Grid Magazine October 2023 [#173]

Lifelong members

Could Philly be the

Ships, not windmills,

publisher

Alex Mulcahy

managing editor

Bernard Brown

associate editor & distribution

Timothy Mulcahy

tim@gridphilly.com

deputy editor

Katherine Rapin

art director

Michael Wohlberg

writers

Kiersten Adams

Kyle Bagenstose

Bernard Brown

Nic Esposito

Constance Garcia-Barrio

Dawn Kane

Carolyn Kousky

Noah Raven

Ben Seal

Ashley Lauren Walker

photographers

Chris Baker Evens

Rachael Warriner

A Commitment To Less

Idrive, walk and bike with one eye following the pavement, scanning for dead animals.

It comes from my background as a herper, someone who recreationally searches for reptiles and amphibians. A popular way to find the critters I love is “road cruising,” in which you drive around and look for them crossing the pavement. In the process you also spot the creatures that don’t make it across.

Herpers have a lexicon of terms for roadkill, such as road jerky, road pizza or simply DOR (for Dead On the Road). We can identify the species of animal from even freeze-dried, sun-baked scraps at 75 miles per hour on the interstate and we know that there are far more bodies ground into the asphalt than normal people ever notice. Thus it comes as no surprise to a herper like me that biologists have estimated that hundreds of millions of vertebrates (animals with backbones) get killed on North American roads every year.

The effects of roads on wildlife is one of those topics I try to stop myself ranting about at dinner parties, so it delighted me to see Noah Raven and Carolyn Kousky’s article about a proposal to fund more wildlife road crossings. Yes, we need to make it safer for animals to cross the road, but I can’t help but wonder, wouldn’t having fewer vehicles driving less also reduce the slaughter?

And why stop with cars? We know if we slow container ships down a bit, they won’t kill so many endangered whales and Atlantic sturgeon. It’s a critical fix, but wouldn’t having fewer ships on the water also save whales?

Likewise, properly maintaining our rail infrastructure and fully staffing trains is vital to reduce the risk of a derailment that could cause a toxic disaster. But we also need to buy less stuff to reduce the volume

of vinyl chloride and other nasty chemicals transported on trains.

My point is that the scale of transportation and consumption (since we must transport the goods we consume) matters as much as the technical details of transportation safety.

I worry that only hardcore, crunchy environmentalists would seriously propose that everyone drive less to avoid running over turtles, or that we scale back global trade to save the whales. Bet let’s slip on our darned-elbow cardigans for a moment and try to imagine a world in which we don’t buy and ship as many consumer goods from China on container ships 1,300 feet long, or send American fossil fuels around the globe on tankers that could stretch across three football fields.

It’s time to commit to Less.

Of course Less is at a disadvantage in an economy driven by companies and leaders that benefit from More. No one makes money from you buying less stuff. Walking instead of driving is similarly a bust for everyone from Ford to Exxon.

Virtually all the advertising dollars flow to More. It falls to advocacy organizations and the environmental press to argue for a scaled-down transportation system and a circular economy.

So let’s have at it. We hope readers who are already pros at Less find some new ideas and inspiration in this issue. And we hope we can help readers who are newly disquieted at the hazards and casualties of our transportation system learn more about how to solve problems — even as we shrink them.

bernard brown , Managing Editor

corrections : On the September 2023 cover, the image caption incorrectly stated that the photograph was taken at the Apex Manayunk in September 2021. The photo was taken at The Isle apartment building (also on Venice Island) in August 2020. In the photo caption for “Blazing Trails” in September 2023, we misidentified Xianny Jimenez as Jackie Valerio.

How to Save a Life

Can a car insurance fee protect wildlife from collisions?

by carolyn kousky and noah raven

Busy roads and wildlife are a bad combination. Collisions between vehicles and wildlife not only kill and injure animals — they can also cause substantial property damage and injure or kill drivers and passengers. In 2020, Pennsylvania had the highest total number of animal-vehicle collisions reportred through insurance claims in the country — an estimated 166,404.

But there is a proven solution: wildlife crossings. Designed to be an extension of the natural landscape, wildlife crossings are overpasses or tunnels that keep wildlife off

the road by giving the animals safe passage. Picture a bridge, planted with the surrounding vegetation and used by animals instead of people, or an inconspicuous tunnel built for animals under a roadway. Coupled with fencing to direct wildlife to use the crossings, they can reduce accidents and make our roadways more visually appealing.

A novel funding source could support their expansion: a small fee (less than 1%) on vehicle insurance policies. State Farm estimates there were over two million insurance claims due to collisions between vehicles and animals in the U.S. in 2020-

2021. Reducing the accidents would lower insurance claims and protect people and wildlife.

Our highways and roads often separate animals from their food, breeding grounds and migratory paths, forcing crossings that can be deadly for them and us. While millions of small animals, from opossums and rabbits to pets like cats and dogs, die from these collisions each year, it is collisions with large animals that cause the most damage. These collisions cause an estimated 26,000 human injuries, 200 fatalities and $8 billion in damage every year.

Research has shown that wildlife crossings, especially those that prevent large mammal collisions, can pay for themselves over time. Washington state, for example, has found that its highway crossings for wildlife save between $235,000 and $443,000 per structure each year. The ben-

efits of crossings do not exceed costs everywhere, however; detailed analyses are needed to identify road sections that could yield the most benefit for animals and humans.

Wildlife crossings also generate substantial conservation value. Research has estimated that for 21 threatened or endangered animals, road mortality is a major threat to their survival. For some mammals, such as the endangered Florida panther, highways are the leading cause of death. Crossings allow animals to reach food sources, mi-

gratory paths, nesting grounds and other populations of the same species for mating, increasing genetic diversity.

Here in Philadelphia, for example, American toads need to migrate from conserved land at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education to the Roxborough Reservoir to mate and lay eggs each year. The young toads then make the migration back to the forest, but doing so requires crossing busy roads and their populations were falling due to collisions. In the absence of a safe

crossing, the Schuylkill Center established a volunteer project to help them cross the road safely.

To be effective, wildlife crossings must be installed periodically in all sections of road with high rates of collisions. The federal government sometimes provides states funding for construction, but the states must then cover maintenance costs. With stressed budgets and growing needs to update aging infrastructure, there simply aren’t enough dollars. President Biden’s infrastructure bill included $350 million over five years across all states and territories for competitive grants to fund new wildlife crossings. This is an important opportunity that Pennsylvania should harness and use as a foundation for greater expansion of crossings.

As briefly noted in a U.S. Forest Service report, substantial and sustained funding could come from a small fee on automobile insurance that would be deposited into a fund earmarked for the construction and maintenance of crossings. In Pennsylvania in 2020, there were roughly 10.6 million private and commercial licensed vehicles. If the annual per vehicle fee was only $5 — less than half a percent of the average automobile premium — it would generate almost $53 million in annual revenue. With the cost of crossings ranging from $500,000 to $2.7 million for underpasses and up to $6.2 million for overpasses, we could build and maintain many such crossings.

This fee could be designed to exempt lower-income drivers and be raised for commercial vehicles. After construction of sufficient crossings, the fee could be reduced substantially to only cover needed maintenance.

Helping wildlife cross our busy roads and highways not only saves their lives, but ours as well, and can dramatically reduce property damage from accidents. Fortunately, we know how to solve this problem: construct wildlife crossings along with roadside fencing. Let’s make sure that both animals and people can get to where they are going safely. ◆

Helping wildlife cross our busy roads and highways not only saves their lives, but ours as well.

Carolyn Kousky and her son Noah Raven want to see more wildlife get across the road safely.

Woven Together

Weavers Way celebrates 50 years of food and community

by nic esposito

Today, weavers way co-op counts more than 10,000 member households, with storefronts in Ambler, Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy, and a new store due to open this year in Germantown. But long-time member Sylvia Carter can remember 50 years back to its humble beginnings as a buying club in a church basement.

Carter moved to Mount Airy as the neighborhood integrated in the mid-1900s. “I was one of several of the early Black homeowners, and there was beautiful outreach among the 80% that welcomed us into their communities,” Carter says. “But there were still some who didn’t understand how we were able to purchase the homes in their [white] domain. The only African American they knew in some of the cases were household maids.”

Carter became heavily involved in welcoming Black households to the Charles W. Henry Elementary School, which is directly across from what became Weavers Way’s first physical store at Carpenter Lane and Greene Street in 1973. Carter didn’t know much about food cooperatives, but when her sister Madeline Morris became the founding membership coordinator of the group that would create Weavers Way, Carter realized that this was yet another way to build an integrated community.

“For some reason, the parents and faculty at C.W. Henry had this thinking that we were an exclusive club and we had to get that whole idea out of their heads,” Carter recalls. She and fellow members got permission from the principal to attend the school’s parent-teacher nights, she says. “We would go there with apples to let the

parents of the students know that they were welcome at Weavers Way.”

