When Jonas Maciunas and Mark Keener were collecting data
for the Old City District's new plan, they stumbled across an astonishing
statistic. Since 2000, the amount of automobile traffic on Old City's stretch
of Market Street has plunged by a third, even as the neighborhood's old
cast-iron warehouses were filling up with thousands
of new residents.
The combination of rising population and declining car
use prompted the two planning consultants to reexamine some long-cherished
notions about Old City's place in the constellation of Philadelphia
neighborhoods. Instead of continuing to promote the area as a nightlife
destination, they said the district should focus on enhancing the residential
feel of the colonial-era enclave. It was time, they suggested, to put Market
Street on a road diet.
Their report, Vision
2026, is more of a wish list than a master plan, yet it reveals a
profound shift in thinking among neighborhood leaders. The Old City District -
a business group that is usually all about bringing more traffic into the
neighborhood - eagerly embraced the idea of making Market Street less like a
highway-style thoroughfare and more like a friendly neighborhood Main Street.
Such a transformation, of course, would require radically
reconfiguring the street's design. To force motorists to slow down, space for
cars would have to be reduced to a single lane in each direction. Sidewalks
would be furnished with benches and trees. Between the seating and walking
zones, the planners envision what's called a "sidepath," a protected
bike lane on the sidewalk. Curbs might even be banished to create a seamless,
flat space for all travel modes.
If these ideas sound familiar, it's because similar
proposals have been popping up in many of the recent master plans issued by
other neighborhoods that straddle Market Street. Schuylkill Yards, the Science Center, and the Center City District all
are looking for ways to tame traffic.
That's no accident. The demographic changes we're seeing
in Old City are playing out along the entire length of the street. Long viewed
as a business corridor, the essence of Philadelphia's downtown, Market Street
is being rapidly domesticated with apartments and shops. Pedestrians and
bicyclists are coming out of the woodwork. Not surprisingly, their safety is a
growing concern.
Market Street has effectively become the central spine
for the ever-expanding Drexel campus. Since it completed the 1,300-unit Summit dorm last year on 34th Street, you can see
knots of students gathering on the corner as they prepare to wade across the
wide boulevard. The mixed-use East Market development at 11th
Street, which opens in 2017, promises a similar pedestrian surge at what
already is one of the city's most dangerous intersections.
The new way of thinking about Market Street is most
clearly reflected in the Schuylkill Yards master plan, which lays the
groundwork for a new live-work district in the no-man's-land between 30th
Street Station and Drexel University. In a rendering of the 32nd Street
intersection, the planners (West 8 and SHoP) show a much-narrowed Market Street
with a sidepath nearly identical to the one in the Old City report. They've
even proposed a diagonal crosswalk to make it easier for students to flow
across Market to Drexel's LeBow College.
These pedestrian improvements aren't all in the future.
Five years ago, the University City District established the Porch,
a pop-up park next to 30th Street. At the time, the Market Street sidewalk was
a stingy three feet wide, and pedestrians had to walk single-file next to the
speeding traffic. Using planters and other design elements, the Porch carved
out a generous pedestrian walkway.
The city Streets Department also has played around with
temporary improvements along the stretch of Market west of City Hall, where new
apartment buildings and restaurants have been creeping in amid the staid office
towers. Using traffic cones, one lane was closed to cars to create a bike
path. Unfortunately, the experiment was short-lived.
It certainly wasn't because Market Street was overwhelmed
by traffic.
"The average daily traffic counts are falling along
the entire length of the street," said Mike Carroll, deputy commissioner
for transportation at the Streets Department. Though that doesn't mean there
aren't pinch points that cause annoying backups, he told me that, overall,
Market Street has more automobile capacity than it needs.
So, how should the city respond?
Ideally, the Streets Department would organize the Market
Street neighborhoods into a single working group. That way, the various
proposals could be stitched together into a unified plan the city could use as
a basis to apply for government funding grants.
Carroll acknowledged his department had not been focused
on Market Street as a single entity, largely because it has its hands full with
Roosevelt Boulevard, the most dangerous street in town.
The department is also worried about Chestnut and Walnut Streets, which also
have become speedways.
But here's an interesting statistic: Even though Walnut
and Chestnut are narrower than Market and JFK Boulevard, they're safer roads.
Between 2010 and 2014, Market and JFK together had 16 percent more total
crashes, according to the Bicycle Coalition's Sarah Clark Stuart.
It's been a particularly bad time for Market. This week,
Jamal Morris, a promising young engineer and Drexel graduate, died after a hit-and-run motorist knocked him
off his bike at 45th Street. Another cyclist was badly injured last week near
30th Street. Last summer, actor Michael Toner lost a leg after he was
struck by a car as he crossed at 12th Street. One obvious reason is that the
wide-open spaces on Market Street make it easier for motorists to floor the gas
pedal.
Given Philadelphia's obsession with parking, declining
car use may sound counterintuitive. But for proof, look no farther than the
1,662-space garage that Brandywine Realty Trust built to serve the IRS
headquarters on Market Street. It's so underused Brandywine is considering
converting the lower floors into a food market along the lines of Reading
Terminal. As car-sharing and bike use grow, Brandywine believes traffic counts
are likely to fall even more.
The city needs to plan for the way the city will be, not
the way it was. Market Street, the city's main street, could be a good place to
start.
Source: Philly.com
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