Which city agencies are responsible for crosswalks?

Submitted by Fattom23 t3_124lxjl in philadelphia

I'm starting to get frustrated about how dangerous it is to leave Lemon Hill going east, with people consistently parked in or near the crosswalk making all the other issues with that intersection worse. Which city agency/other entity would actually be able to authorize barricades/planters/street redesign to try and make it better? Normally, I would think a Councilperson might be able to help, but retiring Clarke is likely even more useless than regular Clarke was, so I'm skeptical of that solution.

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Brraaap t1_jdzq3l0 wrote

You'll need your councilperson to put forth any changes to council.

As for enforcement, PPA would be ticketing them if it were in their area, so I'm guessing PPD. Maybe try reporting it, with photos, in the 311 app

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Fattom23 OP t1_jdzqe8s wrote

So every time a piece of infrastructure or bollard or barricade goes up, it was explicitly authorized by council? That seems inefficient.

In terms of reporting, that's a losing game. Saturday, two cops directing traffic there just watched someone park in the crosswalk. As long as it's physically possible to put a car there, someone will. And PPD wouldn't have time, even if they cared.

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ambiguator t1_je0cuuz wrote

> That seems inefficient.

😑

Indeed. Inefficient by design is The Philadelphia Way.

Here's a general outline of how to get, e.g. a new crosswalk or stop sign installed, or to get permission to plant some flowers or whatever:

  • File a complaint with the Streets Department. On paper, Streets is responsible for all this. But Streets won't do anything unless a) they're legally required to or b) a District CM tells them to. In this case, you might want a "no parking" sign, or if there isn't one there already, or a "speeding study". https://www.phila.gov/services/streets-sidewalks-alleys/report-a-problem-on-a-city-street-sidewalk-or-alley/report-a-problem-with-a-traffic-light-or-sign/request-a-traffic-sign-or-report-a-problem/ Get your friends to fill out the same form. Fill it out more than once.

  • After the signage is in place, report illegal activity to PPA to get them to ticket. 215.683.9775

  • PPA may tell you they don't ticket there, in which case you need to go through 911 - you can text them! Yes 911, not 311. 311 won't do anything. Don't worry about clogging the lines or whatever. This is how they want you to do it.

  • File a "roll call" complaint with police, and get your friends to do the same. https://www.phillypolice.com/forms/roll-call-complaints Enough noise through this channel, and you might see an uptick in ticketing for a couple weeks. Repeat every couple weeks as the ticketing subsides.

  • Now that you've established a track record of illegal and dangerous parking and driving, contact the RCO again about additional measures like planters, bump outs, and other street treatments. Blow up their spot at meetings, get them to bug the CM about it, and keep contacting Streets. You might have an email contact at Streets by this point. Email them, as well as filling out the speed study form. Your RCO will probably want you to collect signatures from neighbors to show support for the changes you're proposing. The CM almost certainly will want to see the same.

  • Consider running to be on the RCO board, or running to become a Democratic Committeemember, and you'll have an even more direct line of communication with the Councilmember. By now, you'll have the phone numbers of the people who can make these things happen, and you should call and text them every day until it does.

Hope this helps!

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Fattom23 OP t1_je0hjid wrote

I appreciate the very thorough response. There's probably 5 or 6 things in here that I didn't know. This is just an insane number of steps to expect citizens to go through, but that does seem to be par for the course for city government.

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imbrokn t1_jdztlh9 wrote

I call the ppa for illegally parked cars on our street weekly. You are right that they don’t always come but sometimes they do.

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courageous_liquid t1_je05nu8 wrote

No, but it needs to get scoped into a project.

Typically stuff like that goes under open ends (like TOITS or VIZOC), and the political pressure to get that scoped can come through a councilperson or RCO.

Streets identifies other projects based on prioritization by planning, DVRPC, and OTIS, as well as the mayor's office.

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Fattom23 OP t1_je07ufc wrote

Yeah, I was thinking something to the scale of those planters there were put in at 15th and Market. Maybe if I just took some and left them no one would bother to move them ...

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courageous_liquid t1_je09wip wrote

> Yeah, I was thinking something to the scale of those planters there were put in at 15th and Market.

that's a pretty big project, not just a stripe and breakaway bollard install

yeah, definitely put permanent objects in public ROW at your own risk and probably don't talk about it online

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Scumandvillany t1_je0bclq wrote

Yes. There has to be council resolutions approving street repaving

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jpstanton93 t1_jdzwmrk wrote

Illegally parked cars encroaching on the crosswalks would fall under PPA for ticketing. Try reporting via 311.

