Focus on the Short Trips

Bus stop, Rittenhouse Square.

I'm hearing that the commute from Center City out to King of Prussia is becoming increasingly excruciating, and I'm certainly sympathetic to the drivers trapped in that traffic. I used to commute from Center City to Delaware, and most of the time it wasn't terrible, but when it was bad it could be very bad. I remember one day when my half-hour drive to the office took two and a half hours.

I think there's a growing understanding that the problems of congestion and crashes on the Schuylkill Expressway will not be solved by letting people drive on the shoulder, or building an elevated road on top of the existing one. I even think the search for solutions is now bringing at least some people to the conclusion that we need to rely more heavily on rail transit than we have for the last hundred years or so.

I heartily applaud this evolution in the communal consensus. The work will be hard and long and expensive, but in the end I think it will get us to a better place.

Let me now tell you what I'm really interested in. It's not the commute from Center City to King of Prussia. It's the short trips. I think there are big gains to be made here - quickly and inexpensively.

First some numbers. In the United States, half of all trips are shorter than three miles. For this number I rely on an article from the League of American Bicyclists, who in turn are relying on the National Household Travel Survey. (See National Household Travel Survey - Short Trips Analysis.)

The article notes that 72 percent of trips less than three miles are made by privately owned motor vehicles, as are 60 percent of trips less than a mile. (The poster above highlights the 60 percent figure. It was an ad for the Clean Air Council's 2017 Greenfest Philly.)

Increasing the number of these short trips that are made by walking, bicycling, or transit would, to my mind, tend to decrease the number of cars that are wandering around on our streets. This in turn should relieve traffic congestion and also decrease competition for parking spaces. Maybe even make the air outside your front door a little cleaner.

When I mention the short-trip numbers to people, they often express surprise. I think we tend to focus on the long commutes, neglecting the short commutes and the short intraday excursions for shopping, lunch, and so many other things that just pop up.

And it's true that there are a lot of long commutes, and that's where many of our vehicle miles traveled and much of the gasoline burned are to be found. The Bike League article notes that 37 percent of all trips are five miles or longer. When I was commuting to Delaware, my drive was 21 miles each way, and in America that is not a particularly long commute.

As I said above, I think it's very important to deal with these long trips, but I think a lot of our short-term gains could come from focusing on the short trips. I think the way to encourage people to get out of their cars is pretty straightforward - implement Complete Streets and Vision Zero. Improved sidewalks and pedestrian crossings, protected bike lanes, the usual agenda.

I also think that buses and rail transit will play a very important role, and I think the key issue here is how long you need to wait for the next bus.

For the last few months, a friend and I have been commuting from the Rittenhouse area down to 2nd and Chestnut for something called Tuesdays with Toomey. We take a bus down on Chestnut and back on Walnut. Routes 21, 42, and 9 all go down Chestnut and back up Walnut, and we rarely wait more than five minutes for a bus. It's quite lovely. Now if we just had a little electronic sign at the bus stop, telling us when the next bus is coming - the way they do in Paris.

See also Cars & Bikes: The Back Story, Getting Kids Back on Their Bikes, Transportation Should Not Trump Destination.

Getting Kids Back on Their Bikes

In 2012, Professor Peter G. Furth penned the following words: "It is this writer's opinion that the turning point will be when children begin again riding bikes to school in large numbers. When bicycle infrastructure and children's safety become intertwined, funding for bicycle infrastructure will be secure."

This is in an article he contributed to a book called City Cycling, which was edited by John Pucher and Ralph Buehler and published by MIT Press. The quote is on page 135.

I think Furth is right, but I also think there's a chicken-and-egg problem here. How do you get large numbers of kids riding to school without a network of protected bike lanes?

With decent bike lanes, you can get a lot of kids on bikes. We know this. The Europeans have been doing it for years, and even in this country there is the occasional bright spot. In Davis, California, 43.4 percent of high-school boys and 30 percent of high-school girls commute to school by bike. (For more on this, see Why Are European and American Bicycling So Different?)

But what about a place like Philadelphia, where we do not have a network of protected bike lanes and where the anti-bike forces in and out of government are mounting a very effective campaign of resistance to bicycling.