This outreach wasn’t just targeted to after school time; in the next few years, C.W. Henry allowed Weavers Way members to become part of the school day with what Carter called “Little Co-op.” In this program, Weavers Way staff and members taught kids how to select, purchase and sell a product, and even how to pay the bills

and determine a profit. Carter remembers that one year the kids made a profit and used the money to buy a cow for a family in South America. This led to more farmbased education that paved the way for the establishment of the Weavers Way farm at the Awbury Arboretum, which still exists today as a production and education farm.

And it wasn’t just the kids who were getting an education. Over the past 50 years,

During college when I would come home for break, we were working members so I was in the basement bagging chips and pecans.”

— kristin haskins-simms, Weavers Way member

Carter has seen firsthand how a community can learn to run a profitable and professional grocery store.

“We learned how to run a co-op and a board,” Carter says. “We learned how to respect and give authority to our talented staff. And we learned how to be more diverse and to be sure that we were getting the talent we needed to run a store with the community involved.”

Co-op member Kristin Haskins-Simms says she was practically raised in Weavers Way; she grew up in a house only a few doors down from the Summit Presbyterian Church, where the grocery store got its start as a buying club. Her mother, Yvonne Haskins, was an early adopter and used to bring HaskinsSimms along with her when she shopped.

As Weavers Way started opening stores,

Yvonne Haskins made sure that her household had a membership, which has benefited Haskins-Simms as she has left and returned to Philadelphia throughout her adult life.

“I’ve lived in New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut, but always was able to maintain a membership through my mom,” Haskins-Simms explains. “During college when I would come home for break, we were working members so I was in the basement bagging chips and pecans.”

Haskins-Simms says she most values the familiar quality that a trip to Weavers Way invokes, where a shopper gets to know people, their lives and their stories. For Haskins-Simms, that’s not an everyday experience at other stores. As she describes it, her family have been members for so long

that it’s just “part of the fabric of our lives.”

Haskins-Simms thinks Weavers Way’s future looks bright, with the plans to open in Germantown. She readily admits the Mount Airy store is much too small and there are not a lot of decent shopping options in Germantown, aside from a larger chain grocer and dollar stores. She’s excited for the potential increased membership that the Germantown store will usher in.

“It’s going to be a great footprint in the community.”

General Manager Jon Roesser says that getting the Germantown store up and running by 2024 is priority number one for the immediate future of Weavers Way, but surviving another 50 years will take more than a new storefront. “We’re gonna have to continue to really lean into the things that differentiate us from all the other grocery stores that are out there,” he says. “Being the ultimate local source for locally grown and produced food, and our cooperative business model as an alternative to the traditional, for-profit, capitalist model.”

Opposite page: Kristin Haskins-Simms spent her formative years working and shopping at Weavers Way Co-op. Left: Their first store hasn’t changed much over the years. Above: Weavers Way has seen eight mayors; Michael Nutter was number seven.

S P R O T A

T R A N T I O N

How do you get you and your stuff from Point A to Point B? It is a simple question to ask, but a devilishly complicated one to answer, especially as we try to coordinate millions of people using a variety of modes (feet, wheelchairs, bicycles, cars, even container ships), at wildly varying speeds and by way of systems built in layers over the course of centuries. ¶ Hence the second question: how do you get you and your stuff from Point A to Point B safely? Force equals mass times acceleration, so the more we seek to move faster and with the aid of bigger and more powerful machinery, the riskier it is for us as fragile passengers — as well as the other creatures in our paths, be they tiny toads or humpback whales. And of course it takes a lot of energy to propel heavy vehicles, resulting in pollution that poisons the air and water and warms the atmosphere. ¶ Last, how do you get from Point A to Point B pleasantly? Sustainable transportation is more appealing if it doesn’t expose you to the worst of human behavior, which is what you’ll see during a rush hour ride along a Philly bike lane or a trip on the El. But what if your commute was lovely? What if, even, the train station was also an orchard? ¶ These are the questions and problems we set out to explore in this transportation issue. We hope you find some answers.

OFF TRACK

Philly’s worst possible transportation disaster? A train derailment in Center City, experts say

story by kyle bagenstose • photography by rachael warriner

First came the heavy rains. Then came the derailed train.

On the morning of July 17, the Delaware Valley held its collective breath as reports came in that a freight train had derailed in Whitemarsh Township, a few miles from Philadelphia’s northwest border. The train carried rail cars containing hazardous materials and residents were evacuated from nearby homes as officials raced to assess the danger.

Fresh in mind was the high-profile train derailment and subsequent leakage of toxic substances from a train in East Palestine, Ohio, earlier this year. Although there have been conflicting scientific analyses of the

level of danger to the public, residents of the town widely reported symptoms including asthma, nausea and headaches they believe are tied to exposure.

Fortunately, the fallout in Whitemarsh was less catastrophic: officials said the only spilled material was plastic pellets. One derailed car was carrying tetrachloroethylene, a hazardous substance the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes can cause face, skin and respiratory system irritation and “may” cause liver damage and cancer. But that car stayed intact.

By afternoon, the precautionary evacuation was lifted and residents returned home. Officials with Norfolk Southern,

which owns the railway in Whitemarsh, said they initially suspect a sinkhole caused by a deluge the day before was to blame for the derailment. An official investigation is still pending, but the company will “learn” from it regardless, a spokesperson said.

The incident has since largely receded from local memory. But should it have?

A closer look at the railways that crisscross Philadelphia and interviews with rail industry and emergency response experts suggest not. According to David Nitsch, director of the Emergency and Disaster Management master’s program at Thomas Jefferson University, that’s because a significant freight train derailment in the heart of

commonly needed to respond to a variety of hazards, like the truck fire that shut down I-95 earlier this year, junkyard fires or train derailments. Trainings focus on conducting evacuations, responding to hazardous materials, rerouting traffic and other tasks.

Armed with training exercises, planning documents and partnerships with a slew of local, state and federal agencies, the City says it’s prepared.

“We’re unable to give a probability to a rail incident occurring in Philadelphia, same as we would not give a probability to a hurricane or terrorist attack occurring in the City,” Jeffrey Kolakowski, a spokesperson for Emergency Management, wrote in an email. “It could happen, and so we prepare for it; we maintain a constant vigilance to understand the risks in Philadelphia, the tactics to address those risks and the relationships necessary to manage those risks.”

The dangers of rail

Despite the City’s assurances that it’s prepared for a major train derailment, some don’t feel safe.

the city represents one of the worst possible disasters the city could face.

Whenever a public safety incident occurs, Nitsch says, the first priority is ensuring the safety of human life, then stabilizing the situation, then securing the environment. But when a safe evacuation would call for the movement of potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of people — many who may have physical mobility problems or don’t own a car — in an extremely short time period, the logistics become impossible.

“You take East Palestine and plunk it down at 30th Street Station — that is a doomsday, nightmare scenario,” Nitsch says. “The real simple answer is there’s no good way around that … I tip my hat to emergency managers.”

For their part, officials with the City of Philadelphia say its Office of Emergency Management has adopted an “all-hazards” approach to public safety incidents, now common across the profession. The governing philosophy is to build capabilities

Russell Zerbo, an advocate with the Philadelphia-based environmental nonprofit Clean Air Council, says that he recently attended an event at a park in Grays Ferry along the 25th Street corridor. An elevated freight line owned by the rail transport company CSX runs parallel over the busy roadway for more than a mile. Zerbo looked up at the line as a freight train rolled by.

“It said ‘hydrochloric acid’ on the side,” Zerbo says, naming a chemical that can vaporize and cause skin, eye and respiratory irritation, as well as burns and pulmonary edema, according to the CDC. “If the train derailed, it would land on a car … there’s no buffer … it’s literally on top of you.”

Adding to his concern, Zerbo says, is the fact that Philadelphia filed a formal complaint with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission in July 2022 over the condition of the viaduct above 25th Street. First constructed in 1914, the rail line was also subject to a 2005 complaint in which CSX was required to take several steps to repair the deteriorating structure. But the company failed to advance past the first stage, the City alleged in 2022, skipping inspections, forgoing repairs and allowing cracked and spalling concrete to fall and endanger passersby below.

“In this state of disrepair, the viaduct constitutes a danger to the health, safety

It’s just absurd that hydrochloric acid is allowed to go up and down an elevated railway bridge that is widely known to be insecure.”

RUSSELL

ZERBO, Clean Air Council

The 25th Street Viaduct has been the subject of controversy and concern for years. In 2022 the City filed a complaint against owner CSX alleging failure to inspect and repair the crumbling structure.

and welfare of residents,” the complaint stated, also claiming CSX officials told the City they did not plan on making additional repairs because the company, “did not want to incur the cost.”

CSX told local media at the time that it received a grant to facilitate repairs on the viaduct and that the structure had passed an inspection in 2021. In addition, Kolakowski says the City views the filing of the complaint as a “relatively isolated incident” for railways in the city.

But Paul Pokrowka, Pennsylvania state legislative director for the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, aka SMART, a union that represents rail workers across the country, says he believes the problem is indicative of a wider trend afoot on U.S. railways. Over the last 20 years, Pokrowka says, the industry has undergone a transformation by reducing its workforce, creating longer trains than ever and otherwise attempting to squeeze more profits out of its business model — to the detriment of safety for workers and the public.

