A wake up call for Secretary Pete

I’m not sure what qualified “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg to be Secretary of Transportation, other than him being a Democrat and the vice president’s job going to Kamala Harris.

As I predicted back in 2018, there was no chance Democrats would nominate two white men for president and vice president. I believe that is still true, into the foreseeable future. Soon it will be SOP for the GOP, too.

I believe Secretary Pete, as we should now call him, is a bright guy — the Navy veteran is a Harvard grad — but I think he is short on what President George H.W. Bush once called “the vision thing.”

Last week, he released a plan that would eventually eliminate all road deaths by the end of the century.

The first part of that — eliminate all road deaths — is laudable.

The time frame is laughable.

By the end of the century? You mean 78 years from today?

Talk about not overpromising.

He cites Oslo, Norway, population. 634,293, and Hoboken, N.J., population 60,000, that have achieved a couple of years with no pedestrian deaths. (The Washington Post story did not specify no “motorist” deaths, but we’ll let that pass.)

Credit was given to Vision Zero, a safety protocol invented in Sweden in 1997 to reduce road-related deaths that has gone global. 

It has many components, and the link will tell you more than you need to know. (Oslo admitted one facet of its success was enforcement.)

As I see it, the core principles are to reduce speed, and redesign roads to slow down motorists.

That used to be the job of the police, but Philadelphia police don’t seem much interested in writing traffic tickets.

In 2008, Philly cops ticketed 270,929 motorists. That number collapsed to 97,226 in 2018, a 65% decrease in motorists ticketed on Philly’s 2,500 miles of streets.

When I was at the Daily News, each year I reported the number of tickets written to motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists, cars parked in bike lanes, and even skateboarders. The tickets written to nonmotorists were laughably low, and when I asked a police spokesman why the number of tickets written to motorists was declining, he joked that maybe Philadelphians had become much better drivers.

You’ve been out there. Are Philly drivers getting better?

No rational person opposes traffic safety. But a rational person can question the tactics of Vision Zero.

You may have noticed “speed bumps” on streets around town, such as Schoolhouse Lane, to slow speeding motorists. The city calls them “speed cushions,” and are part of the city’s overall effort at “traffic calming,” which suggests traffic is nervous.

It is not. The problem is reckless drivers — those who drive too fast, who zig-zag between lanes, and increasingly those who blow through red lights. Enforcement seems to be beyond the city’s ability, so it decided to inconvenience all drivers.

On some streets, such as Pine and Spruce in Center City, the 25 mph speed limit has been lowered to 20, “enforced” by (poorly) timed traffic signals. It would be a valid tactic if it worked, but it doesn’t.

Some other tricks the city has up its sleeve from the Department of Streets website:

“‘Right-sizing’ includes traffic lane removal [fewer traffic lanes, more delays] or parking addition for road narrowing, bump-outs (curb extension), staggered parking, to create chicane-like conditions.” (I have no idea what “chicane-like conditions” are.)

“Pavement undulations refer to soft rumble strips, raised crosswalks or speed tables & speed cushions.”

I have noticed mid-block pedestrian crossings — such as on Arch outside the Comcast center, or 10th between Market and Filbert — that scare the bejesus out of me. The Arch street location seems to have a traffic cop there all the time. After generations of people being taught to cross at the corner, not mid-block, we are now told to cross mid-block.

Why? This is asking for trouble.

The core of Buttigieg’s plan is to reduce deaths by reducing driver error, by the end of the century. Here’s the lack of vision.

Does Secretary Pete believe that anyone will be driving their own cars by 2100?

Driverless cars and trucks are already on the road. When they are perfected — and they are close — onboard computers will make collisions all but impossible.

Doesn’t he know that? And why isn’t he directing his attention to fixing potholes, improving ports, modernizing airports, and finally giving America the equivalent of high-speed, safe trains that Japan and Europe have had for decades?

Asking for my grandchildren.