The bike testimony City Council did not hear

Locked out, that’s what I was Thursday morning, locked out.

Locked out of what, you ask?

Out of the City Council meeting that was going to hear testimony on the insane idea to ban even momentarily stopping in bicycle lanes, a subject I wrote about it last month. Council is supposed to start at 10. I arrived at 9:30, got in a line of well over 50 people, which did not move an inch. After a while, a City Hall employee came out and announced the chamber, upstairs and downstairs, was filled.

Why?

Council is also taking up approval of the Sixers Arena. Or disapproval. (Believe me, the fix is in.) Both pro and con were out in force.

Also the “no stop” bill, on which I was scheduled to testify. 

Unable to attend, I wanted to share my testimony with Council. Good luck finding a general email address on Council’s web page. 

Instead, I sent it to my Councilman, Mark Squilla, and asked him to forward it. I trust he will.

Now, you privileged few, can read the testimony, even before Council members. 

Here are my prepared remarks:

I am Stu Bykofsky, the CEO of Byko Media LLC, and an independent journalist.

I would like to comment on two issues today — the bill to prohibit stopping in bike lanes, and the OTIS scheme to erect small concrete humps on Spruce and Pine streets.

Others are speaking about the incredible, and unnecessary, burden this places on residents. I will take a different tack. 

We all want safety and there are many ways to achieve it other than in the disruptive ways being proposed. 

We could drop the speed limit to 5 mph, and I know some in this room would like that. But even that would not be effective without enforcement, and enforcement, ladies and gentlemen, is what we do not have. 

On June 16, the Inquirer reported traffic citations have plunged since the 1990s. A decade ago, while I was a Daily News columnist, I reported annually on the lack of enforcement against bad drivers, bad bicyclists, bad pedestrians. Enforcement decreased each year.

So let’s start here: Enforce the laws we already have on the books. Have police ticket speeding or reckless drivers. And also ticket the vast majority of cyclists who recklessly ignore red lights and stop signs.

Yes, I said it. Enforcement of those laws is all but nonexistent. 

How else to slow speeders? Speed bumps, speed cameras, synchronized lights that actually work.

The big push for concrete humps is being driven by the tragic death of Dr. Barbara Friedes. The humps would not have prevented her death because a drunk driver was going so fast he would have jumped the low barrier. 

As you should know, almost all bicycle fatalities occur at the intersection, not mid-block, and I know of no opposition to planters at the intersection. 

Now I turn to the low hanging fruit of the “no stopping” bill. 

At my request, the Philadelphia Police Department did some research. It went back five years and found not a single report of a cyclist being killed or injured at a stopped car. Not one.

Is Council aware of that?

Why were there no injuries? Because when a car stops in a bike lane, every bicyclist I have ever seen either goes up on the sidewalk — yes, they do — or carefully rides around the stopped car.

The bill the committee approved in great haste offers a solution to a problem that just does not exist.

Here’s another fact: Using the Bicycle Coalition’s own stats, bike commuters are about 2% of the city’s work force. That number has not budged even as bike lanes expanded across the city.

By the way, the Coalition is a partisan lobbying group that has been given partnership status with the city, something that ordinary residents and taxpayers like me do not enjoy.

The interests of the 98% of nonbikers have not been addressed. This bill should be held until it is amended.

Call it the pause that refreshes.

Thank you.