“I’m not just coming from the perspective of jobs. It’s a public safety issue now, and I think the truth is it’s unraveling every day,” Pokrowka says.

Surveying the landscape of the country’s railways, one doesn’t have to look very hard to find signs of trouble. Last December, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that six of the seven largest U.S. freight railroads have implemented “precision-scheduled railroading,” a logistical practice designed to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

According to industry professionals interviewed by the GAO, the practice involves cutting staff, creating longer trains and reducing assets such as locomotives. Between 2011 and 2021, staffing among the seven largest railroads fell about 28%.

Pokrowka says this caused myriad impacts across rail operations, such as lower levels of track maintenance, car maintenance, operational training and ultimately, safety.

“They’ve shaved everything so hard in the name of profit that there’s nowhere else to go,” Pokrowka says. “And now the public is seeing the effects.”

Pokrowka’s view was echoed by many following the derailment in East Palestine.

An April report in The New York Times noted Norfolk Southern’s workforce had dropped 39% since 2012, a bigger decline than its peers, while its accident rate increased by 80% and its injury rate for employees also rose. The National Transportation Safety Board opened a special investigation into the company’s “safety practices and culture” earlier this year.

Still, the GAO report noted that Federal Railroad Administration officials said national safety data among all rail companies from 2011 to 2021 is “inconclusive about the extent to which operational changes” associated with precision-scheduled railroading “may have affected rail safety.”

Rail companies also claim they’ve turned a corner. Connor Spielmaker, senior communications manager for Norfolk Southern, says the company had fewer derailments in 2022 than any other year over the past decade.

“Since 2019, our total number of accidents

has dropped by 16%, and the number of accidents on the heaviest trafficked routes on our network has dropped by 25%,” Spielmaker says.

Joseph Palese, a civil engineer and scientist at the University of Delaware, who worked for railroads for 35 years, says he believes the industry unfairly gets a bad rap. Specifically, he says the rail companies have worked with regulators to implement new standards, such as safer, puncture-resistant hazmat cars and positive train control, a technology that automatically slows down trains to eliminate human error.

In general, he says companies maintain a safety-first mindset, often doing more than regulations require and accumulating a safety record better than other freight transportation methods like box truck transportation.

“Yes, [accidents] are unfortunate and can sometimes happen, but it’s a safe way to transport these goods,” Palese says.

Where Trains Roll Through Philadelphia

Where do trains run in Philly and what do they carry?

It’s essentially impossible for the public to assess exactly how much risk they face from freightlines moving through the area. That’s because the specific details of a train line and its regular cargo — from whence trains originate, where they’re heading and what they’re carrying — are not privy to the public.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation does provide a map of the rail lines, which shows two large Norfolk Southern lines passing through the region. Entering from the west, one loosely follows the path of the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Norristown, across Montgomery County, and into Bucks. The other follows the Schuylkill River into East Falls. From there, it connects with CSX lines: one cuts northeast across the city loosely following Route 1 and the other continues to follow the Schuylkill River, becoming the 25th Street viaduct before looping around South Philly.

Freight also moves across other lines that share traffic with SEPTA, meaning

hazardous cargo can move along numerous stretches of the city with the public generally unaware.

“You would be hard pressed to find a larger population that deals with this level of industry,” Zerbo says. “It’s just absurd that hydrochloric acid is allowed to go up and down an elevated railway bridge that is widely known to be insecure.”

Rail accident data housed by the Federal Railroad Administration show a bellshaped curve for incidents on Norfolk Southern Lines in Montgomery County over the past dozen years. There was just one incident in 2010, a peak of eight in 2014, and then a slow descent to two in 2021 and one in 2022. The nine deaths that have occurred since 2000 are all listed as having been trespassers.

The same is true of Philadelphia. Within the city, data show, accidents on the CSX lines peaked in 2015 with 13, and fell to four so far this year, although one employee was killed in 2013.

The Federal Railroad Administration says

the July accident in Whitemarsh is under investigation. Both Norfolk Southern and CSX, which owned the train that derailed, had to submit accident reports within 30 days, which are typically made available to the public after several months. The administration will then issue its own findings, usually within six months of the accident.

For those with ongoing concerns over rail safety, Kolakowski says city residents can sign up to receive ReadyPhiladelphia emergency alerts by texting “READYPHILA” to 888-777. He also suggests personalizing text or email alerts for locations and info important to them and becoming familiar with other emergency preparation tips by visiting Emergency Management’s website at phila gov/ready

Pokrowka, with the SMART union, also points toward Pennsylvania House Bill 1028. Introduced in the wake of the East Palestine derailment, the bill would limit train lengths to 8,500 feet and require at least two-person crews on the most significant class of railways. It would also create new rules for safety equipment and require the study of regulations regarding the transportation and reporting of shipments of hazardous waste.

The bill passed the House with a bipartisan 141-62 vote in June and is now in committee in the Republican-controlled State Senate. Pokrowka believes such legislation will always be a target of industry lobbying and is urging residents to call their politicians to offer support for passage, especially in the wake of the recent derailments.

“It’s not the first time we’ve been pushing this,” Pokrowka says, adding that groups have been advocating for a similar bill for about a decade. “It’s time for the Senate to get it on the governor’s desk.” ◆

Paul Pokrowka of the SMART union says industry-wide staffing cuts have impacted maintenance and training.

They’ve shaved everything so hard in the name of profit, that there’s nowhere else to go, and now the public is seeing the effects.”

PAUL POKROWKA, SMART union

COMMUNITY GREENING

West Mount Airy comes together to beautify a regional rail station

On a sunny afternoon in late spring, 27 sixth graders from Mount Airy’s Henry H. Houston Elementary School skipped and hooted their way to SEPTA’s Carpenter Train Station, as if already savoring the adventure of planting trees there.

“We identified flowers and pollinators along the way,” says Christine Bush, a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) specialist at the Henry Houston School, who led the children. At the station, Mount Airy Tree Tenders — members of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society program that works with volunteer

story by constance garcia-barrio

community groups to plant trees — showed the students how to gauge the right width and depth for a tree pit, drive in supporting stakes and mulch the trees.

“The children had so much fun, and even named the earthworms they found before they left,” Bush says. As an added bonus, Jo Winter, executive director of West Mount Airy Neighbors (WMAN) — a nonprofit civic group that seeks to advocate for the needs of West Mount Airy and to strengthen its social fabric — arranged for a Mister Softee ice cream truck to swing by and give each child a treat.

The tree planting was part of WMAN’s

Mount Airy EcoLab collaborative project, a plan to create a green space on oncevacant land at the back of the train station. Winter, who spearheads the project, hopes that the work can be replicated at other sites in Mount Airy. The project has drawn volunteers and community groups far out of proportion to its quarter-acre size, perhaps because of a decision to embrace all Mount Airy neighbors in shaping the plot’s use.

“The whole process is communitydriven,” Winter says. “Team members include forest stewards, arborists, landscape designers, Tree Tenders, gardeners, environmental groups and near-neighbors, with a range of expertise.” Thanks to the work of volunteers, the orchard has become an attractive outdoor gathering place. “The trees have fruited,” Winter says. “We’ve hung a big tree swing where kids play, put in raised beds, spread the wood chips throughout the site, and put in fencing.” Mount Airy neighbors donated funds for more fencing when the first batch was stolen.

Winter began the project after moving from Redondo Beach, California, to a home across from the Carpenter Train Station in 2018. “The area was overrun with invasive plants,” she says, adding that besides rocks and rusted metal items from the train yard, people sometimes dumped tires there. She began building relationships with the SEPTA station managers. “We started talking about turning the land into an area where people of all ages could co-create a green space.”

Winter’s conversations with the station managers paid off.

SEPTA now works with 21 garden clubs to spiff up its 150 train stations, according to Jeffrey Carpenter, manager of support services in SEPTA’s Building and Bridges

The whole process is community driven.”

JO WINTER, West Mount Airy Neighbors executive director

Jo Winter of West Mount Airy Neighbors hopes the collaborative greening project at the Carpenter Train Station will be replicated.

Department. “We only partner with the clubs that are really committed,” he says. “We cleared out overgrowth, dead and diseased trees and things people had dumped.”

Such partnerships help SEPTA and the communities it serves to thrive.

“It beautifies the site and gives us another pair of eyes on the station,” says Ed Wallace, head of support services in the Building and Bridges Department. “It’s a win-win situation.”

Winter also advanced the EcoLab through a technical-assistance grant from the National Park Service Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program (NPS-RTCA).

“Typically, we work in the early stages of a project,” says Tomas Deza, an outdoor recreation planner with NPS. “We help to formalize a coalition of organizations,” he says, noting that the program also assists in pinpointing gaps in community representation. “We ask what organizations aren’t at the table that should be at the table.” They also provide help with marketing and public engagement strategies. “We leave organizations with a plan to go forward.”

