Quo Vadis, Philadelphia?

Major Strasser Has Been Shot! Round Up the Usual Suspects.

Philadelphia, 1988.

Lately I have often found myself comparing City Council president Darrell Clarke with Mitch McConnell, the quondam majority leader of the U.S. Senate, who would dearly love to return to that post. Even in his reduced state as Senate minority leader, McConnell has shown himself astonishingly effective in making sure that nothing gets done. As for Clarke, on his smaller stage in Philadelphia, I have grown old watching him delay worthy projects indefinitely. In its own, quiet, way Clarke's performance is just as impressive as that of McConnell.

The Quo Vadis in this story's title, by the way, is Latin for Where Are You Going. Quo Vadis was the title of an 1896 novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, a Nobel Prize-winning writer from Poland. Several decades later, Hollywood worked its magic and produced the 1951 film Quo Vadis, starring Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, and Peter Ustinov; a young Sophia Loren appeared as an uncredited extra. The story is a historical drama, set in the Roman Empire at the time of the emperor Nero.

So, Quo Vadis? The answer in Philly is, I think, not a happy one.

In God We Trust. Everyone Else, Bring Data.

I see this most clearly in the area I'm most familiar with - the project of reimagining our streets so that they are safe and useful and possibly even pleasant for everybody. But I suspect that workers in other areas could come up with their own examples of the underlying disease. The history of the 2012 zoning code would, for instance, be an interesting study. (For generally hopeful stories from 2012, click here and here and here.) 

And what is the underlying disease? City Hall simply doesn't have any idea of where it wants to go, so it deals with whatever shows up under its nose on any given day, and has no sense of how the pieces of the daily hurly-burly might be gently herded together, headed up, and moved out towards a better future. 

As for my own experience with our long-suffering streets, I could rehash the old fights, but that would involve me talking about Emily Fredricks, and today I'm just not up to that. So instead let's look at an upcoming issue. We'll be looking at both politics and policy. 

I've been hearing a lot lately about bicyclists riding on the sidewalk, and how much pedestrians hate it. My own impressions tend to confirm that there's a lot more sidewalk cycling than there used to be. Certainly there's a lot more bicycling overall than there used to be, and we can add in the many privately owned electric scooters and skateboards.

However, impressions and anecdotes can be remarkably deceiving. As Michael Bloomberg has often said: "In God We Trust. Everyone Else, Bring Data." (There's even a T shirt.)

So I went looking for some data on bike-ped interactions in Philadelphia - near misses, crashes, injuries, and deaths. My pickings were mighty slim. In 2009 there were two bike-ped crashes that resulted in pedestrian fatalities. One of these occurred at 16th and Locust. (For a story by Allison Steele in the Inquirer, click here.)

Not finding what I needed in Philly, I decided to look for any useful data on the subject. A few years ago, I had spent quite a bit of time looking at New York City crash data. In 2011 the Bloomberg administration had started something called the Bicycle Crash Data Reports. My conclusion at the time was that bike-ped crashes were very rare - even though two pedestrians had been killed by bicyclists in 2014. (For more, see A Sense of Perspective.)

I went back to the Bicycle Crash Data Reports for New York City and reviewed the numbers for 2018, the most recent year for which data are available. Bicycle-pedestrian crashes led to 270 pedestrian injuries and 55 bicyclist injuries. There were no fatalities for either pedestrians or bicyclists. 

In the same year, crashes involving motor vehicles injured 10,783 pedestrians and killed 115.

My tentative conclusion for Philadelphia, in the absence of good data, is that sidewalk riding does not result in large numbers of deaths or serious injuries. 

However, I think we're making a big mistake if we think that the lesser injuries and near misses don't have a big effect on people. I don't have any data on these interactions, but I do have some very interesting data on near misses between cars and bicycles.

Intermittently Terrifying

A 2015 British study called the Near Miss Project got 1,532 cyclists from across the UK to keep diaries of their bicycling trips, noting near misses with motor vehicles, and grading them on a scale of 0 to 3, with 0 being annoying and 3 being very scary. Analysis of the data indicated that a bicyclist in the study was likely to have one "very scary" encounter a week.  

We make a mistake if we only look at "objective risk" - the kind of risk that can put you in the hospital. We need to recognize that "perceived risk" - getting scared out of your wits - is also real. (For more, see Intermittently Terrifying.)

I'd like to have similar data for bike-ped interactions, but I don't. So I'll use the data from the Near Miss Project as the best available analogy.

And so here's my conclusion: Sidewalk riding is a serious issue. People are getting injured, and they are getting scared out of their wits. A bicycle on the sidewalk means pedestrians do not feel safe on the sidewalk.

This issue needs to be addressed. The responses, as usual, may be put into three categories: enforcement, education, and engineering.

