New configuration of the 1600-1800 blocks of the Ben Franklin Parkway as of March 30, 2015.
There was a lot of disbelief on Friday after the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reported that the bike lanes on the Ben Frankin Parkway were being temporarily eliminated due to a construction project.
The response to that blog, including your phone calls/emails/tweets, and a Philadelphia Magazine story that went up earlier today, made a real difference. The Streets Department told the Bicycle Coalition this afternoon that they will not be eliminating the bike lanes. Rather, they will maintain four feet bike lanes in both directions for the duration of the project, which is scheduled to go on through spring 2016. The original elimination of the bike lanes, they said, was an oversight. We took the picture above this afternoon.
The Ben Franklin Parkway’s bike lanes are an important route between Center City and Fairmount, and help keep cyclists on those often-fast, busy streets, safer.
Those who made phone calls or sent emails to get this done: Thanks. As usual, we appreciate the work you do. We also thank the Streets Department for listening to our concerns and taking steps to correct the matter so quickly by reinstating the bike lanes.
Are the bike lanes that dashes white lane on the far left?!?!
Horrible! Drivers will see a dashed line as a lane they can drive in.
This was a GREAT chance to have a “protected” bike lane experiment by placing bikes on the other side of the construction cones/bollards. Major oversight.
Thank you for diligently working to take away my motorcycle parking along the Parkway. One group wins, another loses.
By reducing the driving lanes on the Parkway to two lanes in each direction you have created a traffic problem of such proportions that I have decided that my only choice is to move my offices from downtown Philadelphia to the suburbs. Between the reduction in lanes and the reduction of lanes on the Spring Garden Street Bridge it is impossible to drive into and out of downtown Philadelphia.
I trust that the bicycle riders will be paying sufficient taxes to the city to offset the loss of tax revenues from the businesses that will be moving out of the city.
It was awful last week with cars crossing over worse than ever into the bike lanes on BFP, especially near the Embassy Suites. Drivers don’t seem to care in this zone of the Parkway. They are often in the bike lane and on their phones on top of it!!