As someone who’s been closely watching street safety and Vision Zero politics in Philly for the past decade, the last year under Council President Kenyatta Johnson’s leadership has brought about a strange and unfamiliar feeling in me: hope.
Johnson’s recent speech at the annual Vision Zero Conference, which was celebrated by local advocates for signaling a strong commitment to their agenda, was the capstone to a prolific year of street safety policymaking from City Council that’s unrivaled in recent history. And it’s all the more remarkable in light of whom the new political champions are.
Johnson and Mayor Cherelle Parker didn’t exactly campaign as advocates for this particular cause in 2023, and in the past, Johnson has sometimes been at odds with Vision Zero supporters on high-profile issues like Washington Avenue traffic calming. Mayor Parker was the only 2023 Mayoral candidate to say she thought the city had enough bike lanes already in The Inquirer’s questionnaire.
But following the shocking death of CHOP oncologist Dr. Barbara Freides on Spruce Street last summer, both politicians seem to have undergone a real change of heart that’s been backed up by action.
Under Johnson’s leadership, Council passed a no-stopping bill for bike lanes that removed the 20-minute grace period for parking; they passed a bill directing the Streets Department to approve more traffic calming treatments in school zones; they approved speed cameras on Broad Street and U.S. Route 13; they rolled out camera-based enforcement of bus lane parking; they’re soon to approve speed cameras in five school zones as authorized by the state; and things also seem on track for Council to approve $5 million in Vision Zero project funding in the upcoming budget. What’s more, the Parker administration has been very successful at winning competitive federal grants for Vision Zero projects, stretching the City’s funding even further.
Whether you’re a driver or a pedestrian, you’ve surely experienced the anxiety of inching forward into an intersection, nervously trying to peer around a parked car to see if it’s safe to cross yet.
Councilmember At-Large Isaiah Thomas has been out in front as a vocal supporter of these changes, and some District members have been advancing significant road safety projects as well. 3rd District Councilmember Jamie Gauthier has supported safety upgrades for Woodland Avenue, bike lanes on 47th and 48th streets, and barrier hardening on Chestnut Street. 1st District Councilmember Mark Squilla introduced a new bike lane for 3rd Street, and Kenyatta Johnson completed safety upgrades to Grays Ferry Avenue in the 2nd District. An even more telling marker of the ongoing vibe shift is that even sometimes-skeptical members like 5th District Councilmember Jeffrey Young have introduced more bike lane bills lately, despite sometimes publicly positioning in the other direction.
Another life-saving idea Philly should adopt
Thinking about what else can be achieved in this moment of political realignment around street safety, one idea the Parker administration and City Council might want to consider expanding is corner daylighting.
Corner daylighting is a friendly way of saying we should keep lines of sight open at intersections by enforcing the law against parking too close to the corners. The places that have seen impressive movement on their Vision Zero goals, like Jersey City and Hoboken, New Jersey, have gone a step further than just writing more tickets for this and actually installed flex posts at the corners so people physically can’t park within a certain distance of the stop sign or light. Other big cities like San Francisco and Portland, Oregon have also made daylighting a priority intervention, and there’s a citywide bill being debated in New York City right now too.
Council President Johnson referenced this success in his Vision Zero conference speech, when listing some of the specific changes he’s interested in.
“Daylighting at intersections [has] proven effective in cities like Hoboken, NJ, which has achieved seven consecutive years without a pedestrian death,” he said. “By removing parking at intersections, we can improve visibility and reduce collisions.”
Whether you’re a driver or a pedestrian, you’ve surely experienced the anxiety of inching forward into an intersection, nervously trying to peer around a parked car to see if it’s safe to cross yet. When a car is parked right up to the edge of the intersection, it’s hard to see around it, and it’s stressful trying to guess if the coast is clear.
Anecdotally, illegal parking at intersections also sometimes traps long vehicles like buses, fire trucks, and delivery trucks that need a bigger turning radius. In my neighborhood in Fishtown, I’ve seen SEPTA buses get stuck on certain streets because they can’t make turns due to illegal parking. And a firefighter friend of mine has said it’s relatively common for fire trucks to get delayed on the way to fighting fires because of illegal corner parking, especially in South Philly.
After City Council passed 9th District Councilmember Anthony Phillips’s bill directing the Street Department to support traffic calming treatments in more school zones, the city installed some new speed cushions and corner daylighting around my kids’ school, Adaire Elementary, a few months ago and I’ve personally felt like it’s made a big difference.
With the corners clear, it’s possible to see further down the block to check if a car is coming, saving everyone involved a lot of stress — both drivers and pedestrians.
It would be ideal if additional daylighting treatments could be rolled out in more places through a more strategic and intentional process.
That’s what leaders in Hoboken and Jersey City did starting back around 2019, and they’ve publicly credited this approach as an important factor in their success at getting crashes under control. Hoboken has had zero pedestrian fatalities for the last eight straight years. Jersey City pedestrian fatalities on city streets have been in the low single digits since Mayor Steven Fulop’s Vision Zero initiative went into effect, and they even had a full year of zero fatal crashes in 2022.
