Staff Blog
Bike news: Councilman Kenney throws bicyclists a bone
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| phillyist.com |
A couple of days ago, I got a rather chipper email from the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, the region's largest bicycle advocacy group.
In it, Executive Director Alex Doty wrote the following (emphasis added):
Yesterday morning, there was a copy of a letter from Councilman Kenney on my desk asking the head of the Parking Authority for stepped up enforcement of vehicles blocking bike lanes. How did we get from November's legislation to this?
See below for details of a very productive meeting we had with Councilmen Kenney and DiCicco hosted by Deputy Mayor Rina Cutler. What I took from that meeting was that the Councilmen are fed up with sidewalk riding. While I understand why some people do it, I am also fed up with sidewalk riding. But the Councilmen, like us, are also fed up with cars -- and even pedestrians — not following the rules of the road. Fed up enough to follow up one of our concerns with a letter to the Parking Authority. Thank You, Councilman Kenney!
Councilmembers Kenney and DiCicco are, of course, the very same lawmakers who sought a little while back to impose hefty — OK, more like hysterically insane — fines on bicyclists for riding with headphones, riding on the sidewalk, or riding fixed-gear bike unequipped with a brake (I actually agreed with them wholeheartedly on that one).
Though the laws were harsh, the tone taken by DiCicco and Kenney was always reasonable, and they spoke of equal and equitable enforcement. This little bit of news shows that they meant it, and that they're willing to respond to public input: Democracy with a D, if you ask me.
Which makes, by the way, whoever invented the "Frank DiCicco sucks: equal rights for bikes" T-shirt look even more dense than they did when said shirt appeared in a Philadelphia Weekly article about the laws.
Who sucks now, T-shirt? Hm?
Diciccio still sucks, and Kenny. They are still trying to get bike messengers to register for riding in the cities. Which must have been who they were targeting in the first place when they tried to get all those crazy laws enforced on everyone, only to find out that Philadelphia is a huge cycling city and his ‘look before you leap’ attitude got him tons of criticism from fellow councilmen and other officials. Now to save face they start listening to what people started saying in the first place and give everyone equal enforcement. No matter what this is what they want, they want to do things that get there name in the papers so come election time everyone knows there names.
Jeff:
So making sure cyclists, especially those who tend to pose a greater danger than others, follow the laws already in effect is bad so it reduces crashes and near-misses?
At the same time, you can have equal-enforcement, but sometimes there is a need to crackdown on one group or another in order to re-achieve it.
I have never seen a bike messenger stop at a red light, have any of you?
I’ve seen a few, but most of them seem to just jet through or stop for a little bit until they see its safe to go.
[...] who proposed some fairly ridiculous, unfair bike enforcement laws in November (but who, as of late, may be an OK guy after all). “When Frank DiCicco dies,” says Hammer, “bury him with his ass out of the ground [...]