Saturday, January 16, 2010

Philadelphia Cycling Committee Meeting Tuesday January, 19 6:30 PM

Regular monthly City Committee meets at The Bicycle Coalition Office 1500
Walnut Street Suite 1107 on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 6:30 PM (6:00 PM
refreshments)

There is no scheduled guest speaker for this meeting, but we will be
discussing the turned up the heat under the Bykofsky stew, the Center City
District (CCD) Market Street/ JFK Blvd. bike lanes plan: Item #7, page 2 in
http://www.centercityphila.org/docs/CCDigest-Winter09.pdf

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

At what point does the Bicycle Coalition stop putting out press releases about Stu Bykofsky, that no one reads and takes some tangible action?

If your City Committee can't come up with a realistic plan of action, then its time to find people who will that the coalition will support.

Unknown said...

yeah speaking of which why doesn't the BCGP get a lawyer to take on the DRPA and DRJTBC in order to ensure equal access to these public resources?

Russell Meddin said...

Please come to the Philadelphia City Committee meeting to discuss your issues and comments. Please be aware that the City Committee is a forum to discuss bicycle issues that are of importance within the city of Philadelphia. There are county committee meetings for the surrounding areas of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. County Committee meetings are on the BCGP Calendar.
I look forward to seeing all of you and a lively discussion Tuesday evening.

Russell Meddin
Chair Philadelphia City Committee of the BCGP

Sarah C. Stuart said...

BCGP is organizing public comment on the DRJTBC plans for the Scudder Falls Bridge; public hearings tonight Jan. 19 and 20th.
Links provided here in this post
http://blog.bicyclecoalition.org/2010/01/take-action-bikes-peds-deserve-space-on.html

Regarding "tangible action," do you mean about the Spruce/Pine bike lanes, or the City Council bills? BCGP has taken action on both. BCGP helped convince the Nutter Administration to install the bike lanes and organized public support through turnout at the public meetings and letters to Mayor Nutter and City Council. BCGP's advocacy also contributed to Councilmen Kenney and DiCicco holding their bills. http://blog.bicyclecoalition.org/2010/01/meeting-with-councilmen-dicicco-and.html
Come to tonight's meeting and learn more.

Anonymous said...

If you need some direction on items that need “tangible action” here is some.
1. Stu Bykofsky – Mr. Bykofsky has written a series of about cyclists and bike lanes, each more outrageous than the other. Complete with cherry picked data and inflammatory statements that do not represent the average cyclist. The only response from the BCGP has been a series of press releases that no one reads. It’s time that the BCGP did something more than written a stern letter to the editor.
2. Kenney and DiCicco bills – These bills are nothing more than black mail. If DeCicco wanted to start a dialogue, as he has claimed these bills were, there are other ways to do it. The safety committee includes representation from both of their offices, which will create a biased report. If DiCicco and Kenney don’t like the report they will bring their bills back on line, so they are doing nothing more than black mailing the committee to give them answer that works best for them, instead of everyone who will be affected by this.

The bills are unenforceable, illegal, and its time people heard that: a local municipality cannot enact laws that supersede state vehicle code. Since bicycles are considered vehicles by the state of Pennsylvania. Worse yet the fines and penalties are punitive and far in excess of what any other vehicle operator can face for similar violations.

The answer to this problem is not “design by committee”, it should be leaders who lead. Instead of playing political footsie with black mailers like DiCicco and Kenney.

When the committee creates a plan I look forward to reading about on this blog.

Max said...

Don, I'm curious what ideas you have as far as "something more than writing a stern letter to the editor"?