After SEPTA helped clear the site at Carpenter Station, Winter was eager to start with a strong foundation. She had the soil analyzed and found that it required minimal remediation, meaning it’s safe to grow food on the site. The team has already planted apples, figs, pears, serviceberries, chokecherries and mulberries, and plans to start a grove of filberts and paw-paws in the fall with students from C.W. Henry and Henry Houston schools, Dicker says. “We are interested in fruit-bearing trees both to attract wildlife and to allow community members to taste the fruits of their labor.”

The EcoLab recently received funds to build a tree nursery to raise trees that will be moved to other parts of Mount Airy “to add to our tree canopy and address tree equity,” says Winter. They’re also building high raised beds so that seniors can garden alongside younger neighbors.

The team is using wood chips from felled trees to stifle knotweed, an invasive plant, and add nutrients to the soil, Winter says. She also points out that children enjoy scrambling up the mini-hills of chips.

“I like playing around in the mulch,” says Peter, 5.

“I like how it’s very shady,” says Alice, 12, who helped to weed the area. “Some fun swings are being put up.”

Nurturing children’s needs and ecoawareness is crucial to the program. For example, Henry Houston sixth graders were chosen for the tree planting because they’ll tend the trees until they graduate in two years.

“Our project is designed to engage youth in our local public elementary schools, which serve many racial minority and low-income students,” Winter says. With that goal in mind, Mount Airy Tree Tenders and WMAN have begun a Jr. Tree Tenders mentorship program that will help “grow a new generation of ‘tree people’ in Mount Airy,” says Anne Dicker, leader of the Mount Airy Tree Tenders.

And WMAN envisions even more possibilities for young people in the coming years.

Programs for kids could include yoga, building primitive structures, foraging, intergenerational gardening and a badge program for kids for accomplishments like identifying species of birds or plants, Winter says.

Meanwhile, WMAN keeps ideas for the plot rolling in. At a recent street fair, WMAN invited people to jot down their vision for the space. Ideas include pollinator patches, a meditation labyrinth, beehives, bluebird houses and bat boxes, Winter says.

“We’ll do this exercise until we have a solid idea of what people want to see, then we’ll take that idea to our landscape architect,” says Deza of NPS.

WMAN hopes to cast a wider green web in Northwest Philly and inspire projects in other neighborhoods. There are about 40,000 vacant lots in Philadelphia, according to city data. Greening up even a fraction of them could mean more fresh food and improved mental health for Philadelphians, much research shows.

Meanwhile, STEM teacher Christine Bush plans to return to the train station’s EcoLab with her students this autumn.

“The kids had the time of their lives there,” Bush says. “When we left last time, they all wanted to be arborists.” ◆

To learn more about Mount Airy EcoLab, visit wman net/mt-airy-ecolab

We cleared out overgrowth, dead and diseased trees, and things people had dumped.”

JEFFREY CARPENTER, SEPTA

A diverse group of volunteers were instrumental in the cleaning and planting at the Carpenter Train Station.

GRID READERS RESPOND: WHAT ARE

THE WORST INTERSECTIONS IN PHILADELPHIA?

story by kiersten adams

How does the philadelphian cross the road? It isn’t always easy or safe. Dangerous intersections mean bikers, pedestrians and people with disabilities risk life and limb to simply get where they’re going. The risks they take are apparent in death and injury statistics — 49 pedestrians and cyclists were killed in 2021, acccording to the most recent Vision Zero report — as well as the daily experiences of Philadelphians. We asked Grid readers which intersections in Philadelphia they thought were the worst and then asked an expert, the Bicycle Coalition’s Nicole Brunet, for her ideas for how to improve them.

01. Penrose Avenue/ 20th Street/Moyamensing Road/Packer Avenue/I-76 ●

SUBMITTED BY: Adrian Lowman

LOCATION: South Philadelphia

PRIMARY TRANSPORTATION MODE: Bike

THE PROBLEM: “It’s kind of like a pinch point for anyone not driving because 76 cuts you off to go through the smaller streets. So you have to go that way, and it’s just super fast. All those

roads converging makes it a pain to use.” THE SOLUTION: “Because of the number of lanes going through this intersection, a roundabout, currently being designed by the Streets Department, will greatly increase safety for all users. Roundabouts help keep traffic moving while also slowing drivers and reducing the number of potential conflicts. It’s not a perfect pedestrian or cyclist solution because a roundabout works best without traffic signals, but it helps increase the visibility of pedestrians and cyclists by reducing crossing distances and slowing drivers.”

02.

North Sixth Street/ I-676 Offramp

SUBMITTED BY: C.W. Gillespie

LOCATION: Center City

PRIMARY TRANSPORTATION MODE: Walk/Bike

THE PROBLEM: “If you’re going down North Sixth Street, you end up walking several blocks before you realize you’ve been trapped in an area where there’s no way [to go] except back to get south of the bridge. I don’t know why they haven’t realized that this is a problem, but there’s no sidewalk on one side of the street,

and on the other side of the street there’s no crosswalk.” THE SOLUTION: “The most simple solution to the conflict zones created by Vine Street and 676 would be to remove the sidewalk between the 676 off-ramp (northeast corner of Franklin Square) and have all pedestrians walk on the east side sidewalk until Callowhill Street. A long term solution may be to remove the Vine Street local loop altogether to eliminate the slip lane [a lane that lets motorists go from one street to another without stopping], which would improve the pedestrian and bicycle facilities.”

Benjamin Baker does his best to get across Vine Street safely.

03. 22nd Street & Winter Street

SUBMITTED BY: Inga Saffron

LOCATION: Logan Square

MODE OF TRANSPORTATION: Bicycle

THE PROBLEM: “When I’m heading south from the Parkway, I usually turn onto 21st Street, then make a right on Winter Street with the aim of continuing west to 23rd Street and the entrance to the Schuylkill River Trail. Even though there’s a westbound lane on Winter Street and a crosswalk, the light there doesn’t

allow you to continue naturally across 22nd. That’s because they built a highway offramp there and eliminated a piece of Winter Street. Basically you have to do a little jog to get to Summer Street, and then 23rd.” THE SOLUTION: “An easy way to make this intersection safer would be to move the stop bar [white line on the pavement telling cars where to stop] back at 22nd Street and add a bike lane through the intersection to Summer Street so bicyclists could more easily navigate to 23rd and avoid the 676 off-ramp on Winter Street.”

04. 11th or 12th Street/ Vine Street

SUBMITTED BY: Benjamin Baker ● LOCATION: Eraserhood (Callowhill neighborhood)

PRIMARY TRANSPORTATION MODE: Manual wheelchair/car

THE PROBLEM: “The vast majority of the time that I cross Vine Street — regardless of what block it is east of Broad Street — I’m taking the street rather than sidewalk because the sidewalk is not really safe for me to get up and down the curb cutout. My suspicion is that the city is [wary] about spending the money to review the curb cutouts on any of those intersections because not a single one of them has been redone in the 13 years that I’ve lived here.” THE SOLUTION: “This intersection is part of the Chinatown Stitch, [the City’s proposed project] in which I-676 would be capped. There are three options currently on the table. In the third option, Vine Street’s local traffic would run onto the cap, which will reduce traffic speeds and allow for a short cross-distance compared to the existing layout.”

transportation 2023

05.

Fairmount Avenue/Kelly Drive

SUBMITTED BY: Natasha Tabachnikoff

LOCATION: Fairmount

PRIMARY TRANSPORTATION MODE: Walk

THE PROBLEM: “There is so much through traffic there. Anytime I go to the trail, it’s just me and a bunch of other people waiting three minutes to cross. The signals are not placed in a way that I think people see the red lights because drivers just drive on through — it’s not the safest.” THE SOLUTION: See 06.

06.

Pennsylvania Avenue/ Fairmount Avenue

SUBMITTED BY: Kristen Suzda

LOCATION: Fairmount

PRIMARY TRANSPORTATION MODE: Bike

THE PROBLEM: “The lanes are painted to discourage drivers from treating it as a two lane road. However, drivers treat it as a two lane road, which means that they come over and drive in the bike lane — because paint is not actually protection. It’s frustrating that there’s no actual physical separation.” THE SOLUTION: “For both of these [Fairmount Ave./Pennsylvania Ave. and Fairmount Ave./Kelly Dr.] there are a lot of different solutions that include eliminating lanes [and] creating one way roads. The city is trying to make the oval better for pedestrians and cyclists right now. There are currently a couple of different options on the table [for re-designing the Benjamin Franklin Parkway].”

07.

34th Street & Grays Ferry Avenue

SUBMITTED BY: Nicole Brunet

LOCATION: Grays Ferry

PRIMARY TRANSPORTATION MODE: Bike/ walk/public transit

THE PROBLEM: “I think that’s an especially terrible one, partly because there is a bike lane that runs through it and you have a slip lane. And I don’t even know how many lanes 34th Street has, but it is an incredibly dangerous intersection.” THE SOLUTION: “There are plans to add a protected bike lane on Grays Ferry Avenue from Washington Avenue to 34th Street. It’s these areas that have a lot of bike traffic coming through from West Philly and Center City and desperately need protection. To make this intersection safer, engineers should start by removing the slip lanes in the northwest, northeast, and southeast corners of the intersection; this will reduce the crosswalk distance

and also force all drivers to stop at the light. Slip lanes are very dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists because drivers move unpredictably through an intersection. By eliminating the slip lanes, you could also remove the furthest turn lane, further shrinking the crossing distance. That space can also be used to further protect bicyclists from turning vehicles. Adding bike signals and priority crossing for pedestrians will help provide more visibility for the vulnerable road users as well.”

