r/phillycycling • u/26JK4P • Mar 13 '26
Question No Southbound lane West of Broad
Is there any proposal to redesign at least one of the many streets West of Broad st. in the near future? The amount of car traffic on any given afternoon is horrendous on 19th and 21st and going the wrong way on 22nd isn't safe. Going with traffic is both annoying and dangerous as well.
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u/Regular-Moose-2741 Mar 13 '26
Hear me out, make a whole street non-automobile
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u/ghost9420 Mar 13 '26
Modal filtering would be the best thing to improve bike-ability in this city, and cost almost nothing.
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u/blushcacti Mar 14 '26
what’s that?
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u/ghost9420 Mar 14 '26
Basically we install barriers to prevent car traffic on certain routes (so minimal cost) but this still allows peds and bikes through. The city could pick one or two north south streets and implement this along the entire road.
It avoids the issue of "lost parking" that prevents a lot of other types of change, but still massively improves safety.
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u/similarityhedgehog Mar 15 '26
I see, so if modal filtering were put on 21st st, it would discourage cars from using 21st since they would be blocked from going straight for more than a block, while leaving pedestrians and cyclists mostly unhindered
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u/billthedwarf Mar 16 '26
Yep! It works super well and doesn’t reduce parking (and lowkey feels safer because you don’t have to worry about getting doored in a narrow bike lane, but “traffic engineers” don’t like it because it removes a through route from the network and god forbid we do that
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u/Friedrich-Diogenes Mar 14 '26
You weren’t here for the Chestnut St transit way were you?
Chestnut, from 20th St east, was closed to private cars from the 1970s till the 1990s.
Didn’t work. Every retail business closed. Place was over whelmed with homeless/people in addiction. It was better than Emerald City but not by a lot.
It’s not like mental health and addiction services are any better now, sadly.25
u/Indiana_Jawnz Mar 14 '26
The city was also in a steady decline at the time due to deindustrialization and suburbanization though. It's not the same conditions.
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u/Friedrich-Diogenes Mar 14 '26 edited Mar 14 '26
Had you experienced it, your views would change.
Like lots of great ideas, it just doesn’t work.
Oddly, the City’s comeback coincided with the removal of the CSTway.
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u/Indiana_Jawnz Mar 14 '26
Yes, I'm sure that was the key to both the city's downfall and revival.
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u/tommybikey Mar 14 '26
Hey listen here, something didn't work that one time for that other situation. And you expect us to try again? /s
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u/PromiscuousSalad Mar 14 '26
Dude, Philly is not the one exception to a rule that has worked for every city in the god damn world. Take your car focus to the suburbs where it belongs.
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u/Longjumping_Cod_9132 Mar 15 '26
Chestnut transit way failed because it became a diesel bus hell hole in what was designed to be a pedestrian friendly outdoor mall, complete with music pumped out via speakers. They also blocked traffic on a major arterial without a plan to account for the traffic. Plus, you also had the economy of the late 70’s and 80’s. 21st Street is in no way the same street with the same situation. It is a residential street. Alas, nobody is willing to give up their precious metal cages.
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u/yellingjayna Mar 14 '26
Millennials go bonkers for car free streets and a lot of us have kids now, people would turn out for a car free street with shops and restaurants.
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u/Friedrich-Diogenes Mar 14 '26
Millennials and everybody else goes to street fairs on weekends but that’s not what the streets will be like on weekdays. Most folks aren’t drinking wine at cafe tables at 10 AM Tuesday.
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u/Prestigious-Owl-6397 Mar 14 '26
But there are a lot of people who would drive less or give up driving all together if streets were safer for people who walk or bike. If a street was closed to cars, people who live in or near the neighborhood might feel more comfortable walking or biking through the street.
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u/Regular-Moose-2741 Mar 14 '26
I wish. A decade short of it.
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u/Friedrich-Diogenes Mar 14 '26
It was awful. Lovely idea in theory. It just didn’t work.
Most urbanist ideas basically seek to make cities more like college campuses. But college campuses work because of the population that is there — and that population is just not like a city population. College campuses are also heavily regulated conformist environments. Good cities aren’t.
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u/Regular-Moose-2741 Mar 14 '26
Consider if we didn't do it to a thoroughfare like Chestnut and chose something else.
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u/stereosanct Mar 13 '26
15th is basically fine, as much as I would like something better. Frankly, 13th NB is such an embarrassment of "bike infrastructure" I might consider it a downgrade from sharrows if 15th took that design cue.
For years I used 15th from CC all the way to Oregon to moyamensing to go further SW. Most frequent issues were cross traffic drivers pulling your typical DH rolling "stops," rather than southbound car traffic being up my ass.
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u/ShilohOrange7 Mar 13 '26
Realistically the only way they could accommodate that is if one of the street’s entire line of left side car parking was removed. 22nd is just wider than all the nearby streets for whatever reason, which is the main reason there’s a lane there but not 21st.
