Looking Three Ways at Chestnut Street

Driving, Walking, Biking

Graffito, Chestnut bike lane.

The new parking-protected bike lane on Chestnut Street in West Philadelphia has been the subject of some controversy, and so I decided to spend a bit of time with it. Let's take driving first.

Driving
The bike lane extends from 45th to 33rd Streets. I've driven this stretch several times since the bike lane was installed, and while this is at best a convenience sample, my impression is that there are fewer abrupt lane changes, and speeds are generally slower. I'm guessing there may be higher speeds at night; I did notice one very wrecked car in the parking lane on one of my trips. Overall, from my point of view as a driver, a distinct improvement over prior conditions.

Walking
I also walked next to the lane on a pretty day, making sure to cross Chestnut Street several times (the various construction sites provided useful prompts).

Before the redesign, this stretch of Chestnut had three bustling lanes of automotive traffic. With the removal of one of those lanes, there are only two main vehicle lanes to cross, and that makes life a lot easier for the pedestrian.

In addition, the placement of the bike lane next to the curb means a pedestrian can walk out from the curb and across the bike lane and stand protected by the cars in the parking lane, which separates the bike lane from the main traffic lanes.

Divide and conquer, if you will. Standing at the island of safety with the bike lane behind me and only two lanes in front of me had an almost intimate feel, like being on Walnut or Chestnut in Center City. Not nirvana certainly, but way better than Market or JFK, where I sometimes feel like I'm being asked to walk across a football field during a kickoff return.

Biking
I rode the lane on an Indego bike (there's a bike-share station at 44th and Walnut and another at 33rd and Market). I think this is a simply lovely bike lane. One of the best things about the lane is that it's not blocked by cars, as other bike lanes in the city so often are. Even Uber drivers seem reluctant to  drive through the parked cars to get to the space by the curb.

The bike lane needs to be extended west of 45th Street, and we need to rebuild the older lane that runs on Chestnut east of of 33rd Street. I have a feeling that both of these things will happen, perhaps sooner rather than later.

Bike Count
On the morning of Wednesday, October 18, I finally got around to doing a bike count. I sat outside of the Starbucks at 34th and Chestnut and counted 97 bicycles in 90 minutes, running from 7:55 a.m. to 9:25 a.m. This is hardly the volume we see on the South Street bridge during the morning rush, but it is more than one bike per minute, and the lane is still less than two months old.

I counted all bicycles at 34th and Chestnut that entered or exited the intersection on Chestnut. (There was a fair amount of traffic that entered from 34th and continued south on 34th. I did not count that.)

I broke the flow down into ten-minute subsets. The peak came at 8:45-8:55, with 18 bikes. The low point was 8:15-8:25, with four bikes.

Of the 97 total bicycles, eight were in the main vehicle lanes rather than the bike lane. Five were on the sidewalk, two heading west and three heading east. There were five Indego bikes, and one scooter in the bike lane.

Only eight bikes turned right from Chestnut onto 34th. I had expected to see more turning traffic, because there's a bike lane on 34th that takes you to the bike lane on Spruce, which takes you over the South Street bridge. If I were commuting to Center City from this area, that is the route I would take.

Performing as Designed
This bike lane is in the district of Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, who originally favored the new lane but started to backpedal when constituents complained. The Councilwoman has been remarkably non-specific about the nature of the complaints. Is it possible that none of them are from pedestrians or bicyclists, and all of them are coming from irate drivers?

Some drivers, not all. And what makes these unhappy folks unhappy? Are they dissatisfied because the street is performing as designed, and speeds are slower, and there are fewer opportunities for abrupt lane changes?

Let me close with an old bromide from Marketing 101: Complaining behavior is a skewed indicator of customer satisfaction.

Cargo bike, Chestnut Street.

See also Intraday Biking, No Turn on Red.

Running of the Bulls on Lombard Street

Lombard Street in the morning.

A few days ago a stop sign appeared on Lombard Street at Taney, which is a little street sitting between 26th and 27th, not far from the South Street bridge in Philadelphia. Until that point there had only been a stop sign for the drivers on Taney; the drivers coming down Lombard had no traffic controls between the stoplight at 26th and the stoplight at the bridge.

Everyone I've talked to thinks the addition of a stop sign at this intersection is a very good thing. Some would have preferred a stoplight, but they're pleased that at least something was done to calm the traffic here.

Happy ending to the story? Not quite. It turns out that there was a second part to the plan. Shortly after the stop sign went in at Taney, the traffic lights at 24th, 25th, and 26th went to blinking red. People initially assumed, and some still believe, that the lights were simply broken. No, it's all part of the plan. After a period of time on blinking red, the Streets Department intends to remove the traffic lights at these intersections and replace them with stop signs.

