The answer is no. We cannot do things that might inconvenience drivers.

Yes. I walk more than I do most other things, so this is the one that endangers me the most. It's also one of the few that I have any faith that our city government could actually fix I'd they wanted to. So just keep moving if you don't find it important.

That's a far higher average than I would have expected. I've really only ever reported abandoned cars with it, and it's taken so long to get them removed that it may just be a coincidence when they do disappear.

Do you have any idea about what percentage of that stuff ever got fixed?

Yeah, it's the most Philly gov't thing I've ever heard: roll out a complicated (and presumably expensive) way to pay for something that you just give away free anyway. What a disgusting joke that idea is.

I take a both/and approach, but your example of Center City is exactly what I'm talking about. In the areas where there's actual enforcement, people behave better and it's overall more pleasant to walk/bike/exist. Sadly, because of all the baggage that goes with them, that area is almost entirely patrolled by the PPA, who are monumentally better at enforcing parking violations than PPD. If we could get a comprehensive enforcement division as efficient as the PPA that wasn't up to its eyeballs in political corruption, we'd really have something.

Instead, we have a city where the powers that be have decided you can just park wherever you want as long as you remove your tag and cover your VIN first.

You're not wrong. But I feel the number of votes you would get from protecting the bike lane would be roughly equivalent to the votes you would lose. The calculation could work for someone who thinks bike lanes are the right thing anyway.

My only disagreement with any of that is that, even if frequency, safety and speed are all improved, people still won't take public transit as long as driving is more convenient. Driving will always be more convenient as long as city government as a whole refuses to enforce any meaningful limitations on driving. When you can just drive where you want running every red light, blowing every stop sign and just throw your car on the sidewalk when you get there, that's going to beat a bus every time. Then, instead of paying for storage of your car, just put it on a bus loading zone at night or throw out a cone so that other users of the street are afraid to take "your" spot.

Actively making driving more expensive/harder is part and parcel of improving other transit modes.

I've always wondered why the at-large councilmembers don't raise any kind of stink about the prerogative. My understanding is that that whole system is informal; members just choose not to interfere in the districts of other members.

You know, I gotta hand it to you: some people who didn't know the answer to my question would have just scrolled past. I appreciate the extra effort you put into trying to convince me that the things I thought were important actually don't matter.

It's important to me. Since I'm real unlikely to be shot, being hit by a car while having to navigate around other cars that are parked inappropriately is literally the biggest danger I face on a day to day basis. Vote how you want based on whatever criterion you find important.

This is my first time even hearing that name. Let me do a bit of research; that sounds at least somewhat promising.

Well, that complicates things. It's apparently the one Darrell Clarke thing that I like. Damn, I wish elections weren't choices.

I hear you, but transit is complicated. I ride it because I like it, but recognize that other people won't until it's more convenient than driving (people are self-interested, you know). As long as people can just do what they want with their cars, it will always be more convenient to drive and transit ridership will be depressed. If people get out of their cars, they ride SEPTA. When people ride SEPTA, it improves. So, while I support direct efforts to clean and police SEPTA, I feel enforcing the laws on cars will actually have a bigger positive impact on SEPTA.

Yeah, whoever was the driving force behind that is my friend and I'm influenced to vote for them. Does anyone know who that was?

Inconveniencing walkers is worse than inconveniencing bikers

Inconveniencing bikers is worse than inconveniencing drivers

Inconveniencing drivers is the best

Maybe so, but "I believe our bike lanes should should be safe and usable, our crosswalks and sidewalks accessible to those with mobility issues or strollers, and our intersections should have sufficient visibility for drivers to drive safely" sounds a bit more positive and is a viable message for a progressive candidate.

You don't have to sell me, but I take your point. I'm looking for candidates that are actually serious about improving options for non-drivers. I firmly believe, though, that the first and easiest step to improving other modes of transit is enforcing the laws we already have about what you can and can't do with your car. I'm looking for candidates who want to do that.

That one looks like tons of fun!

TIL that we have a school for circus arts. This city just keeps on giving.

What are your kids interested in? Maybe you can get specific recs that way.

I'm gonna sign up my guys for the Fairmount Soccer Association in the spring, if that helps.

https://fairmount-soccer-association.constantcontactsites.com/

That's a ton of brands for one ghost kitchen (if you weren't exaggerating), but it's probably just a tiny kitchen with a bunch of ingredients.

Astonishing how "lawful gun ownership" almost inevitably leads to guns getting into the hands of those who are not law-abiding gun owners. How could anyone have possibly foreseen that?

I don't know. The power of inertia is extremely strong. However, the people who want the PPA out (because they want to put their cars wherever) would be very motivated. I'm fairly certain there would be at least one incident of violence or threats of violence over it (trying to get signatures that way).

People are weird about their cars and where they're going to put them. We can't just let people park wherever; the city would soon be covered with so many abandoned/unneeded cars that there wouldn't be room for anything else. That's why city leadership needs to make the unpopular calls on it (that's why we have governments). Unfortunately, we have the government we have, so they just say we can have a solution if we can convince 51% of our neighbors to agree. That way, no one at Council ever needs to make a choice.

Which brings us back to why "just opt in to PPA coverage" is totally inadequate as a response to why PPD isn't helping with this.

PPA opt-in is still insane for other reasons, though. The "voters" that you're trying to convince have probably noticed that instead of paying for a permit, they can have a reserved space for the low price of a stolen traffic cone and a threat to shoot someone, so their motivation to cooperate is low. But that's another whole conversation.