As Philadelphia prepared for another winter storm that could drop up to a half a foot of snow in some parts of the region, bikers still dealt with snow that remained unplowed in some of the city’s bike lanes days after snow fell Monday into Tuesday.
Thursday morning, snow still filled up multiple bike lanes throughout Philadelphia, including the lanes on Market Street, at 19th Street, as well as Spruce Street, near 21st Street, in Center City.
It’s an issue that the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia has been pushing for the city to properly deal with, according to the organization’s policy director, Nicole Brunet.
“We have been actively pushing the streets department to establish a written policy and they have not done that yet,” Brunet said. “Typically the way it works now is that they plow the streets first and then they go back and plow the bike lanes.”
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In February 2020, the city purchased eight snow plows that were small enough to sweep bike lanes, according to the coalition. However, the plows saw little use due to a lack of significant snowstorms in the region since then.
With more snow approaching Philadelphia, there are currently one to two smaller plows that could possibly fit in some of the city’s bike lanes, according to Brunet.
“For example, the 22nd Street bike lane below South Street, the section that’s parking-protected, is technically smaller than regulation size,” Brunet said. “The reason it exists is because the city made an agreement with the South of South Neighborhood Association that they would be maintaining that bike lane. Because it’s too small, they can’t get the smaller snow plow into that section.”
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Brunet also said that flex posts located near some of the bike lanes make the areas difficult to plow.
“If they go through the road and try to go into the bike lane they’re going to tear up all the flex posts and it will be a whole other thing to ask them to take out the flex post and then plow and then clean out the area to put the flex post back in,” she said. “I think that would probably open a can of worms that we would have missing flex posts for months.”
Ultimately, Brunet wants a better system in place.
“You can’t just say we’re plowing the streets first and then we’ll get to the bike lanes when we get to them,” she said. “That to me is not a policy. There needs to be an equitable share of maintenance for bike lanes as there is for regular travel lanes.”
Brunet said the coalition has raised the issue to the streets department under both the Kenney administration and the Parker administration. The most recent answer they’ve received is that the city is working on it, according to Brunet.
“We’ll just continue to push for them to establish a better policy in regards to bike lanes, sidewalks, actually allowing for active transportation users,” she said.
NBC10 reached out to the streets department for comment and were referred to the mayor’s office. We have not yet heard back from the mayor’s office.
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