There have been several occasions during this year's saga on Lombard that I have had difficulty processing information. Why would you remove those traffic lights? Lombard Street is an access route for the Schuylkill Expressway, and it is well known for its unruly traffic.

Do Streets and Complete Streets Talk?
For months the City's Complete Streets office has been working on a redesign for this stretch of Lombard, for the bit of 27th Street that runs up from Lombard to the South Street bridge, and for South Street where it comes off the bridge and heads east.

The recent initiative adding stop signs and removing traffic lights from Lombard seems completely disconnected from the Complete Streets proposals.

There was a meeting back in July where the Complete Streets concept was presented to the community. I thought the meeting went well, and that there was a vigorous and thoughtful discussion of the issues. However, there was strong opposition from some near neighbors on Lombard to the idea of adding flex posts to protect the bike lane. Shortly after the meeting Councilman Kenyatta Johnson announced that he could not support the proposed changes because of the objections of the near neighbors. This of course does beg the question of the many parts of the plan that the near neighbors did not object to.

The Bicycle Coalition restarted the negotiation with a letter that focused on areas of presumed agreement, including the construction of raised crosswalks (a proven traffic calming device) and also the addition of loading zones to the parking lane. The loading zones in the parking lane are crucial because the bike lane won't work properly without them.

Meanwhile, Back on Lombard Street
There is a school at 25th and Lombard. The Philadelphia School has 478 students, ranging from pre-K to 8th grade, and buildings located both north and south of Lombard. The morning dropoff is a particularly busy time, with children and their parents arriving by foot, by car, by school bus, by SEPTA bus, by bicycle, and by scooter. Quite a few parents bring their children on cargo bikes.

However, children also cross Lombard throughout the day as they move from building to building for various activities and go to the nearby park for recess.

And, at the end of the day, there is dismissal, followed by after-school activities. This is a very active site all day long.

Did the planners take the school into consideration when they decided to remove the traffic lights, or was it all about cars and designing an optimal flow for motor vehicles while excluding consideration of all other users of the space? Perhaps one day we will know the answer to this question, but for now we do not.

Meanwhile, the traffic light at 25th has been replaced by TPS staff, who direct traffic and wave the handheld stop sign. So people who have other things to do are replacing a machine that should not have been removed from service.

Needless to say, the school and its staff consider the safety of the children to be a fundamental goal, and they will do what needs to be done. But shouldn't the City be trying to make their job easier rather than harder?

See also Is It a Curve or Is It a Turn? and Morning on Lombard Street.

At Least It Makes People Laugh

Philadelphia Parking Policy

Sunset Avenue Pavilion, Asbury Park.

I was at a meeting of the Asbury Park parking committee, and I found myself telling the story of Philly's ill-fated excursion into electric car parking. Briefly, the City offered to rent electric car owners the parking spot in front of their house, as a charging station. The car owner was responsible for installing the charging equipment. Apparently it never occurred to anybody involved in the decision-making that people might see this as an opportunity to get an exclusive parking spot at the curb in front of their home.

(I remember talking with a garage manager a while back, when I was inventorying the parking spaces in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse area, where I live. After we got through the basic information on the garage - capacity, price - we chatted a bit, and he almost immediately volunteered that he wanted to buy an electric car and park it in front of his home in South Philly. His very own spot. Nobody else would be allowed to use it. He was just waiting for the price of electric cars to come down. As George Washington Plunkitt said, "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em.")

At any rate, the predictable happened in Philly, with electric car owners regularly calling the City when someone else parked in the spot, and many other residents expressing concern over the loss of a precious curbside spot; some questioned the wisdom of what might be seen as a government sanctioned conversion of public space into private property.

After a few more than 60 of these spots had been installed, mostly in wealthy neighborhoods in the older parts of Center City, where streets are narrow and on-street parking is perennially tight, City Council declared a moratorium on new spots. And now it is mulling its options. Rip out the existing spots? Grandfather them? Is there a more appropriate way to provide for charging stations, perhaps in large off-street garages?

This is what happens when you act without planning.

Anyway, my friendly and attentive audience at the Asbury Park parking committee listened to the story. And then they laughed. That's right. Philadelphia parking policy is a laughing-stock in Asbury Park.

And why not? It is such a shambles.

The Broad Street Median 
Here's another example - this one is pretty famous. In South Philly people park cars in the median strip of Broad Street. They have been doing this basically since there were cars. In addition to being unsafe, this practice is illegal under state law. And frankly the number of spots - about 200 - borders on the trivial.

But it's a grand tradition, and many long-term residents are as in love with median parking on Broad Street as they are with the (well-cleansed) memory of a former mayor named Saint Frank Rizzo.

The result: As did Admiral Nelson in the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, City Hall turns a blind eye on the Broad Street median.

