What I've Learned

Thoughts on Reforming Our Streets - and Other Things

Generally speaking, our cities have not been designed for the convenience of the people who live there. They have been designed to make rich people richer.

This presents some challenges for people, like me, who are trying to make our streets safe, useful, and pleasant for everybody, not just rich people.

In the middle are the politicians, whose main job is to mediate between the rich and the hoi poloi. They used to have a side job of leading, and there have been some refreshing signs of actual leadership lately, but overall survival by triangulation still seems to be the basic approach.

If you are a policy person in this political schema, the simplest way to get things done is to become a servant of the rich. This will, of course, affect your work product in a variety of ways, but historically it was the only way, and if you admire the work of people like Michelangelo, you are a beneficiary of this system.

Rittenhouse Square was also a product of this system, as duly modernized to fit a more democratic society where money was not so tightly concentrated at the top as it was in the time of Pope Julius II.

Still, there is the lingering thought that policy, in a democratic society, should be able to speak for itself. That is simply not the way it works. In today's world, if you build a better mousetrap, you don't wait for the world to beat a path to your door. You have to go out and sell it. 

You might think that the policy entrepreneur could go and knock on the doors of politicians and sell them a policy or two. Again, that's not the way it works. Here, and now, all politics are interest-group politics, and every idea is a commodity looking for an interest group to peddle it to the politicians.

We're a long way from the Romantic ideal, expressed by John Keats, that a thing of beauty is a joy forever:

And now, at once adventuresome, I send / My herald thought into a wilderness: / There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress / My uncertain path with green, that I may speed / Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed. 

If you have ideas about how to improve things, do not try to do it on your own. Find some like-minded people, work with them, build a constituency, find politicians open to your ideas, try to find a few rich people who may be willing to support you if it's convenient - and then expect a long, hard struggle, prepare to watch your best ideas deformed almost beyond recognition, and recognize that you will lose more often than you win. The important thing - the prize - is to win in the end.

I was fortunate to find, in the endeavors that I remember fondly, a few colleagues, often very different people from me, where the group dynamic proceeded to a deeper, more complex, and astonishingly strong bond that held us together in difficult times, and in less difficult times allowed us to flourish in startling and often new ways.

What Victory Feels Like for Me

I'm sitting in my armchair at the end of the day. The yellow and pink and sometimes red of the sunset sky is slowly fading, and the living room is quietly filling with blue light. Inside my body there is a warm glow. As I unwind from the challenges of the day, I look back and feel that I have probably accomplished something. Will anything come of all this work? I hope so.

I've found that actual victory - passage of legislation, winning an election - can be somewhat anticlimactic. I do know the victories are important, and I enjoy sharing them with friends. But what gets me up in the morning are those quiet moments of satisfaction.

See also Sandy's Book, For Athena, Ron DeSantis Comes to Philly, Rebecca Rhynhart for Mayor, Hector at Troy, Some Things Actually Get Better.

The State of Play on Pine-Spruce

No Stopping? The Bill Has Passed! 

Cement Barriers? On the Way.

September 29.

I'm not used to seeing things move this fast, and frankly I find it a bit disorienting. But I'd be very happy to become accustomed to it. After Barbara Friedes, M.D., was killed on July 17, both Mayor Parker and City Council President Johnson, after initial hesitation, moved quickly to positions that I never expected them to take. I am grateful to them for their courageous and effective action. I am also grateful to the churches and synagogues that voluntarily agreed to stop the long-standing practice of allowing congregants to park in the Pine and Spruce bike lanes when attending services.

After the fatal crash, three bike-friendly organizations - the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, 5th Square, and Philly Bike Action - presented the City with a petition making three demands: cement barriers to prevent motor vehicles from entering bike lanes; change No Parking signs next to the bike lanes to No Stopping signs; and an end to church and synagogue parking in the bike lanes. 

The churches and synagogues, which had been under pressure concerning this issue for some time, all agreed to stop parking in the Pine and Spruce bike lanes, and have done so. Meanwhile, the City has taken important steps forward on the other two issues.

I thought it might be useful to assemble a timeline for at least some of the significant events that have occurred in the last few months. 

July 17: Dr. Friedes dies. 

July 21: A vigil for Dr. Friedes is held at the site of her death. 

July 26: Bicyclists conduct a protest ride from the Art Museum, through Center City, and ending at City Hall. 

August 15: Reform petition presented to City Hall. 

August 26: Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel becomes the final religious organization to agree to stop parking in the bike lanes on Pine and Spruce. A total of seven congregations have given up these spaces. 

August 30: Mayor Parker holds a press conference supporting the reform agenda. 

September 5: No Stopping bill introduced in City Council and referred to the committee on streets and services. 

September 28: Ghost bike commemorating Dr. Friedes instated on Spruce street near 18th. 

October 8. City officials make the first public-facing presentation of Mayor Parker's plan to reform the bike lanes on Pine and Spruce. The Center City Residents' Association hosts the meeting. 

October 15: City Council's streets and services committee holds a hearing on the No Stopping bill, and the bill is reported out favorably. 

October 17: City officials hold a large open house to present the plan to the general public. The event takes place at Jefferson University and is very well attended.

October 24. City Council passes the No Stopping bill by a vote of 17-0, at 12:40 pm. A last-minute attempt to delay consideration of the bill failed. 

The time is always right to do what is right. - Martin Luther King

And that is where things stand now.

_______________

The City Council streets committee kindly asked me to come and tell them a little bit about loading zones. And so I did, at the October 15 hearing. Here's the prepared text of my statement:

Good afternoon. My name is Bill West, and I am the chair of the streets committee of the Center City Residents' Association. CCRA looks after the part of Center City west of Broad, between South Street and JFK Boulevard. The Pine and Spruce bike lanes run east-west through the middle of this area, from Broad to 22nd.

All the comments and queries about our streets that local residents send to CCRA come to me, and I answer them. When it comes to the proposed changes to the bike lanes on Pine and Spruce, residents have asked me: Where will Uber and Lyft go for pick-ups and drop-offs? How will my contractor unload his tools and materials? How will I unload my groceries?

Here's the answer: loading zones. In June, the City and the Parking Authority installed loading zones at or near the beginning of each block on Pine and Spruce, from Broad to 22nd Street. They're working well, although not perfectly. They're so popular, I think we're going to need to add some more.

I do think loading zones are the correct answer for Society Hill and Washington Square West. As chair of the CCRA streets committee, I have had a hand in getting those loading zones on Pine and Spruce, west of Broad. They were inspired by the earlier expansion of loading zones on Chestnut Street, which of course is a commercial rather than a residential area. Chestnut continues to have challenges, and I think the answer there, too, will be to add more loading zones.

The basic mission of the CCRA streets committee is to help make our streets safe, useful, and pleasant for everybody. I hope you will agree that we have a distance to go before we actually get there, but I do think loading zones are a step in the right direction.

Cement block emplacement, Spruce and 18th.

See also The Vigil for Dr. Friedes, Defense Doesn't Win Wars, No Parking v. No Stopping, Loading Zones Are the Key, Pine-Spruce: Will We Replay Washington Avenue?

Campaign Poster Number Five

This 1984 photo is from Asbury Park. My son kindly agreed to put a blanket over his head, creating (at least for me) both erasure and a blank slate, or perhaps a projection screen.

See also The NRA and the Truth; It's Not Like Gunsmoke; School of Arms; Gunfight at the O.K. Corral; Guns Without Responsibility; George Zimmerman, Giving Town Watch a Bad Name.

A World in Ruins

War Is Hard. And Then There's Peace.

Aeneas chats with Turnus. Briefly.

I was stunned when I first read the following paragraphs by Bernard Knox. Frankly, I'm still stunned. They're in his introduction to the Robert Fagles translation of Virgil's Aeneid. This section of the introduction (pp. 39-41) is a personal reminiscence about his military service in Italy during World War II, and how Mr. Virgil came for a visit one day and effectively told Knox what he should do after the war. Knox followed his advice.

Born in Yorkshire, England, in 1914, Knox had studied the classics at Cambridge, and after the war he went back to the classics, earning a Ph.D. at Yale and winding up as director of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. He died in 2010, at the age of 95. 

Before we start, I need to explain something called the sortes Virgilianae. People seeking guidance for the future would open a copy of Virgil's writings and select a passage at random. People would also use the Bible for the same purpose. 

_______

"I consulted the Virgilian lottery in April 1945. The year before, while a captain in the U.S. Army, I had worked with French partisans behind the lines against German troops in Brittany, and after a leave I was finally sent to Italy to work with partisans there. No doubt the OSS [Office of Strategic Services] moguls in Washington figured that since I had studied Latin at Cambridge I would have no trouble picking up Italian. The partisans this time were on our side of the lines; things had got too difficult for them in the Po Valley and they had come through the mountains. The U.S. Army, very short of what the soldiers called 'warm bodies,' since so many of its best units had been called in for the invasion of southern France, armed them and put them under the command of American officers to hold sections of the mountain line where no German breakthrough was expected. I had about twelve hundred of them, in various units ranging from Communist to officers of the crack corps of the Italian army, the Alpini; but they had two things in common - great courage and still greater hatred of Germans. For several months we held the sector, which contained the famous Passo dell' Abettone, then impassable for wheeled vehicles since the German engineers had blown its sides down. We made frequent long patrols into enemy territory, sometimes bringing back prisoners for interrogation, sometimes passing civilian agents through the lines. In April we were given a small role in the final move north that brought about the German surrender of Italy. The main push was to the left and right of us, where tanks and wheeled vehicles could move - on the coast road to our left and on our right  through the Futa Pass to Bologna. We were to attack German positions on the heights opposite us, take the town of Fanano, and then go on to Modena in the valley. 

'We killed or captured the German troops holding the heights without too many losses, liberated Fanano, and started north on the road to Modena. ... 

"Every now and then we met a German machine-gun crew holed up in a building that delayed our passage. Usually we too occupied a building to house our machine-guns and keep the enemy under fire while we sent out a flanking party to dislodge them. On one of these occasions we occupied a villa off the road that had evidently been hit by one of our bombers; it had not much roof left and the inside was a shambles, but it would do. At one point in the sporadic exchanges of fire I handed over the gun to a sergeant and retreated into the debris of the room to smoke a cigarette. As I looked at the tangled wreckage on the floor I noticed what looked like a book, and investigation with my foot revealed part of its spine, on which I saw, in gold capitals, the letters 'MARONIS.' [Virgil's full name is Publius Vergilius Maro.] It was a text of Virgil, published by the Roman Academy 'IUSSU BENEDICTI MUSSOLINI,' 'By Order of Benito Mussolini.' There were not many Italians who would call him 'blessed' now [Benedictus means Blessed]; in fact, a few weeks later his blood-stained corpse, together with that of his mistress, Clara Petacci, and that of his right-hand man, Starace, would be hanging upside-down outside a gas station in Milan. 

"And then I remembered the Sortes Virgilianae. I closed my eyes, opened the book at random and put my finger on the page. What I got was not so much a prophecy about my own future as a prophecy for Italy; it was from lines at the end of the first Georgic:

"... a world in ruins ... / For right and wrong change places; everywhere / So many wars, so many shapes of crime / Confront us; no due honor attends the plow. / The fields, bereft of tillers, are all unkempt ... / ... throughout the world / Impious war is raging. 

"'A world in ruins.' It was an exact description of the Italy we were fighting in - its railroads and its ancient buildings shattered by Allied aircraft, its elegant bridges blown into the water by the retreating Germans, and its fields sown not with seed by the farmers but with mines by the German engineers. 

"The fighting stopped; it was time to move on. I tried to get the Virgil into my pack, but it was too big, and I threw it back to the cluttered floor. But I remember thinking: 'If I get out of this alive, I'll go back to the classics, and Virgil especially.' And I did." 

_______

About the picture at the top of the story: At the end of the Aeneid, when Aeneas has finally reached Latium (the future Rome), there's a big fight over who gets the girl (Lavinia, the daughter of Latinus, the king of Latium) and also who gets the country (which goes with the girl). The local boy, Turnus, is very unhappy that an outsider (Aeneas) looks like he's going to get it all without a fight. And so there's a big battle.

A lot of people get killed, but eventually Aeneas has Turnus on the ground. Turnus says, hey, let's make a deal. We can live together peacefully. But too much blood has been shed. And, frankly, I think Aeneas has PTSD. He kills Turnus. Or, as Virgil puts it, Aeneas "plants / his iron sword hilt-deep in his enemy's heart. / Turnus' limbs went limp in the chill of death. / His life breath fled with a groan of outrage / down to the shades below." (12:1109-1113). These are the last five lines of the Aeneid. 

Today, killing an unarmed and defenseless soldier is a war crime. But back then it wasn't. 

I didn't learn about this part of the Aeneid when I was in school. I recall Dido and Aeneas, and the call of duty, which trumps all desires for a peaceful life. But the idea that the Roman empire was based on murder was not a message taught to me in school.  

Luca Giordano made the painting in 1688; I found it on Wikimedia Commons. 

_______

If you're interested in what the girl at the center of this story thought about all these goings-on, have a look at Ursula K. Le Guin's novel Lavinia (2008). It's a pretty amazing work of reimagination. 

See also Narcissism and Dictatorship, Jim Crow Was a Failed State, Fascism, Mussolini's Personal Sex Factory, What Happened in Ferrara?

Surf School, Asbury Park

Can 4-Year-Olds Learn to Surf? Yes.

One of my hangouts is on the beach near the jetty that separates the surfing beach - the northernmost beach in Asbury Park - from the swimming beaches that lie to the south, down to Ocean Grove. And possibly my most favorite thing to watch is the very young children in surfing school. We're talking four to seven years old.

But don't worry, Mom and Dad. In the class for the youngest surfers, there is always an instructor mounted behind the child on the surfboard. And there are more instructors standing in the water, which generally comes up around their knees. And there are more instructors on the beach, watching everything that goes on in the water and keeping an eye on the kids who are sitting on the beach, waiting for their turn.

Here's a bigger kid getting a ride. Practice makes you better.

And here's a class getting ready to go down to the sea with surfboards. (Apologies to Psalm 107.)

Another class in the water and heading out.

A day at the beach. Note the mini-surfboards.

And one more.

The whole show is put on by a company called Summertime Surf.  This engine of commerce, or scholarship, or surfing, or maybe just plain fun was founded in 2006. It seems to pretty much own a large stretch of the Jersey shore, with schools offered in Asbury Park, Bradley Beach, Belmar, Point Pleasant, and Manasquan River. A tentacle appears to have reached out to Rhode Island.

The kids - and the instructors - don't spend all their time in the water, and so the camp in Asbury Park comes with a large tent - a shady refuge for breaks and the occasional bit of instruction.

Below, a student racks her board after a lesson.

These camps are expensive. Not everybody has room for something like this in their budget, but in Asbury Park there is an option - the Asbury Park Surf Club, which traces its origins to 2019. It runs a class every Thursday in the summer. The children come in groups from places like the Boys and Girls Club. The instructors are volunteers; they're also surfers, and their love of the children and the sport shines through every time I'm watching them.

Here's a shot of a group of APSC surfers heading out to the waves.

Again, notice how many instructors there are.

And here's a shot of the beach crew at the end of the day, standing and watching as the campers take their last rides.

The pictures here were taken in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

See also How Surfboards Get Around, Umbrellaville.

Loading Zones Are the Key

To Unlocking our Parking Lanes

New loading zone, Pine near 18th.

People who live in what is sometimes called CCRAville live in a very nice place. Geographically, it is the southwest quadrant of William Penn's 1682 plan for Philadelphia. The present-day City Hall sits in the square that was at the center of Penn's plan; a bit to the southwest lies Rittenhouse Square, and a bit further to the southwest lies Fitler Square. Rittenhouse and Fitler squares are the lungs of CCRAville. 

This part of the city was largely developed in the nineteenth century, and today many of the tree-lined streets in the area are flanked by rows of red brick and brownstone houses from that time. It is, generally speaking, a prosperous, well-tended area. But it is not without its problems - this is, after all, the real world. And one of those problems is parking.

Finding a curbside parking space in CCRAville is a challenging process in the best of times. And sometimes, frankly, it's impossible. I speak from personal experience.

The shortage of open space at the curb makes it very difficult for people to gain access to the area. And so the plumber who arrives to fix the leak in your basement may very well wind up parking illegally, possibly in a crosswalk or possibly blocking a traffic lane. All these maneuvers contribute to congestion on our streets, and sometimes they are quite dangerous.

Recently the City government and the Philadelphia Parking Authority (a state agency) agreed to do something about this problem. They worked together to install loading zones at or near the end of each block of Pine and Spruce streets, running between Broad and 22nd - basically running east-west through the middle of CCRAville. (For the City's flyer explaining this project, click here.) 

The Center City Residents' Association, the local community group that looks after CCRAville, encouraged this project from its conception and through a lengthy gestation.

The final result, in place since June, is a great success. Illegal parking on these streets has declined dramatically, improving traffic flow and increasing safety.

The rules of the game.

A Long Backstory

You might think that putting up a few posts and some small signs is a quick and easy process. You would be wrong. I can trace the roots of this project back for a decade, and I think others could probably add a few years to that.

What I'm going to do here is tell you the story as I saw it. Like an infantry soldier in a trench, my view of this project was quite limited. I know what I did; I know some of what the people around me did. I can't tell you what was going on with other people further down the trench line, and I have no idea what the colonels and the generals were thinking and doing.

When I retired in 2009, my daughter got me a gmail account, and my wife set me up with a blog called westwordsphilly. The blog started as a friends and family affair, with me processing my departure from corporate life for a small audience. I soon found myself writing about health insurance - I had worked for an insurance company and developed a strong interest in reforming the industry. This led me to work on the campaign to get Obamacare passed. And then, after the bill became law, I found myself looking at other topics. I had worked for the New York City Planning Commission in the 1970s, and as I walked around CCRAville it struck me that we weren't managing our streets any better than we had been handling health insurance.

I had been an avid runner and bicyclist, but I was particularly annoyed by the parking in my neighborhood, and in due course I found Donald Shoup, a professor at UCLA who had been analyzing parking for decades and was in the process of revolutionizing the entire field.

That's a story for another day. Today, all we need to know is that, if curbside parking is free or very inexpensive, and off-street parking is more expensive, the street will always fill first. 

Many of our City leaders do not understand this mechanism even today. When confronted with streets where curbside occupancy is 100 percent or more, City Council tends to respond by trying to create more off-street parking. The main problem with this approach is that it doesn't work.

Bug truck, 1600 block of Pine.

Implementing Shoup in Philly - or Not

At this time, ten years ago, I did not have the idea of reimagining our streets lane by lane, and I certainly had not thought about how changes in one lane could affect the other lanes. And, frankly, I didn't yet know much about parking. In all this, I don't think I was alone. 

I saw three things. First, what we were doing wasn't working. Second, we needed to reimagine the whole street and not just nibble around the edges of various problems. And, third, the arrival of bicycles in large numbers could drive reform.

I had been talking with various friends about these ideas, and on May 4, 2014, I wrote an email emphasizing the importance of bicycling to the reform of our streets: "I can't help thinking that bicycles, starting as a disruptive force, may well be the catalyst for a long-needed solution.  Bicycle lanes, reduced speed, improved intersections, better separation of traffic overall, and more attentive drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists." 

Be careful what you ask for. CCRA president Jeff Braff was one of the recipients of this email. He was an enthusiastic bicyclist, but in his CCRA job he naturally heard a lot of complaints about parking in the area, and he was interested in getting a better understanding of the issue. So, I suppose we could say that talking about bicycling brought me to working on parking. Jeff asked me to work with Mike Axler, CCRA's assistant treasurer, to count the parking spaces in CCRAville, something which had never been done. (To this day, nobody knows how many parking spots actually exist in large swaths of Philadelphia.) 

Mike and I agreed; we received our commission from Jeff on September 15, 2014, and promptly started counting parking spots. Jeff had hoped we could finish in three weeks, but the work carried us well into 2015. The summary report of our study was published in the Center City Quarterly in summer 2015, p. 19. 

I'm not going to go through all the details here. If you're interested, have a look at the stories on my blog that are listed at the end of this article. 

For me, the most surprising number was that no more than 13 percent of the households in CCRAville were parking a car on the street. Roughly half the households didn't own a car, and the rest were parking off the street. 

So a small minority of residents were monopolizing the curb space in CCRAville, and virtually everyone in the area was suffering from a lack of access, whether it be visits from friends and family, a house call by the friendly local plumber, or the ability to drop off groceries that you've brought back in your carshare car. (See, in particular, Parking: Storage v. Access.)

I'll just add one more number. The parking authority had issued more than twice as many Zone 1 parking permits to CCRAville residents as there were Zone 1 parking spots in CCRAville. (See Parking Permits and Musical Chairs.) 

All this struck me as an easy act to follow. And Professor Shoup had provided the tools to make the system function effectively. My thought was that we should use them.

Needless to say, things did not go well.

Cash machine, Starbucks. Spruce near 18th.

Not

It took a couple of years, but I eventually came to understand that Philly was simply never going to use fancy tools like variable pricing or uniform price auctions to manage its public parking. But we did manage to head off a bad move by City Council that involved something called parking minimums. 

Parking minimums are legal requirements that new construction contain a certain minimum number of parking spaces. In 2012, Philadelphia adopted a new zoning code that substantially reduced parking minimums. (Professor Shoup's recommendation is to abolish them.) 

In 2017, when City Council introduced a bill to raise parking minimums, CCRA president Wade Albert wrote a letter to Council President Darrell Clarke and Council Member William Greenlee. Here is one paragraph of a fairly long letter: 

"CCRA further opposes the bill because it is not at all clear that mandating more parking space for multi-family housing will in any way reduce the shortage of on-street parking. A relatively recent study of car owners in CCRA's neighborhood conducted in [2014-2015] by CCRA members Bill West and Michael Axler concluded that there are many vacant parking spaces in local garages and lots. And this is not surprising, given that many individuals with cars often choose not to pay for garage parking (with a monthly average cost likely between $175 and $275) when they have the option of parking on the street with permits that only costs [sic] $35 on an annual basis." 

The curb will always fill first. And CCRAville dodged a bullet.

When the loading zone fills,
there will be spillover.

Loading Zones in Residential Areas

And Professor Shoup had given me another tool - loading zones in residential areas. I first wrote about a version of this idea in 2015, and in 2016 I applied the idea to Pine and Spruce streets, where the concept was particularly appealing because the bike lanes there were being severely impacted by cars and trucks blocking the lane.  The 2016 story contains one of my favorite lines: "I don't think the bike lane is the problem. I think the parking lane is the problem." 

Later, I joked to a friend about this article: "Needless to say, it didn't exactly move and shake the movers and shakers."

And things were quiet for a while. 

A Pivot Point on Chestnut Street 

In the summer of 2019, the City greatly increased the number of loading zones on Chestnut Street. (For an article in the Inquirer, click here.) On September 26, 2019, CCRA president Maggie Mund wrote to Jeannette Brugger of the City's Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability. Here is part of what she wrote. 

"The Chestnut Street loading pilot is still in its early stages, but it already seems clear that increased provision of legal loading zones has dramatically decreased the incidence of illegal parking or stopping in the traffic lanes, thereby substantially reducing congestion and smoothing traffic flow.

"Chestnut Street is a commercial corridor, but we believe that these lessons are also applicable to residential zones, which have seen a dramatic increase in package delivery, as well as pick-ups and drop-offs by companies such as Uber and Lyft.

"CCRA would be very interested in exploring with you the possibility that the CCRA area could become a pilot zone for testing the utility of increased numbers of loading zones in residential areas." 

This proposal was received positively, but in the end nothing came of it. I recall that one of the problems was picking an appropriate area in which to conduct the pilot. Virtually every block in CCRAville would have benefited from loading zones, so how do you pick.

And then of course, early in 2020, the Covid epidemic arrived, and this project went into long-term storage. 

If only the vehicles looked half as interesting as the buildings.

Same spot: Spruce near 21st, July 4.

Another Pivot Point

It turns out, though, that the idea of installing substantial numbers of loading zones in residential areas was not dead. Randy LoBasso of the Bicycle Coalition had been talking with the parking authority, engaging in what the Quakers call friendly persuasion, and asking them to increase the effectiveness of their enforcement activities on the Pine-Spruce bike lanes, which were being crippled by cars and trucks blocking the lanes. In September 2021, those talks bore fruit. 

"In September, the Philadelphia Parking Authority announced that it was creating a dedicated unit of bicycle-mounted enforcement officers, who would be ticketing cars illegally parked in bike lanes and bus lanes. CCRA ran a survey in its weekly email newsletter, asking residents if they would be willing to see more loading zones added to the parking lane on blocks of Pine and Spruce where the crosstown bike lanes run. The response was overwhelmingly positive. In October, CCRA wrote to the Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability (OTIS) asking the City to work with us on installing loading zones in this area. OTIS responded affirmatively, and planning is expected to begin in January 2022." - CCRA Streets Committee Report for the Year 2021, submitted December 9, 2021. 

Here's the text of the letter from CCRA president Rick Gross to Chris Puchalsky of oTIS on October 4, 2021. 

"Dear Chris,

"We read with interest the Philadelphia Parking Authority's announcement that it was forming a special, bicycle-mounted unit of enforcement officers. Their mission: Write tickets for motor vehicles parked illegally in bike lanes and bus lanes in Center City and University City.

"It's worth noting that people parking in this way often don't see any option, because there are no spaces available in the parking lane.

"CCRA has been looking at the issue of parking congestion in our area for some time. We have been discussing the idea of creating one or two loading zone spaces per block in areas such as Pine and Spruce from Broad Street to 22nd, where there are bike lanes and where the parking lane is almost always at 100 percent occupancy or higher. The loading spaces would operate during the day and then revert to regular spaces in the evening.

"After the PPA announcement, CCRA surveyed its members regarding this notion, and 83% of respondents replied affirmatively to the idea.

"We would like to see a loading zone pilot for Pine and Spruce between Broad and 22nd. We think this should be done in conjunction with the PPA's enforcement pilot.

"We would be happy to collaborate with you on this project, and we look forward to hearing from you in the near future." 

Planning progressed, and in October 2022 I joined representatives from the City and the Philadelphia Parking Authority for a walk-through of Pine and Spruce, between Broad and 22nd streets. It turned out that quite a few of the blocks had idiosyncrasies that needed to be dealt with. This is what walk-throughs are for. 

We met at Spruce and Broad and walked to Spruce and 22nd, where something interesting happened. It was outside our study area, but we noticed that the block of Spruce between 22nd and 23rd had signage on the north side of the street barring parking during the day. The blocks east of 22nd had only one lane for motor vehicle traffic, so why two lanes here? We discussed. People went back to the office and researched and discussed. In the end, nobody could understand why the north side of the street was no parking during the day. And in 2023, the signs were changed to allow parking both day and night, adding thirteen spots - a baker's dozen - of daytime parking in an area where parking is famously tight. 

In August of 2023, CCRA received notice that the City planned to skip the pilot phase and install the loading zones on a permanent basis. 

Finally, in June of this year, while I was at the beach, I received an email from Anna Kelly, one of the people I had been working with at the City, informing me that the loading zones had been installed. That was a very happy day. 

What a street corner can look like.

Streets Are for People

Early on, I saw the need to look at the whole street. Call me slow, but I only gradually came to the unifying principle that streets should be designed for people. I did not come to this idea by myself. Just as Professor Shoup educated me on parking - and particularly loading zones - Jan Gehl, with his book Cities for People, educated me on the many ways, large and small, that design of our public spaces can make them interesting and welcoming.

I think the pope's visit to Philadelphia in 2015 was an eye opener for many people. Streets can be very versatile, if only you let them. And then in the pandemic we had the streeteries. We also fiddled with Open Streets, but in the end didn't do nearly as much as we had hoped. 

Many people, including many in positions of power, are definitely not on board with this new approach. After all, for many years our streets have been for transportation and sanitation, and basically everything else was unimportant.

But I feel that seeds have been planted and taken root and cannot be easily extirpated. And I'm hopeful for the future.