The Solution Triad

Enforcement. After the events of 2020, I am strongly disinclined to use an enforcement blitz to try to solve this problem. My feelings were reinforced when I recently came across a story in the Chicago Tribune. A study of enforcement against sidewalk cycling found that cyclists in majority black neighborhoods were eight times more likely than those in majority white neighborhoods to be ticketed for riding on the sidewalk. Those in majority Hispanic neighborhoods were three times more likely.

I don't think I'm opposed to all forms of enforcement. I remember, back in the early eighties, when my children were quite small, we were out in Rittenhouse Square, by the goat. There were a number of other children, mostly well under the age of six. They were running around and playing in the open space between the goat and the big tree in the pavement. I believe some may have been drawing on the pavement with chalk. And then a large boy, perhaps twelve, showed up on a bicycle and started looping around in the space. He announced that this was the way it was: He got to go wherever he wanted, and everybody else had to get out of his way. I explained to him that that was not the way it was. And he moved off.

I suppose we can call that enforcement. If so, I'm in favor of it.

So ... Philadelphia is in the process of creating a new, civilian corps of public safety officers. These officers will be unsworn and unarmed, and they will report to the Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability, the home of the streets department. It seems their main focus will be on directing traffic in Center City during the rush hours, but they will also be able to write tickets for moving violations and parking violations, such as parking in a crosswalk. 

I'd like to see this group given the additional task of enforcing the law against sidewalk bicycling. It's possible that just telling people to get off the sidewalk will be enough, along with the occasional ticket for cyclists who are slow on the uptake. (One of the things you hear from sidewalk riders is "I pay taxes!" Perhaps people simply need to be reminded that being a taxpayer does not exempt you from following the law.)

Education. Education can be divided into two parts: developing the messages and delivering the messages. The messages are already in pretty good shape, but distribution can be a challenge. I think the basic problem here is that we lack good continuing education systems for adults - systems that would explain the rules of the road to the forgetful, and possibly even tie the rules in to the reasons for them. 

I don't think this is going to be an easy problem to solve.

Engineering. Finally we come to engineering.  The basic solution to sidewalk cycling is bicycle lanes. The Bicycle Coalition regularly surveys bicycle traffic in key areas of the city. Its 2019 survey found six percent of bicyclists riding on the sidewalk. When no bike lane was present, the rate was 25 percent. When a buffered lane was present, the rate of sidewalk riding approached zero. 

Round Up the Usual Suspects

So how will this play out? What tools will our City Fathers and Mothers use to solve the problem of sidewalk cycling?

Engineering. I think our leaders either can't or won't see the way that sidewalk cycling and bike lanes fit together as two pieces of a puzzle. I've noticed in the past that people tend to have tunnel-vision and think that a problem must be solved where the problem is seen. (This is the problem of the quarterback who only looks at one receiver.) The idea of fixing one part of the street (the sidewalk) by adding a bike lane to another part of the street (the vehicle lanes) is a bit subtle, but if you can't figure it out, you probably shouldn't be designing our streets. 

And that's where I think we are. After our leaders fail or refuse to see how engineering properly understood can solve this problem, they will fall back on a political analysis that will strongly favor motor vehicles, give lip service to the safety of pedestrians but basically ignore them because that's what politicians have been doing for a century, and continue their hostility to bicyclists because bikes and scooters and skateboards are the interlopers disrupting their vision of a motorist nirvana. This nirvana was a pipe-dream in 1908 and continues to be a non-starter today. (See Cars and Bikes - the Back Story and Why Are European and American Bicycling So Different?)

Education. Setting up a broad-based and sustained educational program for the general public, with targeted outreach to key groups, would be a major undertaking and a novel one. I think it would also be complicated, requiring, for instance, coordination among several levels of government. 

And so I think our leaders will punt on education - or rather they will turn to enforcement as a form of education. 

Enforcement is a bandaid, so why are we so fond of it? I think there are two answers.

First, let's face a basic fact about the place where we live: Enforcement appeals to the savage heart of Philadelphia. The Quakerly overlay of friendly persuasion is just that - a veneer. Underneath, Philly is like a football team with a very thin playbook. And our go-to play is crime and punishment. 

Politicians know a reliable crowd-pleaser when they see one, and they use it again and again.

And that leads us to the second answer. By avoiding the underlying issue and using enforcement to tamp down the symptoms for a bit, the civic leader can be assured that the problem will, in due course, present itself again, allowing the leader to go through a well-rehearsed role - first, a flamboyant display of shock that this problem has resurfaced, followed by a repetition of the punishment that will again allay symptoms for a while. 

I've taken to referring to this scenario as the Mobius strip of Philadelphia politics - no matter how far you go, you alway wind up at the same place. Some people find this environment comforting. I find it depressing. I like to solve problems - and of course I don't have to worry about getting reelected. 