A local civic group brought a lawsuit seeking to have the law enforced, but the suit was dismissed.

It's true that the cars of South Philly don't fit on the streets of South Philly. The solution (or at least part of the solution) is to build some large garages and let those who are willing to pay take their cars off the street. I've previously mentioned that the site of the old Moyamensing prison at 11th and Reed, currently host to an Acme grocery store and a large, suburban-style parking lot, could be redeveloped to include a large, multi-story parking structure. Another site for a garage as part of a redevelopment would be Broad and Washington.

Actually planning for parking, however, is hardly ever a part of Philadelphia's discourse on parking. The City seems to view parking management as a cash register and source of patronage jobs, and most citizens, while bemoaning the terrible state of parking, are strongly resistant to any changes in the status quo.

MeterUP
Next let's have a look at the meterUP mobile parking app, a good idea that collapsed because of elementary errors in planning. Being able to pay for your parking space with your smart phone is a very attractive idea. Pango, the vendor, had former Governor Ed Rendell on its board. And it was the low bidder. The program had a lovely launch - I still have the t-shirt - and had 20,000 active users when it collapsed in April of this year. Cause of death? "Financial problems." Possibly caused by not charging enough money.

We're now hearing that meterUP is coming back with the same name but a new vendor, possibly before the end of the year.

Asbury Park: Things Are Different
Meanwhile, Asbury Park has had a successful parking app for some time. This year we found a new vendor who had, in our opinion, a better mousetrap, and so we switched vendors, with no gap in service, and usage then increased substantially. That's how grown-ups do it.

I got started on the Asbury Park parking committee about two years ago, after my wife and I bought a small condo apartment and started spending quite a bit of time at the beach. At my very first meeting I was pleasantly surprised that people were talking about the importance of access and an 85 percent maximum occupancy rate. It put me in mind of a graduate seminar on parking policy.

And it's not all talk. Asbury Park has dynamic pricing. The system is not as sophisticated as the one in San Francisco, but the price at the meter does go up and down according to location, time of year, day of the week, and time of day. In Philly curbside parking rates vary by geographic location only.

A Small City
Asbury Park is a small city - about 16,000 year-round residents (the ones the Census counts - I'm in Asbury a lot, but the Census counts me in Philly). Its main calling card is its beach and related boardwalk, but it is also known for music and restaurants, among other things. (I can't resist mentioning the Zombie Walk - October 7 this year.)

There are two main areas for paid parking: the blocks along the beachfront, and the commercial corridor along Cookman Avenue, which extends westward from the beach along the southern border of the city and ends near the train station.

A lot of people live on these blocks, so the City has the delicate task of balancing the needs of residents and visitors. Residents of the metered areas can purchase a resident parking permit. There are several permit zones and, as in Philadelphia, your permit is only good in your home zone.

In much of the city, curbside occupancy rates tend to be low, and the parking is free. As parking guru Donald Shoup puts it, if you don't have an access problem, you don't need meters.

The Five-to-Eight Zone
A problem arose near the beachfront. Parking is paid on the first two blocks west of the boardwalk - the 100 and 200 blocks. Residents of the third block in - the 300 block - were experiencing increasing difficulty finding convenient parking spots when they returned home from work or some other trip. The problem was worse in the summer, and especially on weekends. Parking on most 300 blocks was free, and the city was not ready to switch it to paid parking, so we came up with what we called the five-to-eight zone.

On selected blocks, one side of the street was placarded for resident-only parking between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. Residents of the 300 zone who purchased a permit had exclusive access to these spots at night. During the day, anybody could park there.

Why not make the spots exclusive both day and night? Our concern was that many residents would be away during the day, leaving many empty spots very close to the beach, and we wondered what beach visitors would think about not being allowed to park in those spots. On the other hand, we thought it reasonable to ask visitors, if they wished to stay after 5 p.m., perhaps to have dinner or go to a show at the Stone Pony or the Wonder Bar, to move their cars into the paid zone, where there would be spots for them.

The zone has worked pretty well. Resident complaints are down, at least on this topic, and visitors have not made a stink. Plans currently call for the metered area along the beach to expand into more of the 300 zone, at which point the overnight spots may go away. But it's been an interesting experiment.

Why Things Are Different
In Asbury Park, parking management is smart, well-informed, and nimble. Why are things in Philadelphia so different? I think the answer is simple: the mayor and the city council. In Asbury Park the city's leaders understand that access comes first, and then the money will come after (call it doing well by doing good). In Philly, as far as I can tell, everything starts and stops with the money.

How do we get Philly to do better? I don't know.

Sunset Lake, Asbury Park.

See also Parking Permits and Musical Chairs, The Pavements of Asbury Park, The Supreme Court and Parking, What Streets Can Learn From Boardwalks.