Clean Air Council joined the Bicycle Coalition and other Vision Zero Alliance advocates for a day of action on Tuesday, April 30th in Harrisburg. Advocates spoke to State Representatives and Senators about critical legislation needed to make streets safer for all road users.
If passed, this legislation would allow comprehensive integrated protected bike lane networks throughout Pennsylvania, create safe cycling and pedestrian spaces, and reduce dependence on automobiles. Protected bike lanes make bicycling safer, and are one of the best ways to protect pedestrians.
Pennsylvania State Senate Bill 565 (SB 565) and its companion House Bill 792 (HB 792) would allow pedestrian plazas and bike lanes on state roads to be separated and protected by parked cars. The bill was sponsored and introduced yesterday by 1st District State Senator Larry Farnese of Philadelphia.
On state roads, pedestrians are 6.5 times more likely to die in crashes than non-pedestrians. While similar numbers of pedestrians involved crashes occur on local roads, 75% of pedestrian crashes that result in a fatal injury are on state roads. Protected bike lanes reduce traffic speeds by narrowing the road, calm intersections by reducing the turning radius, and create a shorter crossing distance for pedestrians.
House Bill 37, another important bill the Council advocates for, would ban hand-held cell phones while driving. The Fredricks family, whose daughter Emily was killed on her bicycle by a distracted driver while biking in the bike lane near 11th and Spruce Streets in Center City, spoke to legislators about their daughter and asked Senators and Representatives to pass legislation to prevent other families from experiencing similar tragedies. Distracted driving caused by cell phone use is a major cause of bicycling and pedestrian fatalities in Pennsylvania, and quadruples the risk of a crash. The Council asked legislators to join neighboring states New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland in banning hand-held phones while driving.
The Council also asked legislators to bring two bills to the floor that would have a major impact on road user safety. The first, a radar bill, (HB-1275) would allow municipal police to use radar technology. Pennsylvania is currently the only state in the country that does not allow municipal police from using radar to detect vehicle speeds. Speed is the largest predictor of how serious a crash can be. The difference of just 5 or 10 miles an hour can mean life or death.
Pennsylvania can more effectively slow drivers down by putting radar technology in hands of law enforcement across the Commonwealth. The second bill, yet to be introduced, would protect vulnerable road users including pedestrians, motorcyclists, horse and carriages, farm equipment, and others by requiring a minimum of four feet to pass. Many parts of the state do not have sidewalks, especially on the particularly dangerous state roads, and vulnerable road users must be afforded the protection of a minimum passing distance.
Creating safer roads for everyone is a common theme throughout all the bills presented to legislators on this day of action. Everyone has the right to travel safely, and a bipartisan focus on reducing traffic deaths, will create safer roadways for all users.
Two major steps toward bringing dockless electric scooters to Pennsylvania and Philadelphia happened this week. Rep. Greg Rothman, R-87th, of Cumberland County and Rep. Stephen Kinsey, D-201st, of Philadelphia introduced HB 631 on Tuesday, that would add electric scooters to the “Special Vehicles and Pedestrians” section of Pennsylvania’s vehicle laws.
Today, Philadelphia City Council held a public hearing on dockless e-scooters and Clean Air Council delivered comments in support of this alternative mode of transportation, along with some of our concerns for how they would be implemented.
Electric scooters have the potential for great environmental benefits, and the Council is excited to see them possibly coming to Philadelphia in the future. The transportation sector in the United States makes up roughly 30% of greenhouse gas pollution, and a large portion of that comes from personal vehicles.
Public transportation, bikes, and walking are well known long-term alternatives to replace car trips, and the Council believes e-scooters are a new low emissions mode and an alternative that may take more cars off the road.
Studies in Cincinnati and Portland show that roughly 1/3 of scooter trips replaced either a personal car or an Uber/Lyft. Motor vehicle congestion is a major contributor to poor air quality in Philadelphia so alternatives to single occupancy vehicle trips must be considered. The Council supports these innovative companies working with the Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability to come up with transportation solutions that will reduce air pollution and the effects of climate change.
The Council believes it is not enough for the e-scooter trips to be low-emission, and believes part of the permit process should be that companies employ sustainable business practices when operating here. Two points are critical. First, the energy sourced for the trips should be renewable either through credits, or through the grid itself. Second, and most importantly, the companies operating in Philadelphia should commit to disposing of their waste sustainably, and recycling all of it.
