Spruce and Pine Bike Lane Meetings, Call Council for Good Cause, TransportationCamp

5th Square's weekly newsletter reaches over 10,000 subscribers with the news, events, and opportunities Philly urbanists need to know about each week. Become a member to support our advocacy. 

ACTION ITEMS 

Mayor Jim Kenney’s transportation team is hosting TWO public meetings about safety changes on Spruce and Pine on April 4th and 5th. Streets and OTIS are considering safety improvements to the city’s most popular bike routes as part of repaving this year, like moving the bike lane to the left-hand side, but they aren’t considering any new protected bike infrastructure—despite having federal funding in-hand for protected bike lanes. RSVP and demand that Mayor Kenney install protected bike lanes THIS YEAR as part of this repaving project!

The May 15th primary is approaching fast, and there’s less than a month left to update your voter registration. Make sure to register with a party before the deadline. If you do not, you will not be to vote for any primary candidates. There are lots of great urbanist candidates who are running for office this year, some of whom we’ll be endorsing in just a few weeks.

EVENTS

NEWS

SEPTA officials released an economic impact study that frames the transit agency as a critical cog in the region’s economy. The study, prepared by Econsult Solutions, argues that Southeastern Pennsylvania is the Commonwealth’s economic engine. Nearly a third of the state’s population lives in the region, generating 41 percent of Pennsylvania’s economic activity on just five percent of its land. And without SEPTA, the report asserts, that engine would grind to a halt. SEPTA faces two major funding challenges in the coming years: maintaining the existing system and expanding it to meet future needs. The passage of Act 89 in 2013 raised Pennsylvania fuel taxes to pay for increased infrastructure spending, boosting SEPTA's annual capital funds and helping SEPTA make necessary improvements. Even if SEPTA manages to maintain its capital budget though, the transit agency won’t be able to maintain increasing rail ridership trends without money to expand service. While bus ridership has declined significantly in recent years, ridership on SEPTA’s trains and trolleys has gone up.

The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board calls on elected officials to get serious about managing our streets, backing up recent report about congestion by Center City District. That report provided a concise guide to the issues contributing to congestion, all of which stem from fragmented decision-making, and a failure on the part of electeds to prioritize space for anything that isn't single-occupancy vehicles. As the editorial board points out, these obstacles also slow down bus trips to the point that people are driven off the buses as a main mode of transport—a likely contributor to our falling bus ridership. 

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and other institutions who studied Stockholm’s congestion-pricing scheme found that the policy cut air pollution in the city center and reduced childhood asthma cases by nearly 50 percent. The study — which according to the authors is the first to investigate a possible link between congestion pricing and health — comes as more jurisdictions in the United States are exploring similar strategies to reduce traffic in city centers or on commuter highways. Sweden’s plan to tax vehicles heading into the city center generated outrage — at first anyway, Streetsblog.org has reported. The city first conducted a seven-month experiment with congestion pricing from January to July 2006; in August 2007, the tax became permanent. The city began charging vehicles $2.60 to drive downtown during the regular workweek. As traffic declined, so did air pollution. The amount of nitrogen dioxide in the air declined by nearly 8 percent; the amount of soot and other particulate matter declined by about 15 percent, the study says.