LeCount Street residents relieved Philly has changed traffic direction after crashes

It has taken a year of organizing, complaints, and a spate of recent collisions, but residents along the 600 block of South LeCount Street in the Schuylkill section of the city finally got a traffic-calming measure. Though it’s temporary, residents say they’ll take it.

The section of South Street near LeCount Street is a high-traffic corridor with a bike lane just east of the busy South Street Bridge. Residents said the frequent crashes on the corner have affected their quality of life, as many have witnessed them and rendered aid to cyclists and pedestrians in recent years. They hope a Philadelphia Department of Streets plan that switched the direction of traffic on LeCount from south to north Thursday will help reduce the number of collisions.

This month alone, a grandmother and granddaughter on a cargo bike, a 36-year-old pregnant woman on an electric scooter, and a 37-year-old cyclist who was critically injured were involved in crashes.

Even before those incidents, families of the 11 children living on the block had opted to keep them inside out of traffic-safety concerns, but that has not shielded them from the reality.

Rachel Berger’s 8-year-old daughter had just started to gain momentum as a cyclist when she saw the aftermath of a July 9 crash, including blood on the sidewalk.

“The night after the crash, she said to me, ‘I’m trying to go to sleep, Mom, but every time I close my eyes, I just see the blood and I can’t sleep,’” said Berger, adding her daughter has not asked to ride her bike since.

Some are frustrated by the time and public pressure campaign required to get the city’s attention.

Berger, 42, got her neighbors on the block to sign a change-of-traffic-direction petition last summer. She sent the petition in September to her City Council member, Kenyatta Johnson, whose office sent it to the streets department, and then never received an update.

“I don’t know what the appropriate level of nudging is, so I thought I’m gonna keep pushing this,” she said. “Then this summer, that’s when this person got seriously hit.”

The speed at which the streets department reviews requests for traffic-calming measures is often a sore spot with residents. Speed cushions, for example, take six months to a year to be installed despite improvements to the request process.

The department has to analyze data and consider what would work best for a block: extending curbs, adding stop signs, or prohibiting turns. In a statement, the department said it looked into requests for speed bumps on the block, but the traffic engineering division suggested a traffic-direction change instead.

Vincent Thompson, Johnson’s communications director, said the office has been “working with city departments to resolve this issue” since the complaints were received.

“Council President Johnson is a strong advocate for the safety of bike riders,” Thompson said in a statement. “He has worked with Philly Bike Action, Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and others to get legislation approved that enhances bike safety citywide.”

Still, LeCount Street residents said they did not know what to expect from the city. Neither the streets department nor Johnson’s office addressed the perceived lack of communication that residents expressed.

As more people were getting injured, people like Ashley Lepera, 33, mounted a public pressure campaign.

For Lepera, a nurse, the first two weeks of July were the final straw.

“I watched so many people’s lives get ruined,” she said.

Lepera said she arrived home on July 9 to a group of people surrounding a “practically comatose” cyclist who had been hit by a car and was not responding to aid.

She took to Facebook, Reddit, and a Discord chat asking for advice and if people would join her in a visit to Johnson’s office. Residents began talking to reporters.

Jessie Amadio, 37, an organizer with Philly Bike Action!, said she wasn’t surprised efforts to change the traffic direction had stalled.

“What really gets stuff done is political pressure,” she said.

Lepera and Berger had a meeting with Johnson last Friday. By Wednesday, a day after the pregnant woman collided with a turning car, residents learned the traffic direction would be changed.

Johnson’s office did not discuss why the request was suddenly pushed through.

“They only actually did something because they were shamed,” Lepera said.

Amadio understands the challenge for the city in responding to traffic-calming requests, but she believes there should be a way to “fast-track” calming if multiple people are being injured.

“If a City Council district person hears of a crash in their district, there should be a way to take immediate action, just to staunch the bleeding, so to speak, and then let streets and the engineers and the traffic study people do their work over the course of many months,” she said.

It could be as simple as using cones or traffic diversion, she said.

For now, residents on LeCount hope their temporary measure helps prevent crashes and doesn’t turn South Bambrey Street, the next side street going south, into the next problematic intersection.

Should the streets department find the measure to be effective in the six-month trial period, legislation would need to be introduced by Johnson, who represents the district, and passed in City Council for the change to become permanent. The earliest legislation could be introduced is September, when Council members return from summer break.