Bike lane opponents challenge city plan for loading zones on Pine and Spruce Streets
Neighborhood loading zones were proposed for Pine and Spruce Streets as space for temporary stops. Some residents say they'll gobble up permit parking spaces and won't work as intended.
Another front has opened in the war over scarce parking space on Pine and Spruce Streets as some residents challenge a city proposal for neighborhood loading zones to complement a new ban on vehicle drivers stopping in bike lanes.
The zones are intended to give residents, delivery trucks, and contractors a place to stop on each block so they don’t need to clog the bike lane.
But members of Friends of Pine & Spruce, a nonprofit organized after passage of the no-stopping bill last October, say that the zones would eliminate 30% of parking spaces, impose hardships on residents, and make the streets more dangerous for everyone.
They made their case last Friday during an administrative hearing on a pending Streets Department regulation to set up the loading zones.
Paul Boni, general counsel for the group, argued that the move was “unwise and illegal.” The city code authorizes loading zones only for businesses, pedestrians, and buses.
And a 1981 ordinance requires permit parking for residents on all blocks of Pine and Spruce Streets.
“Look, the city can install neighborhood loading zones if it wants, but City Council first needs to amend the permit-parking ordinance,” Boni said. “If our elected officials want … to essentially prevent residents from having cars, then let’s have that debate.”
Friends of Pine & Spruce requested the public hearing by objecting to the proposed loading-zone regulation; in administrative matters, any objector can do so.
The next step: A hearing officer will make a recommendation on the proposed loading-zone regulation after weighing the testimony.
Familiar pushback
Underlying the testimony about loading zones were familiar arguments from the ongoing cultural clash between cyclists and drivers.
Several residents suggested that Pine and Spruce Streets do not need so much protective infrastructure because data show few fatalities and that the streets are not on the city’s High Injury Network of roadways with the most crashes.
“I fear it’s quite dangerous is to say … there’s not enough injuries or fatalities that have been recorded specifically” on Pine and Spruce Streets, testified Owen Stecca, a South Philly resident who uses the bike lanes.
“What we’re trying to do is be proactive and prevent any injuries for people that want to travel on this lane, whether it’s a person on a bike, on a scooter, a mobility device, or a pedestrian,” Stecca said. He called loading zones “a fair compromise.”
“We need delivery people. We need to use taxis and Ubers — whichever side of the street you live on, we need places to stop briefly," said Cynthia Dahl, who has lived on the 200 block of Pine Street for 20 years.
She said designated loading zones, which would be placed opposite the bike lanes, taking up parking spaces, would be full with construction vehicles that need to stay for longer periods.
15-plus years of conflict
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 without being ticketed.
But incursions of vehicles in the bike lanes often force riders into traffic, putting them in danger, and enforcement has been spotty. Cyclists advocates have long sought curb-like barriers to protect bike lanes. Currently they are marked only by flexible plastic posts.
The city’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Services wants to install barriers to protect bike lanes on Pine and Spruce.
Though parking was already forbidden in city bike lanes, the no-stopping law bans a driver from stopping for any length of time in them. Fines are $125 in Center City and $75 in other areas, enforced by the Philadelphia Parking Authority.
A public uproar that sparked last July when a speeding drunken driver veered into the Spruce Street bike lane, snapping flexible plastic barriers and killing a young pediatric oncologist led to the quick passage of the no-stopping law.
A 69-year-old man pleaded guilty in mid-April to third-degree murder and vehicular homicide while driving under the influence in the death of Barbara Friedes, a resident at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She was on her way home.