08.

West Ford Road/Belmont Avenue/Sherwood Road

SUBMITTED BY: Dominique Howell

LOCATION: Wynnfield

MODE OF TRANSPORTATION: Wheelchair

THE PROBLEM: “There is no walkway, so even though it’s green to go, the buses start turning even though pedestrians, like myself (even though I don’t walk) are going. So that is a dangerous intersection for folks with disabilities.” THE SOLUTION: “In order to make this intersection safer, we recommend adding hardened center lines and extending the corners to reduce the crossing distance in order to make the pedestrians more visible and reduce the speed of turning vehicles.”

09.

South Swanson Street/ Snyder Avenue

SUBMITTED BY: Lauren Bessler

LOCATION: South Philadelphia

MODE OF TRANSPORTATION: All

THE PROBLEM: “It’s terrible for every single mode of transportation, and Philadelphians being extremely self-centered drivers makes it legitimately dangerous at times.” THE SOLUTION: “To improve this intersection, the city should pave over the existing railroad tracks, remove the street parking on this section of Snyder (between Delaware Avenue and Front Street) and add one-way protected bike lanes on each side of the street. Removing parking and adding protected bike lanes will help to slow down traffic because the road will appear less wide and provide safe spaces for both pedestrians, bicyclists and bus riders.”

10.

South 47th Street/ ● Paschall Avenue

SUBMITTED BY: Alex Kopp

LOCATION: Southwest Philadelphia

PRIMARY TRANSPORTATION MODE: Walk/Bike

THE PROBLEM: “Cars are going insanely fast while people are waiting at an unprotected stop. There’s constantly broken glass everywhere because there [are] accidents all the time because people are coming off from a highway onto a small residential street. So it’s not designed at all for the traffic that’s happening there.” THE SOLUTION: “There are a lot of diagonal streets throughout the city and they create slip lanes for cars to speed through neighborhoods. To make this intersection safer, the city should eliminate the travel lane on 47th between Grays Ferry Avenue and Paschall Avenue. This would force drivers to turn right at Grays Ferry and Paschall Avenue then turn left onto 47th Street and help to slow drivers. It would also make a more predictable intersection for pedestrians and bicyclists.”

Cars are going insanely fast while people are waiting at an unprotected stop. There's constantly broken glass everywhere…”

ALEX KOPP, cyclist and pedestrian

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE

MOTORIZED

story by kyle bagenstose • photography by chris baker evens

Last fall, I was cruising down a street in Mount Airy on my new electric bike, joyfully accelerating into the wind and relishing in emission-free transportation, when suddenly it hit me.

The pavement, that is.

An SUV facing the wrong way on the two-lane road jumped out from a line of parked cars in front of me, apparently without looking. I applied the brakes, but the distance wasn’t adequate. In a split second, I made the decision to crumple to the street rather than slam into the moving vehicle.

Fortunately for me, the vehicle stopped before it struck me and I escaped without serious injury. It was lucky for the driver, too, who got out of the vehicle, took one look at the jumbled mess of human and bicycle in front of her, and exclaimed, “Oh Lord, I don’t need this!”

Yeah, who does?

In the year-plus since I began e-biking, I’ve quickly come to appreciate both its benefits and challenges.

On one hand, e-bikes convert more ‘nah, I’d rather just drive’ decisions into ‘yeah, I can do that on my e-bike.’ Depending on a few variables, they get the cost equivalency of thousands of miles per gallon compared to a gas-powered car. Thus, they’re a great tool for combating greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector, the largest emitter in the United States.

On the other hand, e-bikes are a “monstrosity,” as an article in The Atlantic bluntly put it last year. And it’s true, at least in the

Electric bikes can help fight climate change and solve social inequities.They also pose serious hazards. Where do they fit on the streets of Philadelphia?

Frankenstein sense: the combination of oldschool frame and superhuman speed and power leaves them not quite bicycle and not quite automotive. Safety statistics are hard to come by, but the available evidence seems to point toward danger. One Dutch study found e-bike riders are 1.6 times more likely to end up in an emergency room than those on regular bikes. Suffice to say that taking an activity like bicycling, unfortunately already perilous, and increasing the speed is going to create problems.

So the question is: are e-bikes a net good or bad? Chris Puchalsky, director of policy and strategic initiatives in Philadelphia’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability, thinks that’s ultimately up to … well, everyone.

“But I think good or bad depends a lot on how we implement them,” Puchalsky said.

“And by we, I mean society as a whole, and not just the city.”

Several years after e-bikes burst onto the transportation scene during the pandemic, Puchalsky’s nuanced point of view appears prevalent. Through interviews with bicycling advocates, transportation planners and industry experts, one can begin to see the blurry outlines of a path to take the technology from problem child to a mature adult.

The “pro” column

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, nearly 60% of all vehicle trips in the U.S. traverse six miles or less. Considering e-bikes typically have ranges of 20-40 miles per charge, that statistic is encouraging for those looking to decrease the number of cars on the road.

Sure, there’s a certain breed of traditional

cyclist that’ll gladly do six miles on a regular bike — both ways, rain or shine — and think nothing of it. A Portland State University study found only about 7% of Americans fit into that die-hard category. Another 5% say they’ll usually bike given existing transportation infrastructure. Another 37% say they’ll never bike on the road, no way no how.

Then there’s the silent, non-biking majority: more than 51% of people are “interested but concerned.” Among the reasons listed for not biking were requiring a car for work or school, having to travel too far, too few bike lanes and trails, and traffic.

“They’re willing to bike, but they don’t feel comfortable,” Puchalsky observes.

Those problems speak to me, and my e-bike solves several of them. Multiple times a week, I try to get to a gym located two miles away and a part-time job that’s about three-and-half miles. Given the hilly terrain of Northwest Philly, busyness of the roads, and especially the summer heat, I often think twice about a commute on my regular old three-speed. But the power of my e-bike, which tops out at 20 mph and conquers hills with ease, makes it very doable and even joyful.

William Telegadis, founder of Whitemarsh Revolutionary Cycles, a small e-bike business in Montgomery County, says this feeling of freedom and mobility is a major selling point. While several years ago most of his customers were niche recreationalists, these days most conversations with would-be buyers revolve around their commute.

“It’s that customer that comes in with a very specific range that they have to go and the terrain they have to ride to get to work, and then we back into the mileage on the battery and the budget they can afford,” Telegadis says. “A lot more bikes are augmenting or replacing a car.”

Puchalsky thinks e-bikes used for such purposes fit directly into Philadelphia’s long-term transportation and sustainability goals — which seems essential, as e-bike use is on the rise. According to industry groups, e-bike sales reached 900,000 in 2021, double the year prior, and sales revenue grew another 33% the following year.

“We see trends that more people use them and they take longer trips with e-bikes than they would otherwise,” Puchalsky says. “Even if only some of them displace driving, there’s going to be a net positive impact.”

E-bikes also present major equity bene-

Those who just want more people to be on bikes are very excited.”

NICOLE BRUNET,

Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia

The author has firsthand experience with e-bikes. It hasn’t been an entirely smooth ride.

fits. Indego, the bike sharing program that stations bicycles throughout the city, began adding e-bikes to its fleet in 2018 and now operates about 1,000, Puchalsky says. The e-bikes dovetail with a separate Indego effort to provide more stations in predominantly Black and Brown and lower income neighborhoods.

The results look good. A 2022 study from Rutgers University showed that “e-bikes increase the overall usage of Indego,” and concluded that “ integration of e-bikes was successful in promoting bike sharing usage in disadvantaged areas,” including for commuting and daily errands.

Shawn Megill Legendre, manager of the Regional Trails Program at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), says he believes e-bikes can provide a similar range of benefits across a planned network of 800 miles of trails in the city and its suburbs.

“When we look at e-bikes, we do believe they help,” Megill Legendre said. “Addressing the climate crisis, expanding accessibility and being another way people can get around.”

The “no” column

In late July, The New York Times served up the latest in a series of troubling media reports on the dangers of e-bikes, reporting that the California beach town of Encinitas declared a public emergency after two teenagers riding e-bikes collided with cars in separate incidents just days apart. One, a 15-year-old on his way to shot-putting practice, died.

Even as he’s making his living selling

alities. He speaks openly about the darker side of the industry, where online influencers hide the dangers of e-bikes during their reviews and fly-by-night companies ship questionable products, including chargers and batteries that can present major safety hazards, especially if the battery and its lithium-ion cells are damaged.

“The second that all the cells are full, the ones that are damaged are overflowing with current and they’ll basically burst,” Telegadis said. “They go to plug the charger in at night and it becomes a bomb.”

