It’s a Friday morning in October, and there’s a steady stream of cars driving down 43rd Street in West Philly’s Spruce Hill neighborhood. Then, through the traffic, a cavalcade emerges of about 20 parents and children on bicycles — a mix of kids on electric cargo bikes, kids on the front of folding bikes, kids
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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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Part I Jay Arzu was front and center with Leslie Richards, searching for answers. He wanted to know why Philadelphia’s transit expansion had slowed to a bumper-to-bumper crawl over the years. As he watched other major cities pour resources into ambitious projects to improve their public transportation infrastructure, he wanted to understand what had derailed
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In September 2020, SEPTA’s bike policy was amended to allow bikes on trains during peak hours because of low ridership during the pandemic. This policy allowed residents to create a multimodal network of transportation that wasn’t available in pre-COVID times. In December 2021, that amendment was rescinded, and bicycle access has since been limited to
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Since Philadelphia’s 30th Street Amtrak Station announced in late March that it would switch from steam power to gas boilers, activists have been pushing back on the station’s claims that the move aligns with a sustainable future for the city. “That is simply a false narrative,” Clean Air Council Executive Director Joseph Minott says. “Everyone
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There’s something about our tax structure I think most people don’t understand: If you own a car, the American taxpayer subsidizes your ride. The more expensive and bigger your vehicle, the more socialism you get. The money set aside for roads has come less and less from gas taxes over the past 50 years and
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Parking has ruined—and continues to ruin—cities. Don’t believe me? Just go to any zoning board hearing or street engineering meeting—or better yet, talk to your neighbors. You will likely hear that there’s not enough parking in your part of town, and any changes to the streets, or the landscape, or bringing in more residents, will
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There are a lot of laws and disclaimers regarding what bicyclists should do when riding on the road. But there isn’t much public information about what they should do if a crash happens. Of course, no one should go through the traumatic experience of a crash with a driver—especially, as has become more of the
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When the remnants of Hurricane Ida arrived in the Philadelphia region last month, it brought with it the kinds of chaos we used to just hear about: flooding, property destruction, mudslides and at least one dude back flipping into the sewage pit formerly known as I-676 in Center City. “I definitely thought about the water
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Every Sunday in Manayunk, a swarm of cyclists meet in the Regal UA Main Street Theatre parking lot. One group stands out from the rest. More than 20 people of color pull bikes out of their vehicles and begin pumping their tires with air. Laughter and conversation fill the parking lot as the cyclists catch
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Bloc delivery cofounder Alison Cohen believes people are much more likely to support local businesses if they do not have to leave their homes to do so. Her vision, a local alternative to Amazon that provides Philadelphia’s small businesses with a wider customer base—where all the deliveries are done by employees riding on a fleet
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