My New Idea

Clearing a Route Through the Heart of the City

We could have been a leader. Instead we will be slow followers, picking our way along the parade route, dodging the horse droppings left by the cavalry in the lead. Philadelphia used to be a leader, back in the days of Dilworth and Bacon. Yes, we made a lot of mistakes, but at least we were attempting to mold the future in a positive direction.

New York City recently announced that it was going to do 100 miles of Open Streets, upping the ante on Oakland, California, which is only doing 74 miles.

We're not doing anything; we're not going to do anything. And City Hall won't even tell us why.

I and many others have politely asked the City for a number of marginal improvements - repurposing the outer lanes of the Ben Franklin Parkway and roads in West Fairmount Park and Roosevelt Park and a few other places. This would involve closing them to cars and opening them to pedestrians and bicyclists.

The small ask didn't work. So, just for the record, I'm going to tell you what I really think. Why should Dilworth and Bacon have all the fun?

This idea got its start with the outer lanes of the Ben Franklin Parkway. Giving these lanes to peds and bikes is a no-brainer. If you'd like a fuller explanation, click here. And then Inga Saffron of the Inquirer suggested repurposing Walnut Street. This isn't quite a no-brainer, but I'll leave struggling with the details to our capable traffic engineers.

So I was staring at these two stretches on a map, and the thought occurred to me that we could connect them, and provide a highway for pedestrians and bicyclists from the heart of Center City to the Art Museum and the wilds of Fairmount Park beyond. Well, at least to Martin Luther King Drive and Kelly Drive. It's pretty bucolic, but no elk or moose or bison. And you can ride a bike to Valley Forge if you're so inclined.

I looked at 20th and 22nd streets, and picked 22nd because it's a bit wider and already has a bike lane. Then I said let's make it two-way; finding a southbound mate for the bike lane on 22nd has been basically impossible. So we'll club up the northbound and southbound traffic on 22nd, and while we're at it make the other pieces two-way as well.

Certain people will immediately say this repurposing of 22nd Street is impossible. Just look at Trader Joe's with its heavy traffic into the parking lot on 22nd. And then of course, there are the entrances and exits to the Vine Street Expressway. To quote the Princess Bride: "Inconceivable!"

Well, here's the thing. We're still letting cars onto 22nd Street. But only for one block or less, and they have to go slow. They're doing this on 14th Street in New York City, and it's working well.

But that won't work here, you say. Yes, people can turn onto 22nd from Market, but when they're done shopping and leave the parking lot, they'll have to go to Arch, and then they can only turn left.

But wait. The street is two-way for cars also. So a customer leaving the Trader Joe's lot can turn left or right and go to Market or Arch. Actually better options for egress than exist currently.

As for the Vine Street Expressway, the eastbound entrance and exit are largely unaffected by these changes. Drivers exiting would still have the option of turning on 23rd or proceeding on Winter. And if they're headed for Park Towne, they can do that because it's less than one block.

As for the westbound exit, drivers could still go to the Parkway and turn, or head up into Fairmount on 22nd. People would have to use the Parkway to access the westbound entrance - no more tromping up 22nd Street at 50 mph. Sorry for the inconvenience.

What does all this give us? The future. I'm not going to rehearse all the arguments in favor of a balanced transportation system, instead of the predominantly automotive system that we currently have. What I will say is that I think this setup would be pretty cool, and like the Schuylkill Banks and the bike lanes, the City could brag about it when they try to attract large corporations like Amazon. And I think it would be extremely popular with the people who live here. And pay taxes. And vote.

Will it happen? No. With Dilworth and Bacon in the saddle, I think we might have had a good shot at actually getting some of this stuff done. With this mayor, and this city council, and this streets department, I just don't see it.

Still, to paraphrase Senator McConnell, I will persist. Why? I am a member of the Vaclav Havel school of optimism. Here's what he said:

"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." - Vaclav Havel

See also My Life in Fairmount Park, Transportation Should Not Trump Destination, Do We Secretly Want Ugly Cities and Dangerous Streets? Love Park Redesign: Why Are There Still Five Traffic Lanes on 16th Street? Put Traffic Lights on the Schuylkill Expressway.

