Screenshot from our recently-created petition page for more Streets Department funds.
Have Philadelphia’s streets got you down lately? Whether you’re traveling on pot hole-ridden roads in North Philly, or virtually paintless bike lanes in South Philly, more work needs to be done this spring and summer to bring our grid up to speed. At the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Phialdelphia, we want to see more pot hole repairs, repainting, and repaving. What’s that mean for you? More bike lanes.
Sign Up To Testify
The city needs to hear from you and we need you to tell them why the Streets Department needs more funds for their work in the Fiscal Year 2016. Learn how to sign up for testimony (and read the talking points) HERE.
Sign Our Petition
Can’t make it? Then SIGN OUR PETITION, and we’ll bring your story to City Council.
A dangerous pothole on 27th Street.
When roads get repaved, that’s when new bike lanes can get installed. Roads that get repaved get a pavement marking plan and those plans tell the stripping crew where to lay down thermoplast, thus creating a bike lane. The City’s 2012 Pedestrian/Bicycle master plan proposed where new bike lanes should go in order to build out the bicycle network and Mayor Michael Nutter proposed nearly $5 million in additional funds for the coming fiscal year, which City Council has to approve for us to see on the streets.
When the Streets Department puts together its paving program in the fall/winter before the paving season begins, a cross-check between the roads slated to be repaved and the Bicycle Network plan needs to occur in order to ensure that bike lanes get included on a road’s pavement marking plan. Consequently, the fewer miles of roads that get repaved, the less bike lanes get installed. The 900-mile repaving backlog of streets is downright embarrassing.
The Bicycle Coalition and its partners proposed in the Better Mobility platform that the next mayor should should commit to a doubling of the bike lane installation rate from 6 miles a year (the average number of miles of lanes installed between 2008-2013) to 15 miles of new bike lanes annually. Bike lanes that are desperately needed, especially as Indego Bike Share is unveiled on April 23. But before the next mayor comes into power, we need to set an example.
Some smashed streets and awareness cones in Northern Liberties.
That’s why we’ve asked you to sign up to publicly testify on Tuesday, April 21, at 5:30pm, to share your story with Philadelphia City Council and advocate for more Streets Department funds. Without the funding, Philadelphia will continue falling behind its peer cities on paving and the street advances that go along with it. If you can’t make the hearing on Tuesday at 5:30pm, we urge you to sign this petition, which we will bring to City Council chambers, and submit on your behalf.
Whatever your story, we want to hear it, and we want Council to hear it. They control the city’s pocketbook, and have the ability to release more funds for repaving, pot hole filling and restriping. How would a better funded Streets Department, more bike lanes, better bike lanes, and better streets affect your experience in Philadelphia? Tell us. And let us tell them.
Please allocate more resources to fixing the potholes left by this winter. The bike lane potholes often go neglected.