The law for this already exists
Hoboken is only about one square mile with a population of around 60,000 residents — much smaller than Jersey City, or Philadelphia for that matter. But it’s an interesting example nonetheless because of how fully they’ve embraced the concept. About two-thirds of city intersections have received daylighting treatments, according to Hoboken City Councilmember Emily Jabbour, now a candidate for mayor.
In both cities, Mayors Steven Fulop (Jersey City) and Ravi Bhallah (Hoboken) used a state law governing the allowable parking distance from intersections to make these changes administratively, without the need for legislation. In New Jersey, motorists aren’t allowed to park within 15 feet of a crosswalk. In the past, this law had been ignored by city governments, with officials turning a blind eye to a lot of illegal parking. But the option has always existed to enforce the law more literally.
Pennsylvania has a slightly different law, which generally prohibits parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk, but in Philadelphia, officials mostly prefer to pretend this law doesn’t apply, overlooking hundreds of daily infractions.
So when the New Jersey cities decided to pursue corner daylighting as a Vision Zero strategy, they didn’t need to change any local laws. All they had to do was start acknowledging and enforcing the existing state law. This would also work in Philadelphia, and critically, it would vest a lot of power in the Mayor to get it done with a relatively free hand.
Even as some City Council members have had a change of heart on Vision Zero, not everybody has, and the city’s current process for reviewing these matters is heavy on deference to the District Council member. Corner daylighting often happens based on neighbor requests, and the process for gaining approval is discretionary and arbitrary, sometimes relying on neighbor petitions and nearby property owner consent.
Ariel Ben-Amos of StreetBoxPHL, a local advocate for public spaces in the right-of-way, notes that there are over 1,300 vacant lots adjacent to intersections on the High Injury Network — the city’s map of streets with the worst crash statistics. This represents a special challenge for communities looking to daylight those intersections who have to meet already high thresholds for adjacent property signatures to get approval. Ben-Amos argues that these, and City insurance requirements, actively limit communities’ ability to transform their neighborhood streets.
It’s a rare thing when you can find street safety solutions that are cheap and easy, and don’t elicit much public pushback. And it’s even rarer to have the option to execute on Vision Zero agenda items without running into the political buzzsaw of Councilmanic Prerogative.
But in a scenario where the Mayor can direct the Streets Department to daylight a list of intersections to ensure compliance with the state law, there’s no legal need to consult anybody about it. Council members know their districts, so the Mayor could solicit input about the best intersections to prioritize. But crucially, there wouldn’t be a way for Council members to decline to participate.
The Parker administration could go even further by pursuing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Streets Department and the Philadelphia Parking Authority delegating this whole book of business to the PPA instead. PPA has the people power to install and maintain more flex posts than Streets does, and this is all firmly within the realm of parking enforcement anyway.
PPA Executive Director Rich Lazer has also been hailed as a skilled and creative government manager who has branched out into other areas of transportation beyond the PPA’s usual purview, and daylighting would be a fitting addition, especially in light of their recent efforts to combat illegal sidewalk parking and related Americans with Disabilities Act violations.
The PPA, rather unjustly, is one of the city’s most-hated agencies, if not the most. It would be a win for everyone involved if elected officials could simply blame the PPA whenever a daylighting treatment turned out to be locally controversial. Elected officials would get the cover they need to dodge these controversies, and the city’s important safety business would still get done.
One reason for hope is that, according to Bike JC president Alya Schermer, daylighting doesn’t seem to get people’s hackles up in the same way bike lanes do.
“I have not really heard any sort of sustained pushback from Council or the general population,” she said. “But compared to bike lanes and other things that become way more controversial, for some reason the daylighting doesn’t agitate people in the same way. Maybe because in theory people know they’re not supposed to be there anyway.”
Daylighting is also fairly cheap compared to other kinds of public infrastructure. The quality of the paint and flex posts can vary, but according to Hoboken’s Emily Jabbour, the lower-end treatments cost about $2,000 per intersection for paint and flex posts, while higher-end treatments with concrete or rain gardens can cost up to $30,000 per intersection. At those prices, it would be affordable for Philadelphia to transform dozens of intersections per year.
A citizen-initiated daylighting project near E.M. Stanton School at 17th and Christian streets, which was supported by Councilmember Johnson before he became Council President, reportedly cost about $5,000 per intersection, but that included on-street murals in addition to the daylighting necessities. Johnson mentioned the project favorably in his Vision Zero conference speech.
It’s a rare thing when you can find street safety solutions that are cheap and easy, and don’t elicit much public pushback. And it’s even rarer to have the option to execute on Vision Zero agenda items without running into the political buzzsaw of Councilmanic Prerogative. The Parker administration should take a serious look at North Jersey’s successes in this realm and score a win for Philly pedestrians.