As The New York Times reported, malfunctioning e-bike batteries have caused more than 100 fires this year.

Telegadis also points out that there is a dramatic difference between a Class I e-bike with no throttle and a top speed of 15-20 mph and a souped-up one with a 750-watt motor and a built-in speed limiter that can be neutered with the clip of a wire, allowing a teenager to hurtle down the street at highway speeds.

Making matters worse, many products today follow a direct-to-consumer model, with questionable companies popping up and selling sleek-looking but cheaply built models, then disappearing when problems arise.

“The bike gets bought and gets home, and the person takes it to Valley Forge for the first time and everything breaks,” Telegadis said.

These problems lend a Wild West feeling to e-bikes, which further compounds the problems. Issues of liability (who could get sued in the event of an accident) and insurance (whether or not auto policies will cover accidents) are still open questions. When I

sue on my e-bike — brake pads and a new tire — the local bike shop where I take my regular three-speed turned me away due to fear of liability. I told them it had nothing to do with the battery or motor, but they still said no: We just won’t touch them.

There are also cultural challenges, which may be thorniest of all. Anyone who’s cycled down a Philadelphia roadway knows motorists often don’t play nice with cyclists. But riders of e-bikes can get grief from both ends. Even still, Nicole Brunet, policy director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, thinks that’s changing for the better, at least in the bicycling community.

“It’s mixed. There’s definitely a community of recreational cyclists that are never going to get an e-bike,” Brunet said. “But those who just want more people to be on bikes are very excited.”

A better way

Is this frustrating clash of high potential and serious danger doomed to be the e-bike status quo forever? Or can the mode of transportation be better integrated into our systems?

Optimistic advocates point upstream. State and federal lawmakers, they say, can act to get a better hold on the industry, regulating products and business models for both safety purposes and to create uniformity for local and county officials.

Puchalsky would like to see Class I and Class II e-bikes get preferential treatment over Class III. The lower two classes provide many of the mobility benefits without reaching speeds that make them something

chalsky says. And it appears Pennsylvania lawmakers agree; in 2014, they passed a law that — via a 20 mph capable speed limit — effectively makes Class III bikes illegal on Pennsylvania roadways.

Brunet agrees there’s a need for regulation, but notes the Coalition believes the state’s laws are outdated and advocates for a 15-mph limit on state trails.

At the federal level, Telegadis believes requiring bikes to integrate technology that automatically cuts off motor power when the brakes are engaged and quality certifications for chargers and batteries will go a long way toward making e-bikes safer.

But advocates also agree local governments have a huge role to play. And the gold standard more or less remains what it is for regular bicycles: protected bike lanes. That way, no matter what lawmakers do or don’t do, riders can have added security.

Megill Legendre with the DVRPC says the Circuit Trail initiative currently offers 381 miles of bike trails around the region

and prioritizes protected trails wide enough to accommodate e-bikes, regular bikes and pedestrians alike. The commission is also planning a workshop this fall, inviting local officials from around the region to learn more about “micromobility” devices such as e-bikes and scooters.

In Philly, Puchalsky says the goal is creating 40 or more miles of barrier protected bike lanes by 2025, and that the City is well on its way to finding funding to make that a reality.

Brunet agrees that’s a noble objective, but says the program is bottlenecked by the budget for road paving, which typically co-occurs with the installation of bike lanes. Finding more political support to increase the budget, along with policy solutions like

enforcing laws against double parking and automated speed enforcement, could help traditional cyclists and e-bike riders alike.

Brunet holds out hope that a broader cultural change is possible. She points out that under the law, bicycles technically have the same rights as motor vehicles on most streets, regardless of the speed they’re traveling. Getting people everywhere to lower the perceived status of car as king of the road remains the ultimate goal.

“I do think we’re seeing a trend of more and more people using active transportation as their chosen way of getting around the city,” Brunet says. “If we expand protected spaces … [Philadelphia] is set up for the car being the lowest chosen way of getting around. I think we can do it.” ◆

A lot more bikes are augmenting or replacing a car.”

WILLIAM TELEGADIS, owner of Whitemarsh Revolutionary

Cycles

They often look like regular bikes, but they have motors. Where do e-bikes fit into the transportation landscape?

GREATER THAN ZERO

Are Philadelphia’s efforts to eliminate traffic deaths stalling out?

story by ben seal • photography by chris baker evens

Samara banks was the life of the party. Everyone waited for her to arrive at family gatherings, knowing that she would be the one to rally her cousins and entertain the crowd with a song or dance.

“She was always happy and hopeful,” Latanya Byrd says. “She loved children and people loved her naturally. And that’s not just because she was my niece — she was the one who brought the joy.”

It’s been a decade since Banks and three of her sons were killed while crossing the 12lane Roosevelt Boulevard in North Philadelphia. They were hit by a drag-racing driver going 79 mph behind the wheel of an Audi. Banks was 27; her sons Saa’mir, Saa’sean and Saa’deem were all 4 or younger.

In the aftermath of the accident on Philadelphia’s most dangerous road, Byrd became a traffic safety advocate, working to prevent future tragedies like the one that tore a hole in two generations of her family. She’s pushing for change at the city, state and federal levels; she fought for the bill that allowed Philadelphia to install automated speed enforcement cameras along the boulevard, which Mayor Jim Kenney signed into law in 2019. The cameras and concomitant fines, which began operating in 2020, reduced speeding by 92% in their first 18 months. In the two years since speed cameras were installed, fatal crashes on the boulevard have decreased 44% compared with the prior two-year period, falling from 25 to 14, according to city data. Speeding-related crashes also declined 22%.

In 2016, Philadelphia signed onto Vision Zero, joining a network of cities around the country seeking to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries. Mayor Kenney laid out a three-year action plan that set the stage

for a series of projects that have sought to address speeding, improved intersections, calmed traffic around schools and expanded the city’s network of bike lanes.

But in the seven years since the city declared its goal to eliminate traffic deaths by 2030, the trend in traffic safety has mostly been moving in the other direction. Philadelphia experienced 76 traffic deaths in 2017 and has seen more than 120 in each of the past three years; serious injuries have risen nearly 80% in that time. Despite the city’s efforts, the accidents — and deaths — keep piling up. By August this year, eight cyclists had been killed in the city, matching the previous annual record set in 2021. The Vision Zero name increasingly seems like a cruel joke.

“I am angry every day,” Byrd says. “When I hear the news my stomach gets in knots. You feel good for the wins, but no matter what we do there are still people dying.”

The city has been “ambitiously and ferociously applying for federal grants” to redesign high-injury corridors — the 12% of city streets where 80% of traffic deaths occur — and finding plenty of success in doing so, according to Nicole Brunet, policy director for the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. But for all of the bright ideas that undergird Vision Zero’s grandiose goals, they feel even further away than when they were first pronounced. With a new mayoral administration incoming — likely Cherelle Parker, who has shared little about her approach to traffic safety — advocates worry that the chance for progress may be slipping away.

“The biggest thing holding us back is that

safety infrastructure is still not given the budget and the personnel to be serious about getting us to zero fatalities,” Brunet says.

Limited Budget, Limited Results

As with so many potential solutions to Philadelphia’s woes, consistent funding is a key challenge for Vision Zero. The city secured $23 million in total capital funding for Vision Zero projects in fiscal year 2023, including both federal funds and state funds for automated speed and red light enforcement. That represents nearly as much funding as Vision Zero had in the previous two years combined. But even with growth in dedicated funding and an influx of federal grants, the City faces an uphill battle in trying to eliminate more than 100 traffic deaths each year.

“We’re always going to be priority setting in a limited budget world,” says Kelley Yemen, the City’s director of Complete Streets. The changes on Roosevelt Boulevard demonstrate the value of funneling capital investments toward the city’s most dangerous streets, Yemen says. A state report on the automated speed enforcement program found a 36% decrease in total crashes on the boulevard after the program began, along with a 17% drop in speeding-related crashes and an 11% decline in total crashes with fatalities or serious injuries. The program also underscores the potential for automation to help the city’s effort to reduce risk on the roads.

“That program and the vast improvements really just prove the consistency of an improvement is important,” Yemen says. “Spot enforcement is only

I am angry every day.”

LATANYA BYRD, traffic safety advocate

Latanya Byrd advocates for safer streets in the wake of the loss of her niece and three grand-nephews.

going to bear fruit when you’ve got somebody there. The beauty of camera and automated enforcement is that it’s on 24/7. You know that if you’re 11 [mph] over, it’s going to get triggered.”

In an era when policing has become a hot-button political issue, automation offers Philadelphia an avenue to improve enforcement without expanding its police presence. Enforcement, in general, has never been the priority for Vision Zero, Yemen says, particularly police enforcement. It’s “part of the toolbox,” she says, “but it’s not the first step.”

But automation also opens the door to changes in police practices that might contribute to Vision Zero’s goals. Following a recent hit-and-run that killed a pedestrian in Port Richmond, District Attorney Larry Krasner said he wants to crack down on drag racers and other reckless drivers with the use of “modern enforcement techniques.”