It's interesting. Even in Philly kids are getting to school by bike. Parents are riding their small kids to school in cargo bikes, tagalongs, and child seats affixed to bicycles. And older kids are riding their own bikes, either accompanied by a parent or by themselves.

I don't have any numbers for this, but all you really have to do is use your eyes. The numbers are not huge, but despite the utter inadequacy of our cycling infrastructure, children are riding bikes to school.

We'll never see numbers like Davis without a significant upgrade to the built environment, and I think that means we may never cross Professor Furth's threshold.

So we'll plateau, the same way we have in adult bicycling in this town. And people on bikes will get hurt unnecessarily. And some of them will be children.

There's a way out of this impasse. Build the protected bike lanes. They're not terribly expensive.

Message to City Hall. The bicyclists are not going away. Make a space for them on our streets. Life will get better for everybody.

For an overview of the decline in walking and biking to school in the United States, click here.

For a story on how parents in Philadelphia are teaching their children to ride bikes, click here.

See also Intraday Biking, Is It a Curve or Is It a Turn? and Running of the Bulls on Lombard Street.

City Beautiful Sprouts on Cypress Street

2017.

If the Center City Residents' Association were to give out a prize for most improved street, I would nominate the 2400 block of Cypress for the 2017 award. Last year I wrote a story about this block and the neighboring blocks of Delancey and Panama. The other two are in great shape; I think they're among the nicest blocks in Philadelphia. The trick is they're being treated as small streets while poor Cypress is being treated as a service alley. Which it is. This is the land of the garage doors.

But people do live here, and many of them would like Cypress to look nicer. So a group of neighbors on the south side decided to go for color, painting their respectably white facades a variety of very nice colors. Also adding a few shutters. And a potted plant or two.

2106. Note the houses on the left, before they were painted.

All of a sudden the street has come alive.

There are further opportunities for improvement.

Let's take the north side of the street first. It's a respectable row of garage doors (see the shot from 2016 above). The problem is that the doors aren't tall enough to provide a sense of enclosure, and the street space dribbles out over the parking pads and back yards, bleeds over the back facades of the buildings to the north and basically evaporates into the sky. Not what you want in a cozy little urban street.

I don't think we need to put false-front second floors on these garage doors, but we need to do something to arrest the eye. Perhaps the suggestion of a screen - you could string LED lights above the doors. That might work.

Or maybe you just need to fill the space with some trees. Here's what things look like on the 2100 block of Cypress. You'll notice the rear facades of the buildings almost vanish in the presence of these trees.

Trees take a while, of course. A good reason to get started soon.

2100 Cypress.

I don't have any other ideas, but I expect an architect could come up with a few. Maybe a class at an architecture school would like to take this block on as a project.

Finally, a tough nut - the street itself. The City should repave the street and restore the sidewalks, not because I think people will walk on them but because the sidewalks will provide visual definition to the street. If a city street and its flanking buildings are an outdoor room, the floor is a critical organizing element. (See Gordon Cullen and the Outdoor Floor.)

I understand that this is a low-traffic street, and I also know that the City currently lacks the money, the equipment, and the trained workforce to mount an adequate repaving program for our streets. However, efforts are under way to change that situation.

And if some daylight does open up, I think this block should be on people's minds. It is certainly one of our more ramshackle streets, and it is right next to the Schuylkill River Park, which has seen large amounts of public and private investment in recent years.

This area is a gem, and the 2400 block of Cypress may be the only remaining flaw.

The residents of this street can paint, and string LED lights, and plant trees, but they can't repave the street. Only the City can do that.

Here's another thing that only the City can do (at least legally) - tow away this derelict car at the corner of 25th and Cypress. A resident of the street asked me to mention it. The car has apparently been there for months. Recently it sprouted a ticket from our friends at the Philadelphia Parking Authority. The ticket is dated October 16. There have been many contacts with various City departments, but so far no tow truck. I'd say the thing is inoperable and abandoned, but of course that is just my layman's opinion.

Let's not end this story on that note. It's too much of a downer.

Let's have a look at what's behind one of those garage doors on the north side.

As I said, people live here. They're doing what is within their power to do. The City, in my opinion, should do its bit.

(See also Alleys, A Tale of Three Alleys, This Isn't Just Any Alley.)