Quote:
Originally Posted by City Wide
There were hearings last year about a City bill authored by Helen Gym that wanted to make sidewalk closings hard to get and much more expensive and I don't know what has happened, if anything, to that bill. The build trades council and some developers spoke against the bill saying it would drive the cost of construction up.
I think this sidewalk issue points out an interesting dynamic that takes place on this forum, most posters are pro development (build it!!!) and sing the blues about red tape and some requirements that make building in Philly more expensive, but then also want to have safety standards tightly enforced and are often for adding more requirements, like open access to sidewalks (if NYC can do it, why can't we?).
The problem is how to have a bill that covers 15th & Chestnut where sidewalk access is dearly needed but not cover other areas where its not such a big deal. The devil is in the details. What about out at 23th & Market, are the sidewalks important out there? And since most new laws don't include a sunset provision once they are passed we are stuck with them.
|
You are tight about the tension between "build it" and concerns of safety/pedestrian access. I am sure I take contradictory points of view on here all the time (or at least have contradictory thoughts since I'm not a super frequent poster). However, I am always dubious about claims of "red tape making it impossible to build" by contractors in the case of pedestrian access when I think it is often convenience rather than expense (ie they want to close the sidewalks so they can park their cars there), laziness (how often do we see sidewalks blocked for construction when there hasn't been a worker on site for weeks?), lack of forethought, or failure to think outside the box. I realize some sites are really complex like the W, but I know that they could handle it somewhat better.
I will say that the issue is almost as big outside of center city as in it -- sidewalks are important everywhere people go so I am not sure that should be the main determining factor. This arises constantly "in the neighborhoods" and is one of those minor quality of life issues that add up to make the city so much less liveable than it could be. Often, for example, pedestrian access can be maintained simply by moving the pedestrian right of way into a parking lane, but that step is skipped. The city's utter failure to police overzealous sidewalk cafes is another utterly fixable problem in the same vein that the city seems to have no interest in addressing.