speed bumps
Ok to preface this whole blog post: it is based on some tweets I saw! Some people posted on twitter about brand new speed tables being removed in front of an elementary school in Mt. Airy and I thought that was ridiculous. So I did a RTKL request about it. And the whole thing is ridiculous! Twitter and the Streets Department!
Background: in Summer 2023, the City installed a bunch of traffic calming infrastructure on West Allens Lane, including in front of the elementary school. According to this Chestnut Hill Local article, parents were trying to get this in place for over a decade. They were very happy to finally get this in place.
Then three neighbors complained:
I know the City gets all sorts of complaints about every single decision that gets made. But in this case, the complaint is backed by the complainant’s friend, who happens to be the Sanitation Commissioner for the city.
Almost immediately, the Streets Department’s Deputy Commissioner for Transportation set up a time to personally meet with them! He apparently promised to reduce the speed table, and offered to look at ways to add more parking because of course these people had some complaints about parking too.
In some ways, I guess I am sort of impressed. I really want the city to install traffic calming infrastructure (curb bumpouts, speed bumps, anything) in my neighborhood and if I was well connected I would certainly try to exploit it. But it’s also insulting that parents had to beg the city for basic safety measures in front of an elementary school for over a decade, but when three well-connected cranks complain they got a personal meeting with a high-level city official and a solution almost immediately.
One neighbor who was paying attention to all of this set forth all of the ways the City’s responsiveness to a handful of people after years of ignoring the larger community is insulting:
And of course, here are all of the emails I got in the response: