Wednesday, March 6, 2024

A Campaign Poster

Here is my very first campaign poster ever. And probably my last. I have the words, but not the pictures.



See also What Happened in Ferrara?

Friday, March 1, 2024

Shall We Release the Kraken?

A Note on the Homeless

I found this little scene on Chestnut between Di Bruno Bros. and Target. The woman standing in the bus shelter is yelling at the woman lying on the bench, telling her to sit up so that she, the standing person, can sit down.

2023.

I'd like to say that scenes like this are rare in the place where I live, but they are not rare, and they are not new.

Somewhere near Rittenhouse Square, 1982.


Moravian street near the Union League, 1984.

Over the years, the people of Center City Philadelphia have pitched in and tried to help alleviate the suffering. For instance, the Bethesda Project, headquartered at 1630 South street, has been providing emergency shelter, housing, and supportive services to the homeless since 1979. It currently has 15 locations, including the Trinity Memorial Church at 2212 Spruce Street and the Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square. 

(Bethesda was a place of refuge and healing in Jerusalem. Jesus heals a man there in John 5; the priests don't like it because it's the Sabbath and Jesus told the man to pick up his bed, and the man picked up his bed. And things kinda go downhill from there.)

Since 2018, the Center City District has had an outreach program, called Ambassadors of Hope, that helps the unhoused seek shelter and treatment.

I hope we can all agree that these admirable efforts, and others like them, are not not fully meeting current needs. We do have a problem of the homeless on our streets. It is bad, it is getting worse, and local residents are beginning to lose patience. There is pervasive unhappiness with aggressive panhandlers and others whose bizarre behavior disrupts the normal life of the sidewalk and often frightens people who are just trying to walk down the street.

Let me add that the problem is not confined to the city's sidewalks. One recent evening a friend of mine was sitting in her living room when she heard small noises in the kitchen. As her husband had already gone to bed, she got up and investigated. A homeless man had gained entry into the house and was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, removing his shoes. She spoke to him, and he mumbled incoherently. My friend is a retired middle-school teacher, so she used her teacher voice and ordered him to put his shoes back on and leave the house. The man put his shoes back on and shambled out.

Waverly street, 2023.

There are undoubtedly further things that the City and other local organizations, both public and private, can do to help address the situation. However, I think we also need to recognize that homelessness and its related issues are basically a national problem we've been failing to address for a very long time.

For example, many of the unhoused are mentally ill. John F. Kennedy, in the last bill he signed before he was murdered in Texas, pointed the way forward for this group. The law centered on two ideas: closing the mental hospitals, which were widely seen as dumping grounds that did not serve the patients well but did permit the rest of us to ignore their existence; and, second, opening a large number of community mental health clinics that would provide treatment and support to patients while allowing them to live in their home communities. 

The first proposal was accepted with alacrity, and the mental hospitals were closed at a grand rate. However, the money saved by closing the hospitals was, by and large, not recommitted to the proposed community mental health clinics, the vast majority of which were never created.

The result was a large number of seriously ill people released into the public sphere, sometimes with housing, but rarely with adequate provision for their care. I had personal experience with this process in Asbury Park in the 1970s and 1980s. The town had lost much of its popularity as a beach resort, and it had a lot of empty rooms in hotels and boarding houses. The state sent along the mental patients, and their presence, with beds but without adequate support systems, was a powerful accelerant to the city's further decline, which only turned around after the year 2000. (See The Uncertain Eighties. For more on the national situation, click here and here.)


20th and Walnut, 1984.


Subway entrance, 123 South Broad, 1984. 

So I do think the current situation in Philadelphia amounts to playing with fire. And I do think local initiatives can do more to alleviate the situation. We just shouldn't kid ourselves about what we're up against, or expect work at the local level to fully resolve a national problem.

I'm hopeful that our new mayor, Cherelle Parker, may help make the situation better through local initiatives, but I would also encourage her to form an alliance with other mayors to try to get this issue before Congress once again. 

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 15, Mayor Parker spent time with President Biden and visited Philadundance with him. The Inquirer reported that the two discussed how the federal government could assist Philadelphia with issues of public safety and affordable housing, and also "the opioid crisis afflicting the city's Kensington neighborhood." So I am permitting myself some cautious optimism, with the hope that people will recognize that the problem of homelessness extends well beyond Kensington and involves issues other than opioid dependence.  Mental health, for instance.

Finally, a word of caution. I am concerned that Mayor Parker's initiative in Kensington may be over-reliant on the services of the police. As George Orwell noted in "Shooting an Elephant," the injection of a police presence into a volatile situation can lead to suboptimal outcomes.

Unfortunately, I feel this may well be the path that Mayor Parker chooses. Following Sidney Powell, we can call this Releasing the Kraken. It will certainly be popular. But it won't work, and the optics will be terrible. 

Lombard street, 2024.


Wikipedia has a lengthy and very detailed article on the history of the Kraken. I think we should offer a prize to anyone who actually reads it through to the end. To see the article, click here.

See also The Uncertain Eighties, A Moment in Time, Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Quo Vadis, Philadelphia?

Friday, February 23, 2024

Wounded Souls

Albert Camus on Moral Compromise 

Neptune, N.J., 2023.

I suppose this post is mainly for evangelical pastors and Catholic priests, especially the bishops. But it is really for us all. A key aspiration of any fascist regime is to create a state where every individual is morally compromised.

Albert Camus, who wrote the story containing the brief passage transcribed below, started his newspaper career in his native Algeria before moving to Paris shortly before the outbreak of World War II. After the German conquest of France, Camus joined the Resistance and served as editor of the underground newspaper Combat. After the war was over, his career flourished, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. 

I read a lot of Camus when I was in my twenties. I checked, and I still have my copy of Le mythe de Sisyphe on a bookshelf, not far from Marc Bloch's Apologie pour l'histoire ou metier d'historien, which begins with the immortal sentence, "Papa, explique-moi donc a quoi sert l'histoire?" (Roughly translated, "Daddy, what is the point of history?")  Professor Bloch wrote this little book during World War II. He also joined the French Resistance; he was arrested on March 8, 1944, and on the night of June 16, shortly after D-Day, the Gestapo murdered him. 

Returning from the digression: Until recently, I had not been aware of the piece that contains the following story. It's in a little Modern Library collection of some of his shorter pieces. Camus made the selections himself shortly before his death in a car crash in 1960. The story is dated December 1943; in a brief introductory note Camus says that it was published in issue number three of Les cahiers de Liberation at the beginning of 1944 (p. ix); in this note (p. x) he also writes, "I loathe none but executioners." (To see the original article, click here. The Bibliotheque nationale gives issue three the date of February 1, 1944. Camus signs the article "Louis Neuville.")  

One day I noticed this little book on my wife's bureau. I asked her where it came from, and she said she'd found it on one of our bookshelves. Neither one of us has any idea how it got on that shelf. A few days later I noticed the book was still sitting on her bureau and asked her if she was reading it. Her answer, roughly translated, was "Why don't you read it?" And so I did.

The following little snippet, on pages 11-13 of the book, gave me an insight into the reality of a fascist regime that I simply had not had before: 

"Let me tell you this story. Before dawn, from a prison I know, somewhere in France, a truck driven by armed soldiers is taking eleven Frenchmen to the cemetery where you are to shoot them. Out of the eleven, five or six have really done something: a tract, a few meetings, something that showed their refusal to submit. The five or six, sitting motionless inside the truck, are filled with fear, but, if I may say so, it is an ordinary fear, the kind that grips every man facing the unknown, a fear that is not incompatible with courage. The others have done nothing. This hour is harder for them because they are dying by mistake or as victims of a kind of indifference. Among them is a child of sixteen. You know the faces of our adolescents; I don't want to talk about them. The boy is dominated by fear; he gives in to it shamelessly. Don't smile scornfully; his teeth are chattering. But you have placed beside him a chaplain, whose task is to alleviate somewhat the agonizing hour of waiting. I believe I can say that for men who are about to be killed a conversation about a future life is of no avail. It is too hard to believe that the lime-pit is not the end of all. The prisoners in the truck are silent. The chaplain turns toward the child huddled in his corner. He will understand better. The child answers, clings to the chaplain's voice, and hope returns. In the mutest of horrors sometimes it is enough for a man to speak; perhaps he is going to fix everything. 'I haven't done anything,' says the child. 'Yes,' says the chaplain, 'but that's not the question now. You must get ready to die properly.' 'It can't be possible that no one understands me.' 'I am your friend and perhaps I understand you. But it is late. I shall be with you and the Good Lord will be too. You'll see how easy it is.' The child turns his head away. The chaplain speaks of God. Does the child believe in him? Yes, he believes. Hence he knows that nothing is as important as the peace awaiting him. But that very peace is what frightens the child. 'I am your friend,' the chaplain repeats. 

"The others are silent. He must think of them. The chaplain leans toward the silent group, turning his back on the child for a moment. The truck is advancing slowly with a sucking sound over the road, which is damp with dew. Imagine the gray hour, the early-morning smell of men, the invisible countryside suggested by sounds of teams being harnessed or the cry of a bird. The child leans against the canvas covering, which gives a little. He notices a narrow space between it and the truck body. He could jump if he wanted. The chaplain has his back turned and, up front, the soldiers are intent on finding their way in the dark. The boy doesn't stop to think; he tears the canvas loose, slips into the opening, and jumps. His fall is hardly heard, the sound of running on the road, then nothing more. He is in the fields, where his steps can't be heard. But the flapping of the canvas, the sharp, damp morning air penetrating the truck make the chaplain and the prisoners turn around. For a second the priest stares at those men looking at him in silence. A second in which the man of God must decide whether he is on the side of the executioners or on the side of the martyrs in keeping with his vocation. But he has already knocked on the partition separating him from his comrades. 'Achtung!' The alarm is given. Two soldiers leap into the truck and point their guns at the prisoners. Two others leap to the ground and start running across the fields. The chaplain, a few paces from the truck, standing on the asphalt, tries to see them through the fog. In the truck the men can only listen to the sounds of the chase, the muffled exclamations, a shot, silence, then the sound of voices again coming nearer, finally a hollow stamping of feet. The child is brought back. He wasn't hit, but he stopped surrounded in the enemy fog, suddenly without courage, forsaken by himself. He is carried rather than led by his guards. He has been beaten somewhat, but not much. The most important lies ahead. He doesn't look at the chaplain or anyone else. The priest has climbed up beside the driver. An armed soldier has taken his place in the truck. Thrown into one of the corners, the child doesn't cry. Between the canvas and the floor he watches the road slip away again and sees in its surface a reflection of the dawn. 

"I am sure you can very well imagine the rest." 

See also A Teacher's Dilemma, A Lesson From the Berlin Wall.

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Trump Is a Russian Agent

But It's Apparently Impolite to Say So


The term fifth column got its origin in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War. The Nationalists (the bad guys) were attacking the Republicans' forces (these were the good guys) in Madrid. The bad guys had four separate columns of soldiers attacking toward Madrid from different directions, and the bad guys said there was also a fifth column inside the city, ready to attack it from within.

The term has been remarkably durable, perhaps because it is so useful.

Vladimir Putin is a career KGB agent turned politician, and today one of his favorite activities is erecting fifth columns in countries where he is feeling mischievous, like the United States. So who is leading his fifth column in America? Well, Trump, of course. He has helpers, like Mike Johnson and Tucker Carlson, but let's face it: Since the beginning, Putin has been putting his money on Trump. 

And Putin desperately needs Trump's column to succeed, since his main column, in Ukraine, appears significantly lacking in tumescence.

Like the New York Daily News (see picture above), I decided that Trump was a Russian agent after the Helsinki fiasco in 2018. That was five years ago.

But what kind of agent is he? He's certainly not a trained KGB officer like Putin. There are no mysterious gaps in his resume - times when he was off at spy school in Moscow, struggling to pick up some Russian while learning sixteen ways to kill a man quietly with his bare hands.

I think it's possible that he is an unwitting agent, that he thinks Vladimir is doing all these nice things for him out of friendship. And perhaps the file Vladimir keeps on Donald is labeled "useful idiot." Donald is, after all, quite stupid - and worse, he thinks he's smart.

Or maybe he's just a venal, money-grubbing slug whose real-estate con in New York has gone sour, and Roy Cohn is no longer there to show him the way out of his self-inflicted catastrophe. But Putin is there.

I don't know what exact category to put the Donald in, but I think the label "agent" fits. And I wish people who clearly think he is a Russian agent would say so more often, in public.

See also An Inflection PointThe Correct Strategy: Fight7/11 - The Day the Trump White House Fell Apart.

Friday, February 2, 2024

Chestnut Street: Loading Only

Curbside Parking Here Is a Waste of Valuable Space

Chestnut street every day. (Nov. 10, 2023.)


Something good happened on October 26, 2023. It happened in Philadelphia's City Council chamber in our lovely old City Hall. I hadn't been to a City Council meeting in quite a while, but when I received notice that a certain bill was up for passage, I decided to go for a visit. 

The meeting was scheduled for 10 am to 1 pm. I knew from experience that these meetings never start on time, but I decided to show up at ten and go through the whole performance. Shortly after I arrived, members started entering the chamber and drifting toward their desks, talking to one another, and there was a general air of geniality and possibly even happiness. The socializing, and possibly horse trading, went on for some time. In the past, I had found myself somewhat impatient with this phase, but after what we've seen in Congress recently I was enjoying watching politicians knit themselves, and by extension the city, into a reasonably cohesive group.

The meeting came to order at 10:43, and in due course we got to the public comment section. Speakers addressed various bills under consideration. Connor Descheemaker, coalition manager at Transit Forward Philadelphia, spoke in favor of bill number 230489, Council Member Mark Squilla's bill to enable camera-assisted enforcement of parking violations in bus lanes and bus stops. Another supporter of the bill, Jessie Amadio, noted that prior experience showed the vast majority of people who got a ticket from a camera did not get a second ticket.

Eventually public comment came to an end, and Council turned to consideration of bills, among other business. The highly formulaic language of the voting ritual was encouraging me to nod off, but then 230489 came up for consideration. I perked up, the bill passed unanimously, and shortly afterwards Council, having completed its business, adjourned. At 12:31 pm, 29 minutes early.

I'm glad the bill passed. The cameras clearly alter driver behavior for the better. But it won't be enough. 

The Chestnut Puzzle

I have a particular concern for Chestnut street in Center City. I've been watching the stretch from Broad to 19th for a number of years (for stories, click here and here). Altering driver behavior is only part of the problem. We also need to look at the thinking and behavior of the people who run the stores and other businesses that line the street. And finally we need to look at the built environment and how we are using it.

Bus turning from 15th to Chestnut, Nov. 18, 2023.

Here's an interesting case. Around 5 pm on November 18, I found myself standing at the intersection of 15th and Chestnut, where I took this picture of a bus trying to turn from 15th onto Chestnut. There was a car stopped at the curb in the left-hand traffic lane of Chestnut, very close to the intersection and in front of a fire hydrant. The bus driver was having great difficulty making this turn, which means that traffic was backing up on both 15th and Chestnut. The driver of the car stopped at the fire hydrant clearly had no intention of moving his car unless there was an invasion by Martians - or perhaps Godzilla was marching toward him on Chestnut.

So he stayed put. It was, after all, only a Septa bus. And the bus driver worked and worked, and eventually got the bus around the corner.

It turns out there was a reason why the driver of the car was where he was. He was at the end of a line of double-parked cars extending almost the full block of 1400 Chestnut. There are two hotels on this block, and the entire block is either no stopping or valet parking. All of the curbside space was full of parked cars that were showing no signs of going anywhere. Next to them, in the left-hand traffic lane, was the string of double-parked cars. There were a number of valiant parking enforcement officers trying to cope with this situation, but they were not making a lot of progress.

(An early reader suggested I explain that this block, like several others on Chestnut in this area, has sidewalk bumpouts at crosswalks. That's why the car next to the fire hydrant is next to the curb, rather than next to a parked car.)

I suppose the cars may have been there because there was a teleporter at that location that was taking people to an event in Camden. Or perhaps they were attending an event at one of the hotels, and the valet parking system had simply broken down. I don't know.  

I do know that Chestnut street was not functioning very well that night. And the double-parked drivers were simply pawns. 

Emergency Vehicles and Traffic Jams 

Here's a rainy day shot. This is what it looks like out where the rubber hits the road.

Dec. 3, 2023.


Traffic jams are more than an annoyance; they can be life threatening. Imagine you've had one too many hamburgers at Five Guys and you're experiencing a myocardial infarction. How long will it take an emergency vehicle to reach you?

Use the Genius of the Grid: Activate the Alleys

One of the things that simply stupefies me about Philadelphia is our abysmal misuse of our alleys. If you look at the layout of the streets, and the way older buildings were built, it's apparent that alleys were originally intended to be much more than linear dung heaps. Rear access was clearly important for a variety of uses, and if you look at the number of bricked-up windows and doors, it's evident that buildings were meant to have a meaningful relationship with these little streets. There are even quite a few buildings that have front facades facing the alley.

And there is definitely some decent architecture. Here's an example of rear access in the grand manner.

1800 block of Sansom.


There are several imposing rear entrances in this neighborhood, but this one is in a class by itself. And it's still in use.

A number of these blocks see a fair amount of dropping off and picking up. Here's a UPS driver on the 1700 block of Stock Exchange Place. He's going going door to door on the north side of the street, knocking on rear doors and handing off packages. Not exactly rocket science, but you'll notice that he is not blocking a bus lane.

Dec. 14, 2023.


Most of these alleys don't get a lot of sunlight at street level, but if you can pick your eyes up from the muck at your feet for a moment, there are some interesting views available higher up.


It's at moments like this that I find myself comparing us to the shepherds in old Rome, in the centuries after the aqueducts were cut, herding their flocks among the grassy ruins.

Arch of Constantine and Colosseum with sheep grazing. 

(The picture above is a 1656 etching by Stefano della Bella in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is in the public domain.)

Some People Don't Have Rear Access

The man standing in the truck bed and his crew are unloading construction materials for yet another redo of the old Valiant building, next to Boyds. He's in the bus lane, and he has no options. The parking/loading lane across the street is full, and there doesn't appear to be any viable rear access.

November 20, 2023.

Chestnut is not a large street, and I think it's time we faced up to the fact that we need to focus on the two main things: buses and loading. There are more than 3,000 off-street parking stalls in garages within 1.5 blocks of this location. Curbside parking on this stretch of Chestnut is a waste of valuable space.

As we saw with the car parked in a traffic lane in front of a fire hydrant at 15th and Chestnut, increasing the number of loading zones is not a cure-all. But at least we would be moving toward a rational design for the limited amount of space available; and with competent management, including buy-in from the local merchants, maximizing the space for loading zones should dramatically improve the performance of Chestnut street.

See also Unblocking the Bus Lane on Chestnut, Taming Chestnut Street, Small Streets Are Like Diamonds, What Should We Do With the Humble Dumpster? Quo Vadis, Philadelphia?

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

The Face of Fascism

And Then They Dropped the Mask

Halloween decoration, Asbury Park, 2023.

I remember reading, years ago, an article with the title "Fascism with a Smile." This would have been back around 1980, when Reagan was elected president. The idea was that Americans did not respond well to the shout-and-pout style of a Hitler or a Mussolini. After all, one of the things Nixon had going against him was the fact that he was so obviously a darkly angry man. Let's call it, in retrospect, fascism with a scowl.

I remember having some reservations about this idea. After all Senator Joe McCarthy did seem to have a grumpy side, and for a while it looked like he was running the country.

However, Reagan did seem to be on to something with his geniality, and his widespread popularity clearly helped him get away with some pretty amazing stuff. And I think, at least partly because of Reagan and his smile, I was unprepared for the popularity of the Former Guy and his sneer, at least with a segment of the population.

And now I think we have come to the final act of a Shakespearean tragedy or, perhaps better, one of the history plays about the Wars of the Roses. But certainly not a comedy. It puts me in mind of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, where Mr. Gray does not age, but a picture of him does. Gray enjoys a long life of dissipation and the portrait becomes uglier and uglier. Then Gray dies, and all the ugliness moves from the portrait to his face.

Hmm. What if Dorian Gray is not just the Former Guy, but the entire Republican party? 

In the last few years we have seen the reveal, and it turns out that the scowl, the smile, and the sneer were all masks. If you want to know what was always behind the masks, go back to the top of this story. I have seen no truer portrait of the monster that we are up against. 

See also How the Ship Sinks, Angry and Ridiculous, Trial by Combat, The 800-Pound Gorilla in the Oval Office.

Monday, January 8, 2024

The Traffic at J'aime

Why Do We Think Cars Rule?

The view from J'aime.


The intersection of 17th and Pine brings together several of the many strands that make up Philadelphia. On the northwest corner there is a shop that repairs violins; just next to it is a shop that frames pictures. On the southwest corner is a residential building. On the northeast corner is a large parking lot. And on the southeast corner is a relatively new coffee shop that also serves amazing pastries. Its name is J'aime, and I enjoy sitting with a coffee at one of the outside tables and watching the world go by.

Past those four corners flow three threads of traffic: people ride in cars and trucks; they ride on bikes and scooters; and they walk. I was particularly struck by the number of people walking on Pine, which on this stretch is an overwhelmingly residential street - not a lot of stores to attract foot traffic.

When we moved here from Manhattan in 1979, my wife and I were astonished by the lack of foot traffic on the sidewalks in Center City. Well, no more. 

However, there's no doubt that motor vehicles dominate my visual field at ground level. They're big, of course - Americans do love their SUVs and their pickup trucks, and every year they seem to get bigger and taller. Beyond a suspected epidemic of elephantiasis, there are simply a lot of them. Even in the middle of the day, when the number of cars moving on the street can be very light, there are always the parked cars, and they generally fill not just the parking lot but also the parking lane. You simply can't get away from them. 

This surfeit of mechanical eye candy leaves me looking for some relief, and I do find myself gazing up toward the sky with some regularity, which is where the photo at the beginning of this story came from.

By contrast, bikes and walkers tend to underoccupy the visual space. They're relatively small; they're also quiet, and they don't smell of burned and unburned fuel. Bikes in particular have a habit of hiding in plain sight. Coming at you, they almost disappear, and viewed from the side they pull the same trick. (For more on the ways that bikes tend not to impose themselves on us, click here.) 

This imbalance of visual weight led me to question the sway cars hold over the street. Might it at least partially be bluster? I found myself wondering about the actual balance among the three threads at this little crossroads overseen by a small cafe.

Recently I studied the traffic on the South Street bridge, focusing on the eastbound rush during the afternoon, and came to the surprising conclusion that cars were probably in the minority. So I decided to count again.

Oops. Motor vehicles on Pine are in the majority during the afternoon rush. Would you care to guess their margin of victory? It was 6 percentage points. Cars and trucks were 53 percent of the traffic, and bikes, scooters, and pedestrians made up 47 percent. I bet you thought cars were winning by a bigger margin.

I'd been hoping for cars to be in the minority again, but there you have it.

The Count

I did my count on the afternoon of Thursday, November 9, from 4:30 to 5:30 pm. I counted 184 bicycles, 18 scooters (including 2 people on skateboards and 1 person on inline skates), and 194 pedestrians. For a total of 396. Cars and trucks totaled 443.

I was interested in traffic that was using Pine street. I excluded traffic that came into the intersection from 17th street and left on 17th street. Anything turning from Pine onto 17th or from 17th onto Pine got counted. 

At least that was the plan. I'm pretty sure I undercounted the pedestrians. Daylight saving time had ended the previous Sunday, November 5, but I failed to include a sunset at 4:49 pm in my rather impromptu plans. Pedestrians are small, and they don't have headlights. I don't think I'll be scheduling any more nighttime traffic counts.

Also, my view of the northern sidewalk was intermittent because of the intervening motor-vehicle traffic.

However, I didn't miss 47 pedestrians, so I do think motor vehicles are in the majority here. But I don't think they rule. Sane politicians pay attention to 47 percent minorities. 

Improvement Opportunities

And indeed the City has made a number of improvements here designed to make life safer for people who aren't riding around encased in two tons of metal. A few years ago the bike lane was moved from the right side of the street to the left, making it easier for a driver to see bikes in the lane. The Pine and Spruce lanes have also received a number of flex posts near intersections, and at strategic points the asphalt surface of the lane has been painted green.

These bike lanes were originally installed on the right side of the street, removing one of the two lanes  that had been devoted to motor-vehicle traffic, and thereby removing the abrupt lane changes from one car lane to another that can be so heart-stoppingly dangerous on streets with two lanes of motor-vehicle traffic. (The lanes were originally installed as a pilot in 2009 and updated to their current look in 2019, after the 2017 death of cyclist Emily Fredricks.)

There are still a bunch of ways to make things better on this street. More flex posts and better enforcement of the bike lane would be excellent.

And the sidewalks. Philly's sidewalks are legendary for their poor condition, and I can testify from personal experience that the irregularities in the pavement are frequently very hard to see at night. It's true that maintaining sidewalks is the responsibility of the property owner, but since that is not working well, it seems appropriate for the government see what it can do to help make things better. (For an interesting set of ideas from parking guru Donald Shoup, click here. Philadelphia has already settled a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act that focused on sidewalk curb ramps.)

But, as I've been saying for years, I think the main improvement opportunity lies in the parking lane. The problem is convincing motorists, and their elected leaders, that they should share the lane. 

The arrival of streeteries - dining shelters located in the parking lane - was the first large-scale demonstration that there were alternative uses for the parking lane. But transportation planners have known since the beginning of cars that free parking is an astonishingly inefficient use of scarce curbside space. 

In many of the more crowded parts of Philadelphia, it is possible for residents to purchase residential parking permits for $35 a year. This is the functional equivalent of free.

Economists like to talk about opportunity costs. At the corner by J'aime, if a resident is not parked in a spot, someone else can park there and pay the meter. Or the City could make some loading zones. There are a few in this neighborhood, but not nearly enough. Which of these uses are more valuable, and to whom? I think those are interesting questions.

For many years, the pressure on the City was to expand curbside parking. And the City accommodated motorists. Back then, the conventional wisdom was that everybody either owns a car or wants one, and I think the City just assumed the expansions would be universally popular. 

Some of the things the City did actually violate state law. There are many examples of parking zones extending to the crosswalk, when the state requires a substantial setback to preserve sight lines. Now there is a move to "daylight" these intersections, so that everybody has a few more precious seconds to react to a dangerous situation that may be developing. 

Beyond all that, I find it frustrating that motorists expect to park for free. They pay the dealer for the car and the insurance company for insurance. They pay for registration, inspections, and a driver's license. They pay for oil and gas and maintenance. They pay tolls on bridges, tunnels, and fast roads. These are considered costs of ownership. But parking should be free.

So we're capitalists down to the last drop of window-washing fluid, but then all of a sudden the government owes us a free parking spot. The chalk makes a funny sound when I try to write that on the blackboard.


See also Barnacles at the Curb, What We Lost, Flex Posts on Pine and Spruce, Cars and Bikes - the Back Story,  Quo Vadis, Philadelphia?