Sustainable disposal of scooters that are no longer useable is important to the Council since companies turnover their fleet at least annually. No scooters used in Philadelphia should end up in a landfill. The batteries and other electronic components should be dealt with through sustainable e-waste practices, and the other parts of the scooters should be recycled or reused. How these companies deal with this waste is critically important from an environmental perspective.
The Council believes e-scooter companies should commit to being part of the city’s Vision Zero goals. Users who feel safe on our streets are central to their business model. This means investing in all of Philadelphia’s alternative transportation modes and contributing to a fund that takes a portion from each ride and puts it toward safe infrastructure.
These funds should be diverted from the General Fund and go to meet the city’s Vision Zero goals either through projects like restriping our roads, installing pedestrian bump-outs, education campaigns, or other engineering projects.
The Council also supports the rights of pedestrians to travel uninhibited on public sidewalks, walkways, and crosswalks and wants to ensure that people follow the law by not riding e-scooters on sidewalks. The best way to protect pedestrians from scooters riding on sidewalks is to create streets that are safe for all users. Safety includes having good policies in place to prevent scooters from inhibiting pedestrians. Enforcement should occur through the e-scooter apps and ensure that rides cannot end until the scooter is parked in an appropriate location that does not inhibit pedestrians.
Equally important to safety and sustainability is equity. These scooters will use public resources to operate, so they should serve all Philadelphians. Other cities require a certain percentage of scooters be placed in low-income and predominantly minority neighborhoods, and Philadelphia should not only do this, but lead the way with the most progressive regulations for equitable re-balancing. This would be in accordance with the demographics of our city. Companies should also be required to accept cash payment and be available to riders who don’t have a smartphone.
While the Council has several concerns about implementing scooters in a way that prioritizes sustainability, safety, equity, and transparency, we believe the city and the companies that want to operate here can address all of these concerns. The Council is excited about any new mode that curbs greenhouse gas emissions – we have a little more than a decade left to make major reductions to avoid the worst effects of climate change, and we cannot afford to miss out on opportunities to electrify a large portion of our transportation fleet.
Click here to read a full transcript of our e scooter testimony
After a slew of legal filings, briefs, and hearings before two different courts, the Environmental Hearing Board, on Monday, April 16th, ordered stronger protocols for responding to and preventing drilling fluid spills on the Mariner East pipelines. Clean Air Council, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and Mountain Watershed Association took Sunoco and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to court for violating a previously agreed-upon version of the protocols, and then quietly modifying those protocols without the input of the Council, other organizations, or the court.
The history of these protocols, called the Horizontal Drilling Inadvertent Return Assessment, Preparedness, Prevention and Contingency Plan (or HDD Plan for short) is somewhat complicated. The HDD Plan was originally part of the water permits DEP issued to Sunoco for the Mariner East 2 pipelines in February 2017. In August 2017, after a torrent of drilling fluid spills and drinking water contamination incidents made clear that the February 2017 HDD Plan was failing to protect the public and the environment, Clean Air Council and its partners filed an emergency motion with the court. This resulted in the court shutting down Sunoco’s drilling Mariner East 2 drilling operations until the parties agreed to improvements to the HDD Plan in August 2017. Fast forward six months, and DEP and Sunoco walked back some of those protections in a side agreement. Clean Air Council and its partners filed another emergency filing and have ultimately secured the most protective HDD Plan yet. And this time the stakes are higher if there are further violations.
The new HDD Plan accomplishes several important things. First, it now applies to all drilling methods that could result in drilling fluid spills. Second, professional geologists must be involved in determining whether it is safe to proceed with drilling after a spill. The new HDD Plan lays out specific requirements for what the professional geologist must investigate and present to the DEP. DEP then must find that any plans for continued drilling at the spill site adequately protect the public and the environment before it allows drilling to restart. Groundwater protections have been spelled out in detail so there can be no ambiguity in how they are applied; they are key because of the damage Sunoco’s operations has already caused to drinking water supplies and the continuing nature of that threat. Requirements for notifying DEP and the public about drilling incidents have also been improved.
There will also be increased transparency so landowners and other concerned members of the public will be better able to track any future spills that may arise: Reports prepared by Sunoco’s geologists will be shared with Clean Air Council and its partners. DEP’s documentation of spills on its website will be expanded, made uniform, and include more detail about spill locations–a key piece of information that had previously been missing.
