Millions of visitors will descend on Philadelphia in 2026 to celebrate the United States Semiquincentennial (250th anniversary), to watch the Major League Baseball All-Star Game and to attend FIFA World Cup matches. To take full advantage of the waves of global travelers traversing our city, officials need to take critical steps to improve infrastructure and
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How does the Philadelphian cross the road? It isn’t always easy or safe. Dangerous intersections mean bikers, pedestrians and people with disabilities risk life and limb to simply get where they’re going. The risks they take are apparent in death and injury statistics — 49 pedestrians and cyclists were killed in 2021, according to the
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Last fall, I was cruising down a street in Mount Airy on my new electric bike, joyfully accelerating into the wind and relishing in emission-free transportation, when suddenly it hit me. The pavement, that is. An SUV facing the wrong way on the two-lane road jumped out from a line of parked cars in front
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Bicycles continue to evolve — with carbon fiber frames and electric motors, among other newfangled components — but the machine’s design hasn’t fundamentally changed for generations: two wheels, handlebars and a diamond-shaped frame. Aaron Zucker, Leslie Lodwick and Alex Bomstein remind us that we can ride bikes made decades ago, that we needn’t buy the
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At its height, it reached three feet. The color of chocolate milk, the water flooded The Tricycle Shop’s first-floor retail and café space, submerging bistro tables and balance bikes, buoying trash cans and stacks of paper cups, lapping at the midsections of mannequins sporting branded jerseys. Hurricane Ida’s September 2021 rampage through the Philadelphia region
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In business there are two certainties: convenience is never without cost, and sudden changes — disruptions — create new opportunities. The escalating demand for “last mile delivery,” the process by which industries and companies ship goods directly to the customer, is a textbook example of costs and opportunities. Even if you are among the estimated
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Just as there is no agreed-upon definition for “gentrification” or “safety,” there are no universal standards when it comes to gathering community feedback. A decade-long South Philadelphia streets fiasco demonstrates this idea in a perfect microcosm: Washington Avenue and its controversial repaving. Washington Avenue is a wide corridor housing businesses and residences on either side
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Some are compression-short-wearing athletes who trek through the trails of the Wissahickon or beside the Schuylkill River. Some are commuters, taking the city’s bike lanes to and from work every day. Others are “wheelie” kids, groups of teenagers and young adults pulling tricks down Broad Street, not a single care or helmet in sight. All
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Spring Garden Street, which runs from river to river, is currently a fast but miserable route for a cyclist to cut across Center City. Much of it is unshaded and exposed to the sun, and the bike lane isn’t protected by anything but a white stripe on the asphalt. At the eastern end, cyclists who
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As is too often the case in Philadelphia, when a project takes one step forward, someone, somewhere, decides to bring it two steps back. That one step forward happened for bicycling infrastructure last summer, when Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell introduced an ordinance that would allow for a protected bike lane along 11 blocks of Chestnut Street, between
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When Russell Meddin began reading about Mobike in April 2016, he felt he’d come across something big. The private bike-sharing company had begun serving Chinese cities without the use of docking stations. Rather than renting a bicycle from a quarter-block-sized station, and returning it to one, Mobike allows users to leave their bicycles anywhere.
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