Pine and Spruce Street residents sue over Philly’s efforts to upgrade bike lanes

Some residents of Pine and Spruce Streets have sued to stop the city from establishing neighborhood loading zones opposite the bike lanes along the corridor, arguing regulatory overreach.

The Philadelphia Streets Department’s loading-zone plan and other city efforts to beef up the bike lanes amount to “arbitrary and capricious government actions” that exceed the current authority of relevant ordinances, according to the complaint filed Monday afternoon by attorney George Bochetto.

The suit was brought by Friends of Pine and Spruce, a neighborhood advocacy group that opposes the curbside changes, as well as the city’s plan to add low concrete barriers to separate the bike lanes from motor-vehicle traffic.

The streets department created the new loading zones by regulation. Opponents say that changes to city ordinances, which would be more difficult to achieve, are required first.

The loading zones are intended to complement a new ban on vehicle drivers stopping in bike lanes by giving residents, delivery trucks, and contractors a place to stop without clogging the lanes.

The suit cites the streets department and the Philadelphia Office of Infrastructure and Transportation Systems as defendants.

It argues that the city code mentions only four types of permissible loading zones: commercial, valet, passenger, and hotel. And the loading zones would also conflict with the ordinance that requires permit parking to be available on each block in the area, the lawsuit argues.

The streets department did not respond to a request for comment.

Neighbors challenged the loading-zone regulation during a May 2 streets department hearing. In a later document rejecting the challenge, the department said it could establish the zones based on its “broad police powers” to regulate traffic congestion and ensure public safety.

Roots of the conflict on Spruce and Pine date to 2009, when the bike lanes opened. Former Mayor Michael Nutter’s administration struck an agreement with residents that they could stop in the lanes for up to 20 minutes to load and unload in front of their homes without being ticketed.

But enforcement has been spotty and incursions of vehicles in the bike lanes, sometimes for hours, have forced riders into traffic, putting them in danger. Currently the lanes are marked only by flexible plastic posts.

A public uproar sparked last July when a speeding drunken driver veered into the Spruce Street bike lane, snapping flexible plastic barriers and killing a pediatric oncologist, led to the quick passage of the no-stopping law.