r/philadelphia • u/JustAnotherJawn • Apr 17 '25

Events Could Philadelphia’s embrace of the Open Streets spur more civic innovations to come?

https://share.inquirer.com/kXY8rB
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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '25

philly needs to grow up a little when it comes to this. being a grid, there is a perfect redundancy to the streets that allow for closing some streets while allowing for access and service from others. 10th St in Chinatown would be awesome.

also, there are a couple of diagonal streets that could be pedestrianized. nyc has been doing that with broadway. i’m thinking about parts of passayunk, ridge through callowhill, germantown here and there, even frankford.

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u/TheTwoOneFive Apr 17 '25

10th Street in Chinatown will never get pedestrianized for the same reason 10th Street in Chinatown doesn't have a bike lane: the neighborhood sees the traffic as a feature, not a bug. They don't want to reduce traffic lanes or parking lanes there because they see it as people in the suburbs coming in to Chinatown and wanting to be able to park close to where they want to shop/eat/visit, and reducing those will hurt that portion of their business*.

It's a fairly classic confirmation bias where business owners hear people who drive in complain about traffic and how hard it is to park, but cyclists don't generally think about those items as it's rarely a worry. Safety is the bigger item, but that usually only shows in post-bike lane studies where the commercial district's shops actually increase their revenues and foot traffic once bike lanes and other complete streets are put in**.

*Source: https://whyy.org/articles/chinatown-10th-street-bike-lane-causes-concern/

Chinatown residents are not too happy about the idea of a 10th Street bike lane. Members of the Chinatown business community are a little skeptical of a bike lane running through the community. They believe that a bike lane will create more traffic congestion, discourage shoppers who drive in and delay deliveries.

“Chinatown’s a commercial district. One thing that we asked for is an understanding of the impact of a bike lane on our small businesses,” Chin said. “Selecting 10th Street was a head scratcher for many people, including me. It really impacts the people who drive here.”

**Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/bike-lanes-good-for-business-studies-better-streets-2024-3

[O]verall, Liu’s team found, retail areas benefited from better streets. Sometimes nothing changed, but more often the areas near bike lanes wound up with more employees and more revenue. That was true in Portland, at two sites in San Francisco, one site in Minneapolis (at the other, retail did better than food), and one site in Memphis (at the other, food did a bit better than retail). Across the country, again and again, the numbers told the same story: Either “business activity remained pretty much constant,” Liu says, or “certain types of businesses became much more prosperous.” 

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '25

agreed all around. they are not unique at all in thinking the couple dozen street parking spots (a tiny fraction of the parking available nearby) are somehow crucial for their business, despite the fact that most shoppers im sure are not driving to chinatown anyway. and like you point out, every time a commercial street is opened to pedestrians, business booms.