Jim Kenney's famous temper was on full view the day we
strolled around Center City, looking at construction sites. More specifically,
we were looking at construction sites where the sidewalks had been blocked.
There aren't many things that make the Democratic mayoral candidate madder than
having to cross the street because of a sidewalk closure - except when
contractors treat the cordoned-off space as free parking.
"Tell me why that's necessary," Kenney
sputtered as we reached the corner of 15th and Chestnut, where the 51-story W
Hotel is going up. His face reddened, his eyes flashed. The two sides of the
site were rimmed in chain-link fencing, ostensibly in the name of public
safety. But the only thing the barrier was protecting was an assortment of
glossy pickup trucks.
As a councilman, Kenney has evolved on a number of
issues, like LGBT rights. But when it comes to sidewalk closures, his position
hasn't budged. He hated them in 2008, when he introduced a measure intended to
discourage developers from blocking sidewalks during construction, and he hates
them now. Because the final legislation didn't make temporary walkways a
requirement, he has taken to outing the most egregious sidewalk hogs on Facebook, as part of a personal crusade to
liberate Philadelphia's pavements from the Jersey barrier.
But if Kenney becomes the city's next mayor, as seems
likely, he vows to use the power of his new office to bring order to the
streets.
Philadelphia pedestrians could certainly use such a
champion. With so many high-rises and rowhouses going up these days, the city
often feels like one giant - and treacherous - construction zone.
It can be hard enough for an able-bodied person to
navigate the city's obstacle-filled sidewalks, hopscotching from one side of
the street to the other to circumvent the barriers. But for the elderly, the
blind, or the disabled, the gauntlet of sidewalk closures has turned walking
into a game of Russian roulette. Philadelphia already has one of the highest
rates of pedestrian fatalities of any Northeast city - an average of 19.2
percent of all traffic deaths - and yet installing walkways at construction
sites remains optional here.
Of course, erecting a 50-story building on a narrow
Philadelphia street poses its own kind of challenges. Developers often need to
close the sidewalks just to make room to store materials or take deliveries.
Annexing the space can be essential to creating a buffer between a swinging
crane and the public. But, as Kenney argues, "there has to be a way to
plan this so pedestrians and bicyclists aren't put in harm's way."
The biggest accomplishment of his 2008 bill was that it
put a price on the public right-of-way by requiring developers to pay a fee for
occupying sidewalks. It now costs $50,000 a year for each blockface that
builders close off to pedestrians. The bill also included an incentive: The fee
can be waived if builders establish a corridor for pedestrians in the street.
It can be an elaborate, covered sidewalk shed, like what you see in New York,
or a simple "cattle chute" formed with barriers.
Despite the new provisions, even the simplest walkways
remain rare. The fees haven't even succeeded in getting builders to reduce the
amount of time they keep the sidewalks closed.
It may be that the amount is just too low. After all,
what's $200,000 to close four sides of a block when you're spending $1.2
billion to construct a new tower for Comcast?
But City Hall hasn't exactly shown leadership. The
Department of Public Property didn't even bother to create a walkway for its
current renovation project on the north side of City Hall, where there is an
enormous amount of street capacity. Pedestrians are forced in a long circuitous
loop across JFK Boulevard and around Dilworth Park, a walk that involves
multiple street crossings. The excuse, offered by city spokesman Mark McDonald,
is that a walkway would have necessitated closing one of the two turning lanes
for 15th Street.
Given the choice between losing a lane of traffic or
making pedestrians feel safe, it seems the car still wins.
What set Kenney off on his latest Facebook posting was
the convergence of building projects this spring along 15th Street in Center
City. There was a sidewalk closure on nearly every block between Dilworth Park
and Locust Street, including dueling closures at the Chestnut and Walnut
intersections. Even though 15th Street is routinely jammed with people, not one
developer was compelled to provide a walkway. "At one point," Kenney
said, "five out of eight sidewalks were blocked."
It isn't only high-rise projects that are responsible for
the land grabs. Kenney was amazed that a three-house development on Arch Street
in Old City kept its sidewalk closed for months, rather than make space for
pedestrians. Rowhouse developments create some of the worst blockages.
Streets Commissioner David Perri said Kenney was
"absolutely correct" and conceded that the city hasn't been able to
monitor sidewalk conditions at every building site. "No one foresaw the
uptick in construction," he said. It would help, he added, if his
department had more inspectors to keep tabs on the builders, especially in the
neighborhoods, but Streets only just received permission to add five staffers.
In addition to hiring more inspectors to check for
abuses, Kenney's platform calls for adopting "Vision
Zero," a set of guidelines developed in Sweden to reduce
pedestrian fatalities, ideally to zero. Certainly, eliminating the sidewalk
closures that force pedestrians into the street would be a good start.
Deborah Schaaf, a former city planner who now runs the
pedestrian-rights group Feet First Philly, said it would take more than
higher fees to make that happen. She would like to see the city follow the
Washington, D.C., model, which makes walkways the default solution. If it's
impossible to find the space because of site conditions, builders must submit a
special request justifying why they need a sidewalk closure. Nashville and
Seattle have just adopted that approach.
Compared to the alternative - a pedestrian population in
constant danger - that seems like a cakewalk.
Source: Philly.com
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