The new HDD Plan is comprehensive, strongly protective, and scientifically rigorous. Perhaps just as important, the Environmental Hearing Board has made it crystal clear that it will not tolerate Sunoco and DEP trying to change it behind the backs of the public again. Even with these improvements, Clean Air Council is under no illusion that the new HDD Plan will be a silver bullet against all future problems and we believe it is still important to keep a watchful eye on construction operations.
You can view the new, April 2018 version of the HDD Plan here
Photo by Faith Zerbe/Delaware Riverkeeper Network
Exactly 17 days passed since Emily Fredricks was struck and killed by a private garbage truck while riding in the bike lane along Spruce Street before another cyclist was again struck by a turning truck while riding in a bike lane. This time the crash occurred near 13th and Pine Streets, just a couple blocks from where Fredricks was killed, and is once again igniting the call for more protected bike lanes throughout Philadelphia.
This morning, over 100 people gathered today to again form a human barrier between traffic and the bike lane along 13th Street, and show support for Becca Refford, 24, who was commuting to work when she was hit. Refford waved and smiled at the people who made the human bike lane from her hospital bed via Facetime.
Another serious crash so soon after the death of Emily Fredericks should make clear that paint-buffered bike lanes are not good enough protection on the most used, high traffic streets in Philadelphia.
Last week, the City took a small step by committing to a short section of protected bike lanes on South Street and 27th Street near the South Street Bridge. Unfortunately this is a compromise from the original plan to include a protected bike lane along Lombard Street as well.
Spruce Street, Pine Street, Lombard, and 13th Street are some of the most highly traveled bike lanes in Philadelphia. It is important that these roads be upgraded from lines of paint to physical barriers, the past three weeks have clearly demonstrated the need. Call Councilmen Kenyatta Johnson and Mark Squilla to thank them for the small addition to the City’s protected bike lane network, and demand that they take further steps to rapidly install protected bike lanes on all of center city’s bike lanes.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December 14, 2017
Contact:
Justin Wasser, Clean Air Council: 814-242-3156
Impacted Residents, Health Experts and Environmental Advocates Urge Gov. Wolf to Advance Methane Pollution Standards for the Natural Gas Sector
Harrisburg, PA (December 14, 2017)- The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) presented today the final draft of permits to control methane pollution from new and modified natural gas operations to the Air Quality Technical Advisory Committee (AQTAC). Residents affected by natural gas operations, as well as environmental and public health advocacy groups from across the Commonwealth, spoke at a press conference and at the AQTAC meeting during the public comment period. The comments were a continuation of advocacy that has spanned three years urging Governor Wolf to fulfill his campaign promises on methane controls. Wolf first promised to cut methane pollution from all new and existing gas operations on the campaign trail in 2014. He announced his methane reduction strategy in January 2016.
Environmental and public health advocacy groups and impacted residents were pleased to finally see progress made on the methane reduction plan at the meeting, but say that the Wolf administration must quickly finalize general permits and require companies to comply with them. Groups raised concerns about the administration’s proposed concepts for weaker rules covering existing source of methane pollution — a major departure from what the governor promised to do.
“While the progress being made on methane standards covering new natural gas sources is encouraging, the Wolf administration must move quickly to regulate existing sources in a similar way,” said Joseph Otis Minott, Executive Director and Chief Counsel of Clean Air Council. “What DEP is proposing to implement on existing sources is the bare minimum required by law. Governor Wolf must go well beyond the bare minimum in protecting the health of Pennsylvania citizens. We elected this governor based on his promises to be a leader in addressing methane pollution and climate change. Pennsylvanians deserve that leadership.”
Methane, a very potent greenhouse gas, is accompanied by air pollutants harmful to human health when it leaks from natural gas operations. Emissions in Pennsylvania continue to rise year after year.
The standards for new and modified sources will be implemented through two general permits, which allow for a streamlined approval process if industry operators agree to adhere to the permit conditions. One permit, GP-5A, covers unconventional gas wells and pigging operations and the other, GP-5, covers processing plants and compressor stations, including those on large transmission pipelines.
“Comprehensive methane rules for existing sources of pollution must be broader in scope and more stringent than the requirements found in EPA guidelines,” said Robert Routh, staff attorney for Clean Air Council. “These guidelines represent the national floor. Governor Wolf and DEP need to lead here and aim much higher for the sake of all Pennsylvanians.”