Philadelphia officials have spoken with their counterparts in other cities about ways to harness technology to improve traffic safety, Yemen says. Washington, D.C., for example, recently introduced automated enforcement at stop signs, and Philadelphia has had conversations about automated enforcement of parking or moving violations to make transit lanes safer. The Bicycle Coalition supports assisted bus lane enforcement, which was piloted this spring and could be up for a hearing in City Council this fall, Brunet says. The Department of Streets is also working with the Philadelphia Parking Authority to expand the use of red light cameras at locations where crashes are commonly caused by cars running lights, Yemen says.

The law allowing speed cameras on Roosevelt Boulevard is set to expire later this year, but City officials are pushing to make it permanent and expand it to other areas of the high-injury corridor. Yemen says the

city is conducting analysis on roads including Cobbs Creek Parkway, Henry Avenue, Lincoln Drive and Kelly Drive — areas “where we’ve got continuous speeding and a large crash problem.”

Small-Scale Safety

As the City seeks to address the streets that pose the greatest threat to safety, it’s also trying to bring change down to the neighborhood level. With the Neighborhood Slow Zone Program, community members can apply to make an entire zone of residential streets safer. Residents lead discussions on improvements, including speed limits of 20 mph, speed cushions, raised crosswalks and other measures.

The program offers the potential for meaningful change, but as with other traffic safety projects, resources are limited. The city received 28 applications from neighborhoods in 2019 and selected two — one around Willard Elementary School in Kensington and one in the nearby Fairhill neighborhood. Those Slow Zones were completed in 2021 and last year they saw no serious injuries or fatal crashes. Overall, crashes fell 75% from the three-year average before the Slow Zones were installed. The City received 33 applications in its second round and just began the community design process for Slow Zones in West Passyunk and 10th Memorial Way, which borders Girard College.

Listening to community concerns — and responding accordingly with infrastructure improvements — is an important step for the City in the effort to build safer streets, Brunet says.

“Our society has a terrible history of coming in and choosing how neighborhoods look without talking with the communities that live there,” she says.

The challenge facing Vision Zero, though, is that residents in so many neighborhoods across the city want their streets to be safer.

At the current pace, it would take decades to address just those who have already applied for help.

The annual paving process offers an opportunity for less-comprehensive updates to the city’s residential streets that could allow for the kinds of small-scale change that leads to meaningful results, but the City has a woeful history of paving progress.

In the Bicycle Coalition’s 2023 Better Mobility Platform, Brunet urged Philadelphia to separate its transportation initiatives from sanitation, both of which are currently housed in the Department of Streets. Doing so, she argues, would allow the city to address its overwhelming paving backlog. To meet national standards, the city should be paving a minimum of 131 miles of streets each year, out of its 2,180-mile network. The last time it hit that target was 2002, and for most of the last decade the annual total has fallen below 50. That shortfall is a direct challenge to Vision Zero’s effort to keep streets safe.

“We can’t maintain the roads at the rate they need to be maintained,” Brunet says, “therefore we can’t upgrade the roads that desperately need to be upgraded.”

Even if annual improvements fall short of expectations, the City’s paving schedule needs to be more transparent to give communities a window to push for change in their own neighborhoods, according to Jonas Maciunas, a West Philly-based urban designer and the former Complete Streets coordinator for Hartford, Connecticut. Residents are too often told when they propose safer street designs — adding daylighting at intersections or speed cushions to slow drivers, for example — that it’s too early to consider changes, only to realize once their street is being paved that it’s suddenly too late, he says.

“Every single paving and curb cut project is an opportunity to change the status quo,” Maciunas says. “There are too many times where we dig up the sidewalks, dig up the corners, pave the new street — and operationally nothing changes. We’re not rich enough to make decisions like that.”

Residents are vocal about the changes they want to see in their communities, but too often, requests to the City seem futile. The City has a backlog of more than 500 requests for speed cushions, Brunet says.

“Our City can do a better job of telling people how long it takes to get a stop sign, speed cushion or line striping, and communicate that with people,” Brunet says.

It shouldn’t be up to us to go out and re-engineer the road under the cover of night in order to make things safer.”

DAVID BRINDLEY, West Philadelphia resident

Communities Take Control

In 2015, just before Vision Zero got off the ground, West Philadelphia resident Dave Brindley gathered up stray traffic cones to create a makeshift protected bike lane on the 3700 block of Spruce Street, where pedestrians, cyclists and a steady line of vehicles come together in a dangerous dance. Years later, Spruce Street was repaved and flexible delineators were installed to help address the problem, but they only covered a portion of the street. His cones remain on the unprotected portion of the street, a vestige of what’s become known as tactical, or guerilla, urbanism — citizen-led efforts to alter streetscapes without government permission or support.

Too often, Brindley says, safety improvements aren’t adequately considered on highspeed roads that exist outside of Vision Zero’s focus on high-injury corridors. He considers it “a break of the social contract.”

“We expect our City officials to do what is in their power in order to keep us safe,” Brindley says. “It shouldn’t be up to us to organize petitions. It shouldn’t be up to us to go out and re-engineer the road under the cover of night in order to make things safer.”

In lieu of City action, some Philadelphians have bought speed cushions to place in their neighborhoods or painted their own surface treatments directly onto streets. Yemen says the city “appreciates that passion” and wants to work with neighbors on improvements, but “we don’t want traffic control devices just to appear that aren’t designed for the roadway.” She points to the City’s plaza design program, which encourages the conversion of underutilized portions of streets into public spaces as a way for local communities to take control of their own infrastructure improvements.

On 48th Street in West Philadelphia, neighbors found a creative way to demonstrate the benefit of changes they wanted the city to make on a street where accidents and injuries are far too common. The street’s 44foot width makes it 10 feet wider than parallel streets, giving drivers the space to increase their speed and promoting reckless behavior. Last year, neighbors gathered more than 500 signatures and urged Councilmember Jamie Gauthier to ensure the street would be repaved with a “holistic plan” for traffic calming and safety improvements. They argued for a two-way bike lane protected by a line of

parked cars that would address several safety issues at the same time.

When the City milled the street earlier this summer — foreshadowing a repaving that might return it to the status quo — neighbors organized what Maciunas calls a “real-life simulation” of the world they envisioned. Cars were moved away from the curb, creating a path for two lanes of cyclists who hopped on their bikes and showed that something better is possible.

“It existed for 15 minutes, but it was a great 15 minutes,” Maciunas says. “It was a glimpse of a future we could have.”

As of August, 48th Street had been repaved but remained unstriped, leaving open the possibility that the traffic simulation could be made real. For however long that window stays open, neighbors can hope for a permanent step toward safety.

A Long Way to Go

In North Philadelphia, the progress on Roosevelt Boulevard has helped Latanya Byrd feel that Banks and her sons didn’t die in vain. The data showing an enormous reduction in speeding once automated enforcement began was “unbelievable,” she says.

“That’s what we wanted. We wanted to get a message out to let people know, you’re endangering the lives of other people,” Byrd says.

For years after the accident, she avoided traveling on the boulevard. Now that she trusts most people are sticking to the speed limit, she’s more comfortable returning.

Notably, pedestrian fatalities on the boulevard fell from 11 in 2018 to just four in the past two years, according to City data.

Byrd is fighting to ensure the enforcement mechanisms that created that change are made permanent — and that they spread to other sections of the city. She’s also advocating for a law that would aim to help catch hit-and-run drivers by alerting auto repair shops of wanted vehicles, in honor of 8-year-old Jayanna Powell, who was killed in West Philadelphia in 2016.

Byrd gets excited when she sees new funding fall into place for the City to implement additional traffic safety measures. Still, she recognizes there is a long way to go to reach Vision Zero’s goals, and no time to waste.

“It’s moving forward, but it’s so slow,” Byrd says. “The way things go in the world today, everything is political and it shouldn’t be. Let’s just think about the people’s lives we need to save.” ◆

DIESEL DANGER

Truck traffic pollutes Philadelphia’s most vulnerable neighborhoods

Carol foy, a lifelong Grays Ferry resident and community advocate, knows how dangerous air pollution can be.

“I lost a son over a decade ago who had lung problems,” she says. “He was only 33 years old.” After moving out of Grays Ferry, her son moved by the oil refinery in South Philadelphia. He lived near the highway, so the pollution coming from the trucks was constant, says Foy.

According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology, a whopping 21% of children in the city have asthma — more than double the national average. This primarily

story by ashley lauren walker • photography by chris baker evens

affects Non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic children, who have asthma-related hospitalization rates roughly 5 times higher than that of non-Hispanic white children in Philadelphia. These hospital visits, which have also been linked to lower academic performance, have the highest concentrations in the northern, southern and southwestern sections of the city.

“When you combine [high asthma rates] with poor housing and poor indoor air quality in schools, it’s a lot,” says Russell Zerbo, advocate at the Clean Air Council.