See also Parking: Storage v. Access; Measuring the Health of a Parking System; Parking Permits and Musical Chairs; The Supreme Court and Parking; Reimagining Our Streets: Bikes Will Lead, But They Will Not Be Alone; Barnacles at the Curb.

Pine-Spruce: Will We Replay Washington Avenue?

No.

Farm worker waiting for dinner bell, Ohio, 1938.
Ben Shahn/FSA.

I'm not willing to play charades with Kenyatta Johnson any more. The travesty of Washington Avenue should be enough to convince anyone with eyes, ears, and a pulse that the man does not bargain in good faith. 

He sets us tasks. We perform them. He sets us more tasks.

This is a very old playbook. It's called The Labors of Hercules. My favorite is The Cleansing of the Augean Stables. (Augeas made the mistake of stiffing Hercules after he'd done the job; things did not go well for Augeas.)

I won't rehearse The Labors of Washington Avenue here. They involved meetings and petitions, and more meetings and more petitions, and finally a decision to reject competent advice and insist on a plan that very quickly proved deadly. (For more, click here.) 

The facade of consulting the citizenry is just that, but it does allow Mr. Johnson to play his little games of divide and conquer - make sure the citizenry are split and angry with one another, and perhaps they will forget to be angry at Mr. Johnson. 

And it gives Mr. Johnson what he wants, which is No Change. All while he can pretend to be open to change.

And meanwhile, he does nothing to make life in Philadelphia better. In fact, by making people very angry, he makes the quality of life for residents worse. It's a sick, twisted game. I'm not playing any more.

A Better Model

There are better models of government available. One of my favorites is the podesta. The city-states in medieval Italy were often places of significant internal conflict. Back then the political factions were built around wealthy and powerful families suffused with arrogance, and all trying to dominate the whole city. (If you're fond of Shakespeare, think about the Montagues and Capulets in Romeo and Juliet.) Sometimes one family would succeed, but often the factions found themselves mired in irreconcilable conflict. At loggerheads, as people used to say. 

Then one fine day, there comes a wake-up call. Perhaps one of the cities that has gotten its act together has taken it in mind to conquer Loggerhead City, and is hiring mercenaries from all over Italy to put together an army.

Oh my, what are we going to do? say the rich and powerful of Loggerhead City. Maybe we need to work together to defend ourselves, but every time we meet it just turns into a shouting match.

Enter the podesta. He's almost always an outsider because his main job is to settle disputes between powerful people who don't trust anyone who's from another faction of the city. He also runs the city government and the army. Something like a mayor, but also something like a judge.

A Podesta for Philadelphia

Philadelphia is a very Italian city, in many ways. We have many factions; we are frequently quarrelsome; and often our government seems paralyzed. Maybe we need a podesta. Wait, you say. We already have a mayor.

Yes, but the mayor these days is quite weak, because Darrell Clarke, the previous president of City Council, set out on a personal mission to destroy Michael Nutter, who was the mayor at the time. One of his chosen instruments was bike lanes. Nutter was fond of bike lanes and was installing quite a few of them. Clarke (with help from his mini-me Bill Greenlee), wrested control of bike lane installation from the mayor and gave that control to City Council.

This was bad for bicycling in Philadelphia, and it was also bad for Philadelphia. In time Clarke essentially became a shadow mayor, with greatly expanded authority over many things. 

So we had two mayors, one of whom had authority without responsibility, because, when things went wrong, as they often did, the shadow mayor could step further back into the shadows and send his whisperers out to blame the mayor for the travesty du jour.

So, yes, Philadelphia could use a podesta. Or at least a single strong mayor. It's a very Italian town, in many ways.

Two Final Thoughts

First: A basic function of government is resolving disputes that the parties themselves cannot resolve. Judges do this all the time. But for many issues, responsibility ultimately falls on our mayor and City Council, who have become quite adept at dodging this part of their jobs. 

Second: Our leaders need to lead. We didn't hire them just to change street names. They have the police power, which covers health, safety, morals, and the general welfare. This is their power, and their responsibility, and they can't duck it. That dead body on Spruce street belongs to City Hall. 

See also Quo Vadis, Philadephia?