“The citizens of the commonwealth are suffering needlessly when we have the tools and technology available to greatly limit methane pollution and help clean our air,” said Dr. Robert Little, a family physician and president of the Harrisburg/Hershey chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “It bears emphasizing that we need to clear our air of both toxic hydrocarbons and emissions of methane – reducing one kind of pollution without the other gets us nowhere.”
“Until these new source rules are applied to existing sources, people in my community and others dealing with methane pollution right now are still looking at an unfulfilled promise by Governor Wolf,” said Lois Bower-Bjornson, an impacted resident of Washington County, PA. “I am urging Governor Wolf to be that leader who campaigned on a promise of holding the natural gas industry accountable to the people of Pennsylvania and move forward on rules for existing sources of methane pollution and VOCs immediately.”
“Today, my children and 3,200 of their classmates are attending school next to a gas well pad roughly half a mile away exposing them to a known health and safety risk from oil and gas air pollution including emissions of methane and volatile organic compounds,” said Patrice Tomcik, a mother of two sons from Butler County and a Field Consultant with Moms Clean Air Force, a 1 million member strong organization. “Let’s be clear: This problem will not be resolved unless and until DEP addresses these toxic pollutants like benzene, as well as methane emissions.”
Philadelphia has the highest rate of traffic deaths per capita in the US. According to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report using data from 2015, six people for every 100,000 residents died in a traffic related incident. That’s over three times higher than Boston, and more than twice as high as New York City. Cyclists and pedestrians make up 45% of those killed in these traffic incidents.
It’s important to acknowledge these are not accidents, but instead preventable crashes that need to be addressed immediately. Sadly, action will come too late for Emily Fredricks who was killed by a private garbage truck as she rode in the bike lane along Spruce Street last week.
Cyclists who spend any amount of time commuting through Center City know this heavily trafficked area can be extremely dangerous. According to the Bicycle Coalition, a 2015 study counted 212 cyclists per hour passing through 13th and Spruce, just two blocks away from the crash. Emily’s death shows that painted bike lanes no longer meet the demands of increased bicycle traffic in this section, and protected bike lanes must be installed along Spruce and Pine Streets to prevent future fatalities.
How to protect cyclists along Spruce and Pine was the first topic discussed at a recent public meeting hosted by 5th Square, Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia, and Urban Consulate. A panel of guests including Michael Carroll, Deputy Managing Director of the Philadelphia’s Office of Transportation and Information Systems (OTIS), discussed a recent trip to Copenhagen where participants learned how that super bike friendly city operates.
However, after the panelists introduced themselves, Carroll felt the need to discuss the death of Emily Fredricks, and set the record straight on the city’s plan to add protected lanes along Spruce and Pine.
“There’s a couple things I’d like to see cleared up about that,” Carroll said. “Just to be clear there was never any point in design or plan to put any real kind of protection on Spruce and Pine.”
Carroll told the crowd of about 100 people that OTIS had been examining the possibility of protected lanes along those streets, but were in the extremely early stages of planning and securing grant money last year when news leaked to the public that they were looking into this.
“That information wasn’t really intended for broad public consumption but as things turned out it came out to the public that those were the two streets we were looking at, and that came back to the neighborhood,” Carroll said. “A lot of the folks in the neighborhood were upset.”
That outcry ultimately led to the plan being put on the backburner, and OTIS looked elsewhere for other areas that may have less resistance. According to Carroll, the administrative work to get a bike lane installed takes extremely long, and even if there was no resistance against Spruce and Pine, installation of protected lanes would not have begun until next year.
“From our perspective, we’ve got 2,500 miles of streets to look at, and there’s a lot of other candidates that were on that map that we felt like were better uses of our resources at that time to try and put protection in,” Carroll said. “Even if we had programmed those for installation, if we did find a clear path forward, this project would not have started until the Spring.”
Carroll did admit that more funding may have have helped avoid this tragedy.
“This is an instance where under more ideal circumstances, if money was available sooner, maybe we could have avoided a tragedy, but I don’t know that for a fact.” Prior to this incident, Philadelphia was securing funding and developed a plan to make sure money and ideas are available.
The city’s Vision Zero efforts include a plan to install 30 miles of protected bike lanes during Mayor Kenney’s administration. So far there are two miles. That leaves a lot of work to do, so the time is now for the Mayor’s office and City Council to move quickly on advancing these projects. The Vision Zero Task Force was created, and charged with forming a three year action plan. This plan was released earlier this fall, and you can read more about it here. The plan garnered plenty of local media attention and public support but so far little action from city government, specifically city council who since 2012 has had control over the implementation of protected bike lanes on city streets.