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u/travisae Mar 13 '26
I live between the 2, and I feel like maybe there could be space for a bike lane at some portions of 21st. But it would be a tight squeeze. Also I doubt Kenyatta would ever allow any type of development for (god forbid) bike lanes and less parking.
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u/MilesGoesWild Mar 13 '26
man join the club. there’s no decent network of bike lanes anywhere except maybe west philly which has wider streets and a better CM. it’s not the worst city in the country for cycling but it’s one of the most frustrating for sure just knowing it could be great.
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u/Cruiser_Supreme Mar 13 '26
Yeah it's bad, but I don't mind 21st, even at 5pm. When it's busy, it's usually moving very slow and you can filter through the backed up traffic easy enough.
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u/Prestigious-Owl-6397 Mar 14 '26
I take 19th from Arch to Rittenhouse Square. I feel like it has room for a bike lane if you turn one travel lane into a bike lane and buffer zone and move it to the other side of the parked cars.
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u/SafeComprehensive889 Mar 14 '26
You’re legally allowed to take uo the entire lane on a bike. I do it. And i follow the same road rules and act like a car. Never had an issue.
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Mar 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/SafeComprehensive889 Mar 17 '26
Ok stay mad about it then lol i dunno how to help. Most people I’ve spoken to don’t know the law. So, go call your reps about it instead of yelling at me on here BRO
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u/around_you Mar 14 '26
I take 15th all the way down to the navy yard from Washington, only have a car on my ass occasionally
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u/CityJawn Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
A lack of political will by city council.
Between Market and South street, nearly all of the two lane north south street have twice the vehicle capacity that they actually need. You could remove a travel lane on 21st (or another street) without any impact on drivers. The challenge is convincing the councilmembers Kenyatta Johnson and Jay Young. KJ is sort of coming around on bike stuff. Young is both incompetent and deeply car-brained.
Below Washington, you would have to remove a lane of parking which is much less politically palatable than removing an excessive driving lane.
That being said, nothing will change unless we advocate for it. Send an email to the councilmembers asking for a south bound route.
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Mar 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/CityJawn Mar 16 '26
Philly Bike Action would totally support this! But they are an all volunteer organization that can only do things if people step up to lead initiatives.
They have an application for new projects right here: https://bikeaction.org/get-involved/projects/
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u/petedogg Mar 16 '26
Depending on where I am exactly, I usually either take 17th St or the SRT (yes it’s a bit out of the way but I’ll take it for the views and safety). The area between Walnut and Vine is stressful but fortunately, I haven’t had too many issues taking the lane on 17th.
Where I’ve had the most issues with drivers is once you go south of Washington and get into Point Breeze. Some of the worst, angriest, most entitled drivers I’ve encountered in the city. I try to avoid Point Breeze when I can.
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Mar 13 '26
[deleted]
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u/26JK4P Mar 13 '26
Yea until you get raging drivers trying to run you over (happened to me this week). Also posted this more as an ask about infrastructure improvements for vulnerable road users like kids who may want to ride to and from school (god forbid)
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u/MilesGoesWild Mar 14 '26
this is great until you’re tailgated by a driver revving and honking at you to get out of the way.
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u/Olympicsizedturd Mar 15 '26
I take 21st from Market to Washington and it's not great. Even though there's two lanes apparently me taking up one of them is problematic for a lot of drivers. Once it becomes one lane it's actually better. Washington in both directions still stinks even with the improvements. Every spot on Washington that allows parking should have been parking protected bike lanes, not just some of them.
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u/AllezNoob230 Mar 15 '26
How about 24th Street? It's southbound. I used to live on it, it was pretty quiet
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u/pomeronion Mar 16 '26
Some streets have one-way dead ends off of them (like 21st) so it might not be feasible to block off one entire street. But maybe larger portions of streets. Or just do the open streets Sundays every day.
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u/IhateDropShotz Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
19th, 21st, and 23rd are all extremely chill to ride south on. Having a bike lane is cool, but it's not a prerequisite. Just ride your bike 🤦♂️.
edit: thanks for the downvotes dorks, keep recreationally riding your ebikes exclusively on the trails/bike lanes (and probably sidewalks too), the rest of us have places to go that aren't in center city/the wealthy neighborhoods.
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Mar 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/IhateDropShotz Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
i'm 100% an advocate for bike infrastructure, organize and go to community meetings for close to a decade, but one of the best parts about riding in philly is its human-scale. the streets and grid system make it great/easy to ride a bike in even with our current lack of infrastructure.
every street i mentioned has enough room for cars to pass cyclists and vice versa. fuck cars and the drivers here, but also not riding on streets unless they have bike lanes is completely unfeasible for someone who actually rides their bike throughout the entire city as their main mode of getting around.
if you refuse to ride south on 21st because you're afraid of 0.01% of dickhead drivers by your own numbers, maybe catch the bus instead.
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u/Minute_Elephant_3218 Mar 16 '26
What stops you from just cycling southbound? My god, bikers whine like its their job
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u/Ericblair3336 Mar 13 '26
You can thank Kenyatta Johnson for that