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South Philadelphia cyclists have even more to celebrate. With a grant from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission of $250,000 through the Transportation Alternative Program, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia (BCGP) plans to implement sharrows and signage on 13th and 15th streets from South Street to Oregon Avenue. Green chevrons, signs proclaiming that bicycles are “allowed use of full lane,” and added parking lanes are part of the BCGP’s short-term goals for making Philadelphia a world-class cycling city.
Parking won’t be taken away. The chevrons and corresponding signage will simply communicate to drivers that the location is a street where cycling is encouraged and protected, and if the need for speed is so great, they should use other streets.
“Studies show that behavior improves when sharrows exist, and it does improve both cyclist and motorist behavior. We don’t want bikes on Broad [Street],” Susan Dannenberg, a policy fellow for BCGP, said frankly, adding that there are too many dangerous behaviors happening on sidewalks and that the volume of traffic makes it an unsafe cycling corridor.
The 13th and 15th street project aims to create a safer Broad Street bike corridor by pulling cyclists one block away for much safer and protected cycling routes. “Look! There’s a really nice place to ride just one block away” is something Dannenberg hopes riders will exclaim when South Broad Street signage points them to the new and improved roadways.
“Certainly anyone would detour one block if they knew there was a better facility there,” she expressed.
The Bicycle Coalition tapped the Community Design Collaborative (CDC) to help them articulate their goals and present a plan to the City’s relevant offices: the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Philadelphia Streets Department, Philadelphia Water Department, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, Philadelphia City Council and the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities. The CDC grants pro bono design work to nonprofits to the tune of $30 to $40,000 with the hopes that, with a strong and coherent design plan, they’ll attract the necessary funding and approval to achieve the non-profit’s goals.
“In situations like South Philadelphia where you have a 10-foot lane, it’s not really safe for a car to pass a cyclist, so you’re better off positioning yourself so that you can take the lane and pull over and let people pass,” Dannenberg explained.
The hope is that sharrows and signage would create an atmosphere “where motorists would be particularly patient on that street or potentially not use the street at all,” she said.
Of course, the sharrows won’t show up overnight. For best results, it’s ideal to have them go down at the same time the City paves streets.
“The timeline is under review, and they try to coordinate it with paving schedules, and they last longer when they’re put down on fresh asphalt,” Dannenberg said.
The sharrows project has an absolute end-date of getting underway by 2017, at which point if it hasn’t been initiated, the funding is lost.
“This is a street that’s been in the pipeline for a while, so we don’t have to wait for a five-year plan,” the policy expert notes, adding “I think we have good positioning to get it pushed through sooner rather than later, by fall of ’15.”
It’s one of Philadelphia’s points of pride that bicycle commuting has exploded in the last 15 years, a fact some would rightfully attribute to an encouraging City Hall that aims to keep and court a young creative class.
According to the CDC’s “Safe Streets, Healthy Neighborhoods: South Philadelphia Project” report from June of ’12, “Philadelphia has, per capita, twice as many bicycle commuters as any other big city in the U.S. Bicycle commuting increased 151 percent from ’00 to ’09.” In fact, it was the implementation of the bike lanes on Spruce and Pine streets that has fueled cycling momentum and usable statistics about how lane use changes create safer streets. “Upon implementation of buffered bike lanes, reportable automobile accidents dropped 40 percent and fender benders over 15 percent,” the CDC report details.
If nothing else, it seems, these sharrows and signs will stoke and curate conversation amongst South Philadelphians. Geoff DiMasi, the founder of P’unk Ave, 1168 E. Passyunk Ave., and co-founder of the Passyunk Square Civic Association, agrees.
“It’s a great way to continue that dialogue and to make it clear that it’s something to think about,” he said of the numerous public meetings the CDC conducted to get a sense of what citizens wanted and needed . “I think it’s a really good mindset for us as a city to have – let’s just try it and not sign off on a permanent solution. I think the [Bicycle] Coalition has been good about advocating for that kind of approach.”
And the cyclists are many.
“We are flat, we have a grid, a lot of people live within four miles of Center City where a lot of jobs are, and it makes sense to bike to work,” Nicholas Mirra, the communications manager at the BCGP, said. “What we need to do is build the infrastructure to accommodate the existing volume. We’re not building bike lanes in hopes of getting people cycling – we need to build bike lanes to accommodate the cycling that’s already taking place.”
South Philadelphia presents unique challenges because its streets are skinny with, typically, parking on both sides of the street. So the buffered bike lanes of Spruce and Pine are almost impossible to implement without taking a ton of parking away.
“[The BCGP] was focused on what some good north-south connections so they really focused on design approaches to rethinking 13th and 15th streets,” CDC communications manager Linda Dottor said.
The hope is that the sharrows will make these streets “an area where you can have that symbiotic relationship. The idea here is that this is a zone where it’s OK for the bicycle and car to be in the same lane that’s an important distinction to make,” Dottor added.
It falls in line with the BCGP’s “Give Respect, Get Respect” campaign that aims to educate all citizens about simple facts of the road.
“A lot of people aren’t aware of the rules of the road. It’s illegal for adult cyclists to ride on the sidewalk,” Dannenberg noted.
“There’s also an important public education piece that’s necessary in South Philly that, regardless of how you get around, our streets are narrow and you need to be courteous of how we use them,” Mirra said.
Staff Writer Bill Chenevert at bchenevert@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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