The last thing cyclists in Philly need is their safety in the hands of politicians, and that is exactly what is happening. The Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS) needs to be in charge of these decisions, and make pedestrian and bicycle network development one of their key initiatives.
Perhaps a lack of funding for protected bike lanes is the problem? It’s not. In fact, funding has been secured on a state and federal level for pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. In March 2016, the city announced they had secured $2.67 million in federal funding with another $500,000 in local contributions to fund five projects under the “Transportation Alternatives Program” (TAP). The plan for cyclists is outlined in one of the projects. The press release states:
The final project, “Safe Spaces for Cyclists: Build a Protected Bike Network”, will include a mix of converting existing bicycle lanes into protected facilities and adding new protected bicycle lanes by adding flexible delineator posts to clearly separate vehicle and bicycle space in the right of way. The project also will include striping and signage in high priority bicycle corridors throughout the City.
The money is there, the laws are written and plans have been drawn, so why are there still only two miles of protected bike lanes in Philadelphia? The problem is the overly politicized process of road safety. City council is not only guilty of inaction, but in some cases, council members work against the implementation of protected bike lanes under the guise of community outcry.
In 2011, Councilman Greenlee proposed a bill that would require city council to approve all new bike lanes. It was adopted in 2012, and since then council has actively worked against creating protected bike lanes throughout the city. Greenlee is still blocking a bike lane along 22nd street that was proposed in 2014. Councilwoman Blackwell, seems less supportive of the protected bike lane on Chestnut St in West Philadelphia, and recently told the Inquirer, “All I do is get complaints about the lack of access to Chestnut Street.”
Over the summer, Councilman Johnson wrote a letter to OTIS rejecting the planned protected bike lanes on South and Lombard Streets in West Center City. According to the Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia, residents were concerned that they would not be able to pull into the bike lane to unload their vehicles.
Even the very stretch of Spruce St where Emily was killed has had a protected bike lane proposed and discussed publicly since last December at a Washington Square West Civic Association meeting. Public outcry over convenience has seemingly put the project on the shelf, and the city isn’t guaranteeing protected bike lanes will ever be installed along Spruce or Pine streets. Shortly after Emily’s death, the bike lane along Spruce Street was re-striped. This is simply too little too late, and still allows motorists to cross into the bike lane. City council must take the politics out of protected bike lanes, and start protecting the lives of people who choose to commute by bike.
Please take a moment to write or call your councilperson today. Tell them how important it is to you that they move forward on protected bike lanes, even at the expense of convenience for motorists. Explain that this is literally a matter of life and death in some cases, and you expect quick action from them. Do this especially if you are in Councilman Johnson or Councilman Squilla’s districts. Contact information to city council can be found here.
The King of Prussia Mall is the largest suburban mall in the Philadelphia region with 400 stores, and a total of 31,500 people employed at the mall and nearby office parks. The mall is visited by about 68,000 people daily with 5,600 bus riders using six routes to and from the KOP area. Unfortunately, there is currently no rapid transit to get commuters and shoppers to the mall. That is why SEPTA and the King of Prussia business community are planning to extend the Norristown High Speed Line, which skirts the edge of the KOP currently, the rest of the way to King of Prussia.
Currently, it can take commuters from Philadelphia as much as two hours to get to work in King of Prussia on the bus, and drivers take an average of 70 minutes – both while navigating the unpredictable beast known as the Schuylkill Expressway. A light rail connection would ease the burden on our transit system and reduce traffic on the already congested expressways near the mall.According to the proposal, the new rail line would take around 40 minutes for the same trip, and offer an appealing option for people who have the choice between driving or public transit.
Clean Air Council was there to express its support for the project. Not only does the Council believe it will ease the commutes of transit riders and mall employees, this project will have a ripple effect on the region’s traffic problem. The more reliable transit lines the Delaware Valley has, the more likely commuters will choose to leave the car behind. This will ultimately reduce emissions, and let us all breathe a little easier.
The Council wrote a letter voicing its support, and sent Kamali Alloway, Sustainable Transportation and Special Events Outreach Coordinator, to read the letter aloud at the public hearing. You can read the letter here, and watch a video of Alloway reading the letter below. This project is still in the first stage, and its projected completion date is a few years away. Clean Air Council will keep you updated on developments as they occur.