Wind in the Sails Needs Ballast in the Hold

As I have hinted above, I think our basic problem is that Philly is all politics and no policy. For many years I had thought that politicians understood the importance of balancing politics and policy. The basic idea is that the wind of politics fills the sails of the ship of state, and the ballast of policy, down in the hold, keeps the ship from tipping over in a heavy wind. 

Color me naive, but I thought this idea was widely understood. Then I encountered, in my daily life, the eight years of the George W. Bush administration. 

Penn professor John Dilulio worked in the Bush White House for a while, heading up the "faith-based" initiative. When he left, he wrote a letter to a journalist that was later published in Esquire, in which he explains that the White House under Bush had "no real process for doing meaningful domestic policy analysis and deliberation." (To see the whole letter, click here. The quote is in paragraph 16.) 

Because of all the terrible things that have happened since, I think we tend to forget how bad the Bush administration actually was.

And I think there's a tendency to believe that people like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are evil geniuses, but we should remember that the jobs they have built for themselves aren't very hard. It's easy enough to put a spoke in the wheel of progress. And a retrograde agenda is, relatively speaking, a piece of cake, because you're marching over ground that is very familiar.

On the other hand, actually doing things to make the lives of ordinary people better is quite hard in the best of conditions. That's another of the many underlying asymmetries in our politics.

But the larger issue is that these people bring essentially nothing to the common weal. They may be good at winning elections, but the good of the larger society is a tertiary concern at best. 

Some Memories

Let's go back to Philadelphia. I don't want to paint too dismal a picture of our recent history. There has been progress, but the path back started in a low place, and the trip has been painfully slow.

I have watched this progress being made, particularly in and around Center City. And Center City is alive today in ways it simply wasn't, years ago.

When my wife and I arrived in Philadelphia, at the end of 1979 with a three-week-old baby, I was struck by the empty spaces and the almost eerie silence. I found myself thinking of Florence after the Renaissance, a place living quietly on its past, and perhaps without much of a future. 

On the weekends, I would go for long walks with my son strapped to my chest in a Snugli. My main route was east through the little streets in Wash West, to Washington Square and Independence Hall. Sometimes we would peek in at the Liberty Bell. There were no barriers, and there were no people. And then we would go home in more or less the same way, varying the route a bit, especially in Wash West, where there are so many interesting little streets.

Occasionally in the evening, I would walk out alone, with a camera and a tripod, and take pictures. Here's a shot of General Reynolds on the north apron of City Hall. 

1985.

Day and night, I had two main reactions. First, this city has good bones. Second, where is everybody?

Around the corner from General Reynolds, on Market East, a few steps from City Hall, I found an old movie theater struggling to find an audience. It's tawdry, of course. But I also felt it was dispirited, as if it was simply waiting for its lease to expire.

1985.

Philadelphia lost 13.4 percent of its population during the 1970s, and it lost a further 6.1 percent during the 1980s. 

Bleeding People

In prior decades, the federal government had poured vast amounts of money into Philadelphia, and some of it was actually well spent. I'm thinking particularly of Society Hill. But Clark and Dilworth and Bacon were gone, and even Frank Rizzo, our first fascist mayor, left office a few weeks after we arrived. 

Philly started its long decline in population during the 1950s.  The population continued to decline without interruption until the census of 2010 showed a small increase. The seventies, with their 13 percent decline, were the worst decade. 

And then there was the MOVE bombing in 1985, which left eleven people dead and 61 homes burned to the ground over two city blocks in West Philly. Overall it was not a good decade, but there was a positive sign in 1987 when One Liberty Place opened, taking the lead in redesigning Philly's skyline. 

In the nineties Ed Rendell came along as mayor. Rendell knew how to be a booster, and I felt the spirit of the city change in a positive way. The population declined 4.3 percent in the nineties, and then the numbers turned up after 2000.

Today the place I live in looks very different from the tired old city we moved to at the end of 1979. There is a construction boom. It's hard to get a seat in Rittenhouse Square. Children don't just congregate in small numbers by the goat or the reflecting pool; there are a lot of them, and they are literally all over the square. People actually spread blankets on the grass and have picnics. This was not a happening thing in 1979.  

What's It All Mean?

I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I am, however, well aware that Philadelphia is still the poorest of America's large cities. And I continue to see on a daily basis the extraordinary dysfunction of our city government.

Philadelphia has come a long way in the last 42 years. Properly governed, it could have covered a lot more ground a lot more quickly.

We simply need to do better. Our politics continue to fail us. Improvements are stillborn, or born deformed, or mangled in youth. These tribulations do not make us stronger. For that, the opposition would need to bring ideas to the table. 

I believe, despite all the positive news, that we are not on a good track for the future. We need to change.

Crossing Chestnut, 1993.

See also What We Lost, Those Pesky Bike Lanes, It's the Road Design, Stupid, At Least It Makes People Laugh, Do We Secretly Want Ugly Cities and Dangerous Streets?