As commercial hubs and public warehouses become more common, particu-

larly in South Philadelphia, more trucks are spewing diesel exhaust around the homes of many predominately Black residents. The planned 1,300-acre Bellwether District, a commercial hub developed by Hilco Redevelopment Partners, promises to be “Philly’s new home for e-commerce, life sciences and logistics leaders” and to “connect the world’s seas, skies, rails and roads to the people and businesses of Philadelphia,” according to the project’s website The current site will be transformed into a commercial hub for dozens of companies with over 2,400 loading docks.

The influx of diesel trucks could worsen the health of nearby residents. According to the EPA, exposure to these fumes can be detrimental to residents’ health by causing asthma, bronchitis and respiratory illnesses that can worsen existing heart and lung disease, especially in children and the elderly.

The Bellwether site was previously home to the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) refining complex, then the largest stationary source of air pollution in the city and the site of a massive explosion in 2019.

“We are focused on transforming the former PES site, together with our partners, into a sustainable development and an economic engine for all of Philadelphia,” Hilco spokesperson Amelia Chassé Alcivar commented by email.

However, community members are wary of Hilco’s claims to prioritize sustainability and public health. Foy is among the residents who opposed their proposed project, along with other members of Philly Thrive, who have been organizing for environmental, racial and economic justice in the city since 2015.

“[Their] plan compounds and extends the environmental racism that residents have suffered for generations; residents who live near the refinery and already suffer from respiratory diseases are likely to be particularly harmed by increased pollution from diesel trucks,” says Philly Thrive organizer R Merriam-Goldring. “The science is incredibly clear: inhaling diesel exhaust causes cancer.”

Earlier this year, the American Lung Association released its annual “State of the Air” report, which grades Americans’ exposure to unhealthy levels of air pollution. The report evaluates daily and annual measures of particle pollution and daily

measures of ozone, two of the most dangerous and widespread pollutants.

Philadelphia managed to snag a ranking of 28th overall — barely avoiding inclusion in the list of the country’s top 25 worst cities for ozone pollution. The area’s national rank also slightly improved to 55th worst city for short-term particle pollution, from 48th in last year’s report.

“It’s a serious regional issue with neighborhoods by the interstates being the most impacted,” says Zerbo.

Community advocates think Hilco developers can do more to reduce air pollution at Bellwether. In August, area residents drafted a community benefits agreement including suggestions to combat diesel exhaust, like employing a zero-emissions truck fleet to service the Bellwether District. But Hilco wouldn’t commit to requiring prospective tenants to use electric trucks, says MerriamGoldring. “It’s absolutely feasible to have fossil fuel-free warehousing — we’ve shared several models of success stories across the country with Hilco.”

Chassé Alcivar told Grid that the development will provide “flexibility for next-generation environmental solutions such as electric vehicle infrastructure,” but did not commit to requiring electric vehicles. She noted that Hilco would focus on its traffic impact study at an upcoming community meeting.

City agencies are also attempting to make strides in air quality improvement, though federal rules limit their authority. The City is looking for ways to reduce diesel emissions, said James Garrow, communications director for Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health in a response to Grid’s questions via email. “We hope to help all diesel stationary sources switch to electric. This includes emitters such as port cranes and emergency generators.”

According to Zerbo, expanding public transit and investment in infrastructure funding are the most impactful actions the City could take towards improving air quality.

And in the case of potentially big polluters like the Bellwether District, advocates say that improved community outreach would be beneficial.

Creating meaningful mitigation plans, “instead of listening to our concerns and not taking any action,” would be a starting point, says Foy. ◆

Carol Foy, whose son died at the age of 33 from lung problems, opposes the redevelopment plans for the former oil refinery.

COLLISION

COURSE

Scientists and advocates zero in on what is really killing whales

story by dawn kane

Regina asmutis-silvia cannot forget the gaze of a humpback whale stranded on a beach in Chatham, Massachusetts. With fellow members of an International Wildlife Coalition team, she worked to dig under the whale to relieve the pressure of its body-weight on vital organs. They hoped the high tide would carry the whale back to sea, she remembers.

“We were trying to dig a hole around this massive animal; every time you walked by the head, this animal would just watch everything that you did.”

It has been about 20 years since that day she was called to action, but the experience has stayed with her. It informs her current work as executive director for Whale and Dolphin Conservation North America, advocating for the protection of marine mammals that continue to face numerous human-caused threats.

For nearly 50 years, ‘Save the Whales’ has been a battle cry among conservationists. These words helped bring about the international ban on commercial whaling in 1986, which helped humpbacks rebound from an estimated population low of 10,000

individuals to about 80,000 worldwide. In 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act established a national policy to prevent any species of marine mammals from declining beyond a specific threshold.

Even still, whales are dying in alarming numbers.

Since December 2022, there have been 69 large whale strandings along the U.S. Atlantic coast. So far this year, fifteen whales — 11 of them humpbacks — have been found dead off of New Jersey’s shores or on its beaches, according to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center. And those numbers do not account for those that die undiscovered at sea.

The impacts of these tragedies ripple out far beyond the ocean, as whales play a critical role in the global ecosystem. Their excrement provides essential nutrients to phytoplankton, which is necessary for our survival. “[Whales] afford the phytoplankton that gives the world half of its oxygen,” says Asmutis-Silvia.

And this makes preventing whale deaths all the more urgent. Identifying the main causes is key, and it’s not likely offshore wind,

Scientists try to learn from a humpback whale’s death. Experts say ship collisions, commercial fishing and plastic pollution are the leading threats.

a claim that has been recently spread by conservative news outlets. “There are no known links between recent large whale mortalities and ongoing offshore wind surveys,” wrote Andrea Gomez, communications and public affairs specialist with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in an email response to questions.

More likely, says Jenna Reynolds, President of New Jersey-based nonprofit Save Coastal Wildlife, “it’s ships ramming into whales, it’s commercial fishing from the nets and lines and it’s plastic pollution — those are the three big threats to our whales.” Experts are proposing solutions to address all three.

Forced migration

Local activists have observed that many of the whales stranded on the Jersey shore are young. According to Reynolds, 85-90% are juvenile humpbacks. She and other experts agree that warming waters are changing migratory patterns.

“What they feed on — the fish and the plankton — those populations are moving around,” she says. “We’re finding a lot of juvenile humpback whales because there’s food for them here and they don’t have to go north to compete with the adults. But the sad thing is that they don’t have the experience of dealing with ships.”

Especially in the New York Bight — the stretch of waters off the coast of Cape May up to the eastern tip of Long Island — necropsies are consistently showing that vessel strikes are the main culprit.

One way to lessen the number of ship strikes is by imposing lower speed limits for vessels. Last year, NOAA proposed changes to the speed rules they implemented in 2008 for vessels longer than 65 feet to protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Right whales, numbering less than 350, are most at risk as they migrate during calving season, from mid-November to about mid-April. The proposed updates incorporate new, more comprehensive data on areas that present the highest strike risk and would expand to include boats 35 feet or larger.

Although some recreational and commercial boaters object to the lower speed limits, Asmutis-Silvia argues that the changes will also protect boaters. She mentioned a case in Florida where a 56-foot fishing vessel struck a mother right whale and her calf. The calf was killed instantly, and the mother was nev-

er seen again. The vessel sustained a loss of $1.2 million. “They had to ground the vessel before it completely capsized on site,” Asmutis-Silvia says.

“There’s a sort of ancillary benefit to the speed restrictions as well; it lowers emissions and it reduces noise on the ocean, which reduces the potential for collision,” she added.

Activists petitioned for a temporary implementation of the proposed speed rules last November at the start of right whale calving season, but as NOAA works through its regulatory process, the slowdown remains voluntary. Advocates hope that this year the rules will go into place in time. “There’s these little newborns that are very likely to be killed if they’re hit,” Asmutis-Silvia says.

Another change that would help whales is early adoption of ropeless fishing technology by commercial fishers, says Julia Singer, marine biologist at international organization Oceana. The gear rests on the ocean floor and does not utilize ropes, she explained. Instead, when it makes its catch, fishers hit a button that inflates a buoy and brings it to the surface, thus eliminating the possibility of entanglements. The technology is new and still in development, but early trials suggest that fishers may lose less gear in storms and be able to fish in zones that are currently off limits.

Those who want to protect whales and other marine mammals can call their legislators to ask them to support the implementation of slow-down rules, reduce their use of plastics and participate in trash clean-ups.

Asmutis-Silvia also hopes that updates could be made to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA); the current mathematical formula to determine the number of whales that are ecologically necessary does not account for who the whales are within their communities, she says.

As climate change affects the marine environment, researchers have learned that some individual whales have distinct and valuable roles in their communities. Breeding-age females, of course, play a critical role in producing and nurturing calves. And some whales develop innovative hunting strategies, which others then adopt and share. Refining the MMPA policy to value how individual whales support the survival of their community could go a long way in protecting populations globally. ◆

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Make the most of local industry connections and interdisciplinary Ivy League academics

“If there’s a specific topic or type of job you’re interested in, the professors know who to send you to…The Water Center [at Penn] helped me get my foot in the door for a graduate internship at the Philadelphia Water Department where I conducted the research required for my capstone on microplastics in freshwater. Everything was connected and played out really well.”

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