After a long wait, Spruce and Pine Streets in Center City, Philadelphia, are finally being milled, repaved, restriped, and re-engineered. The city’s plan is to move the bike lane to the left-hand side of the street, and add protection to intersections to help cut down on hook crashes.
While these changes are welcome, we do not consider these changes the end of advocacy, or engineering for these bike lanes.
There was a public outcry after the death of Philadelphia pastry chef Emily Fredricks, on Spruce Street, in November 2017, which led, in part, to the plan for improvements.
What’s happening now does not address the number of vehicles parked in the Spruce and Pine bike lanes, which put cyclists, pedestrians, and motorists’ lives at risk.
While the Philadelphia Parking Authority has increased ticketing on Spruce and Pine Streets over the last five years, the issue persists, and Spruce and Pine Streets are still the most-violated streets for vehicles parked in the bike lanes, according to PPA data. All the information from this video we made last year still hold true:
We will continue monitoring and collecting data on those issues when the changes are complete, and keep our audiences informed on what actions we all may take to make Philadelphia’s only river-to-river buffered bike lanes the best, safest, lanes they can be.