As for planters or other infrastructure, try reaching out to the Fairmont Park Conservancy. Not sure if that part of the city also has any business improvement districts, but that may be a good place to start too. If you don't hear anything back from the above entities, try reaching out to Feet First Philly as they may have some resources to point you to. Once you make these initial contacts and have some correspondence going, then you may want to loop in your councilperson.

Hope this helps!

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Fattom23 OP t1_jdzx0o6 wrote

I hadn't considered the Conservancy; that's a really good suggestion.

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a-german-muffin t1_je06qqq wrote

I'm in a group trying to work on some changes to the Poplar Drive/Poplar Street intersection, and I can tell you this: You're probably out of luck right out of the gate. The Poplar/Poplar intersection is complicated because it's a park road and a regular city street, so changes to that one aren't easy (mixed budgets, etc.) — but the one thing we've learned for sure is Parks & Rec is tapped out as far as budgeting for any park roads.

It's not to say it's not worth it to try to get something moving on that front, but you're going to need to gather a fair amount of interest (petitions, potentially other steps). Constantly calling the cops on the crosswalk parkers might move the needle, too (or at least annoy the 9th enough that they lean on council/P&R to do something further).

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Fattom23 OP t1_je078ic wrote

That's disheartening, but not unexpected. It's just insane that someone can look at that intersection and not see that parking in or near that crosswalk is dangerous because it blocks people leaving the park from being visible to the drivers leaving the distant stop sign (the southbound one). That way, drivers can build up a good head of steam before kids and families try to walk out between the cars blocking the crosswalk. Even a couple planters to maintain distance would be incredibly helpful.

I am interested in hearing about this group, though. If numbers can help, I'll help any way I can.

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a-german-muffin t1_je0bkzp wrote

Believe me, I hear you — and maybe the Conservancy can help with getting planters or something similar, but keep expectations low otherwise. That intersection wasn't so much engineered as it just... evolved out of a late 1800s mess.

As for the Poplar/Poplar group, it's mostly a bunch of folks who live over by the park trying to nudge Streets and Parks & Rec, with mild success (Poplar Street's getting repaved this year, so some light fixes are in the works). DM me if you want to pop into the (mostly email) works, though!

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mistersausage t1_je5j6eo wrote

A traffic light would be nice, like they are adding at 31st and Girard

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a-german-muffin t1_je5kkth wrote

Given Poplar Drive only got stop signs in 2017, a light's not super likely. We have heard that it's possible the intersection can get at least partially redesigned, most likely to narrow the crossings, and there might be some short-term solutions (e.g., temporary flex posts) to at least partially accomplish that ahead of a full redesign.

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mistersausage t1_je5l6z9 wrote

IMO a full redesign will only happen when the 100 year old bridge over the tracks collapses.

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a-german-muffin t1_je5mmre wrote

The bridge just got resinspected in December and is apparently still OK, for what that's worth.

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mistersausage t1_je63586 wrote

Until some moron drives a 40 ton dump truck over it

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a-german-muffin t1_je6cjzw wrote

Eh, that inspection came after they were running the 48 over it for months during the Girard detour, and the articulated buses come in at like 30 tons, so... it seems OK from that standpoint.

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RoverTheMonster t1_jdzqpjm wrote

Not helpful but related: what happened to the community message board the friends group put up and then immediately disappeared?

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LovelyOtherDino t1_je05zbz wrote

It wasn't installed properly, so it's been moved to a storage shed until they can get someone to reinstall it.

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Fattom23 OP t1_jdzwxjv wrote

I don't know. It was there so briefly that I never even saw it.

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mortgagepants t1_je0szpz wrote

you might also consider reaching out to vision zero. they try to make it so no one gets killed walking or cycling in philadelphia. (fucking liberal snowflake scoundrels i know.)

all those steps are good, but possibly embarrassing the council person into doing something might speed up the process. http://visionzerophl.com/

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NoREEEEEEtilBrooklyn t1_je0061w wrote

Streets department would nominally be the department who would do that, however, your council person would ultimately be the best person to contact.

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