They Threw Rocks at Mayor Dilworth

Tuesday Evening Wasn't that Bad. Still, Pretty Bad.

The Acme parking lot, a little after 6 pm yesterday.

"Parking in South Philly was a problem even in 1961, when, as Binzen puts it, 'the mayor proposed requiring residents to pay for overnight parking spaces in front of their houses. The proceeds of the $40-a-year licenses' -- about $320 in today's dollars -- 'were to be earmarked for building off-street parking lots.  Such a plan worked in Milwaukee, but Dilworth's scheme got nowhere. When he confronted his critics at a stormy public meeting, rock throwers targeted the building. A city councilman, Tom Foglietta, was cut by flying glass.'"

There. I'm actually quoting myself, from an article I wrote about Peter Binzen's biography of Richardson Dilworth. (To see the story, click here.)

There were a lot of flashback moments on Tuesday evening. A stretch of 11th Street in South Philadelphia has been redesigned to include a two-way bicycle lane and (gasp!) daylighting of streetcorners. After a lengthy period of consultation with the community, construction has finally begun, and many local residents have at last awoken to the serious threat this redesigned street poses to their special way of life.

Whether they would have awoken if they hadn't been prodded by some television news organizations desperate for viewers in the dog days of August is another issue. But I don't really blame the newsies. The killer bees seem to be asleep, and the sharks have stopped biting people. What's a colorful journalist to do?

So here I was, attending my third public meeting on this topic. South Philly is a special place, but the first two meetings were actually about information. This one, held at the old folks center on Passyunk Avenue near the Acme market, was about yelling.

The meeting was held by the Passyunk Square civic organization, and the city sent four representatives, including Mike Carroll, a professional engineer and the highest ranking transportation official in the city administration.

The guy who owned the show, however, was a bulky man with a florid complexion and eyes that he could, apparently at will, make bulge in an alarming way. He stood in the center of the floor. His modus operandi was simple. He interrupted everybody. Friend or foe, nobody could finish a sentence before he started bellowing. Occasionally he was coherent, and he did at one point summarize his party's position quite well. "Put it back the way it was," he said.

I imagined him as a stock character in the old Italian commedia dell'arte, wearing a silly costume and strutting the boards on a creaky stage in the main square of a small Tuscan hill town in, say, the seventeenth century. Bellowing and making strange faces, frightening the small children and fascinating their parents.

Eventually, Mark Squilla, the local city councilman, escorted this fellow from the room. He went quietly. I'm guessing he was pleased to have been the center of attention for such a long time.

And things got a little bit more orderly, but not a lot. There were many others there who were happy to raise their voices whenever they felt like it, speaking all at once, complaining of lost parking spaces and saying again and again, in many ways, how much they hated bicyclists. There was the usual litany of zombie arguments against bike lanes. One woman said there wasn't enough space left in the motor-vehicle lanes for emergency vehicles to get through. Jeannette Brugger from the city pointed out that the two lanes were ten and eleven feet wide. (This is a two-way street, by the way, which is a bit unusual for this neighborhood. The overall street is quite wide - seventy feet - again an anomaly for the area.)

Towards the end of the meeting, the other side managed to get a few words in edgewise. One woman with small children rose to say how much better she thought the new, daylighted intersections were, and how dangerous and scary the old ones were. And a man stood and said that he was a bicyclist and he thought the redesign of the street was a great improvement and he wanted to thank the city for its work and also the Passyunk Square civic for holding the meeting. (Sarah Anton, Passyunk Square's president, did a heroic job riding herd on this unruly mob.)

The bicyclist then did something unusual. He asked for a round of applause for the city and the Passyunk Square civic. And there was a tremendous amount of clapping. Many, possibly most, of the people in the room were actually in favor of the redesign. They'd been sitting quietly through all the histrionics of the opposition; now it was their turn, and they used it well.

At the end of the meeting, Mike Carroll, the senior city official, did something that made me very happy. I've been writing since 2014 about the parking lot next to the Acme. It's pictured above. He said he'd reach out to the owners to see if something could be done to increase neighbors' access to the lot.

