1500 Market Street on February 10th, after flex posts were reinstalled.
SEPTA and the Philadelphia Streets Department have re-installed the protected bike lane on the 1500 block of Market Street.
The block, which had been striped and protected when the original lane went in, had a caveat: SEPTA had been doing work on the sidewalk at 15th and Market, installing a new, much-needed elevator into Suburban Station. Once the work was completed, they said, the protected bike lane would be reinstalled, in line with the rest of the lane, between 16th and 20th.
The new elevator on the south side of 1500 Market was completed some time in October 2019 — a full year after the bike lane was originally installed, as we noted in a blog published January 31st. Three months later, the bike lane was still missing and rampant parking was occurring on a daily basis.
The end of January 2020, before the posts were installed.
So, we reached out to SEPTA, a lot, to get the project completed. We were eventually told it’d be done next week. An — lo! — it was.
Thanks to SEPTA and the Philadelphia Streets Department for completing this project.
But…
Unfortunately, that’s not the only issue along the Market Street bike lane. Some flex posts were uninstalled along the 1600 block for the Mummer’s Parade on January 1st. Those have not yet been reinstalled, leading to more illegal parking on that block. We are currently in touch with the Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability, who we are asking to fix the issues along 1600 Market. We will update when we have more details about when those posts will be reinstalled.