenstorming
- guns
- Hall Monitor
- Health
- Health Care
- Hello, Kitty
- Holidays
- Ice Cubes
- Iggles
- Immigration
- In Memoriam
- Labor
- Lawsuits
- Letters
- LGBTQ
- Maps
- Marcellus Shale
- Media
- MMA
- Mummers
- Music
- MUST READ
- Mysterious Mysteries
- Nation
- News
- Non Sequitur
- Opinion
- PA politics 2010
- Parking Wars
- Parks and Recreation
- People Send Us This Stuff
- Philadelphia Police
- Philadelphia Union
- Philaphemera
- Philly From Scratch
- philly madness
- Photos
- Poverty
- PPA
- President Obama
- Print Edition
- Prisons
- Protest
- Readers Write
- Real Estate
- Rock Bottom
- Schools
- Science
- Screwing Philly
- SEPTA
- snow
- So Lush
- Soccer
- Sporting Life
- Sports Complex
- State Politicians
- State Politics
- Street Art
- Strike
- Stuff We Like
- Taxes
- Taxi Drivers
- Tech Fetish
- television
- The Budget Crisis
- The City Paper
- The CLOG
- The Human Condition
- The Mayor
- The Phightin Phils
- The World
- Things that make you go hm
- Tinfoil Hats Off
- Under the Table
- Under the Tables
- Urban Development
- Urban Planning
- urban wildlife
- Video Poker
- We Call Shenanigans
- Weather
- Web Junk
- Weekend Omnibus
- White House
- What We've Found
- Women's Issues
- Flyered Up!
- How 'Bout That Weather?
- it's always sunny in philadelphia
- Stu!
- Shopping
- get out
- 10-track mind
- ArtsFlash
- Bloggity
- Bruce Being Bruce
- Colleges
- Comedy
- Gigantic Surprises
- Hello Canary
- Hello Puppy
- errata
- get lost
- Inside The Fishbowl
- Library Closings
- Local Support
- Movies
- Murder
- Night Moves
- Recycling
- radio
- Scientology
- Sex
- Sixers
- Skeeze Police
- State Politicians Screwing Philly
- That's a cool stencil!
- Theater
- Things We See
- This Week
- This Week in Oates
- University City
- WIN
- What we don't heart
- trailer!
- what we heart
- Feeling Guilty
- Askadelphia.
- Broke in Philly
- Contest
- Dance
- Dear Paper Doll
- Do A Good Thing
- Education
- Film Fest Schism
- G20-20 Vision
- Goodbye
- Gossip
- Great American Heroes
- PATCO
- Pearl Jam Week
- Puppy
- Stars of the Photostream
- sustainability
- Lower Merion Webcam-Gate
- The Cycle
- Equality Forum
- Bureaucrat of the Week
- Animals
- ElectionEar
- Photostream