I think such a move would go a long way to alleviate parking issues in this neighborhood. As for the hatred of bicyclists, I don't think that's going away any time soon. They're just a particularly visible symptom of the fact that the neighborhood is changing - this is in fact one of the most heavily biked neighborhoods in the United States.

The downside of change is that things change. And the unilateral control that long-term residents have had over their streets is coming to an end. Personally I think that's a good thing.

See also About that Parking Lot in South Philly, Drunken Episcopal Bishop Kills Bicyclist, Once There Was a Prison.

Richardson Dilworth, an Urbanist for the Ages

I was born and grew up in New York City. I didn't move to Philadelphia until I was in my thirties. Aside from Benjamin Franklin and Grace Kelly, I think the first Philadelphian I heard of was Edmund Bacon (father of Kevin). And the second was Richardson Dilworth.

But I confess I didn't know very much about Dilworth until I sat down and read Peter Binzen's excellent 2014 biography, Richardson Dilworth, Last of the Bare-Knuckled Aristocrats. I didn't know he'd been a 19-year-old Marine rifleman at the battle of Belleau Wood in World War I, or that he'd won the Silver Star on Guadalcanal in World War II, or that he'd struggled with alcohol for most of his life.

And what a life it was. Born to wealth, educated at Yale and Yale Law School, a successful law career, then four jobs with the City of Philadelphia -- treasurer, district attorney, mayor, and president of the Philadelphia Board of Education.

And what a cast of characters. Moses Annenberg, one of Dilworth's most important law clients. Jack Kelly, Olympic oarsman and father of Grace. Albert M. Greenfield, Gus Amsterdam, Bernard Watson.

Sam Dash, later famous as counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, worked for Dilworth. So did William T. Coleman, later U.S. Secretary of Transportation, and A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., later chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

A bold and innovative reformer with a calculated temper and a remarkably disarming sense of humor, Dilworth's breakthrough moment came in 1951, when he teamed with Joe Clark to oust a Republican political machine that had run Philadelphia for 67 years. Clark became mayor; Dilworth became district attorney, and then succeeded Clark as mayor.

As district attorney, Dilworth did something that would be worthy of note even today. He insisted on fair trials. As one observer put it, "He wanted to make sure justice was done and if mistakes were made to admit them." (P. 116.)

U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy tangled with Dilworth in 1953. McCarthy was busy hunting for communists in the government, and Alger Hiss had been convicted of perjury. Dilworth reportedly said that 1,000 Alger Hisses hurt less than one McCarthy. McCarthy challenged Dilworth to a televised debate, and at the debate Dilworth defended his statement. "We can put traitors in jail," Dilworth said to McCarthy, "but demagogues remain too long above and beyond the processes of the law." (P. 119.)

Elected mayor in 1955, Dilworth turned out to be an urbanist for the ages. His work with Ed Bacon -- particularly the revival of Society Hill -- is well known. Other stories, less well known, place him at the center of debates that are going on today.

Parking in South Philly was a problem even in 1961, when, as Binzen puts it, "the mayor proposed requiring residents to pay for overnight parking spaces in front of their houses. The proceeds of the $40-a-year licenses" -- about $320 in today's dollars -- "were to be earmarked for building off-street parking lots.  Such a plan worked in Milwaukee, but Dilworth's scheme got nowhere. When he confronted his critics at a stormy public meeting, rock throwers targeted the building. A city councilman, Tom Foglietta, was cut by flying glass." (P. 140.)

Dilworth also wanted to ban cars in the center of the city. Writes Binzen, "His concept was to create a restricted area that would comprise some 400 blocks, from 8th Street west to the Schuylkill River and from Spring Garden Street south to Lombard and South Streets." (P. 151.)

After leaving the mayor's office, Dilworth became involved in a project to develop high-speed rail service between Boston and Washington. President Kennedy encouraged his work, but Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, was an entirely different proposition. When he finally got to meet with Johnson, Dilworth says, "It was very clear that he just couldn't be less interested. He just sat there wondering what the hell we were talking about. All he could envision was where he lived. And he would either get a helicopter or an airplane or else get in that enormous Lincoln and drive on a straight road to Austin at 95 miles an hour. So who needed or wanted a train?" (Pp. 155-156.)

Well, we do.