Yes, Charlie Trainor again. Your question was, if the Councilperson did not support and therefore would not introduce an ordinance or a bill 20 would we post a trial. We would not post a trial if a Councilperson did not support that.
Even though it's possible that with a trial period underway the position of the Councilperson and the community could change; wouldn't that be true? 50
We would have the request -- we would at least have a request from the Councilman. Whether -- the Councilman doesn't need to introduce --
Excuse me, can I interrupt? You say "Councilman," you mean District Councilperson?
When you said "Councilman" previously, you mean district Councilperson?
And that's just a practice of your Department, right? We've established that; it's not a rule or regulation?
We get a request from the District Councilperson to change the direction of a street. At the time of the request, a bill does not need to be introduced. The request from the District Councilperson is sufficient for us to investigate the change, and if we are in agreement, we don't see any problem, for us to 51 post it.
I understand, but this was a request from a State Representative and that wasn't sufficient to initiate anything.
And if the Governor made a request, would that also be your response?
And if the Congress Person for that district made that request, would that be your response?
So the only person who gets any response from your Department, are you saying, is the District Councilperson?
For this type of request. A request to change the direction of a street or a request to change parking, both of which require an ordinance, the requesting party is referred to the District Council 52 Office. If there's a request for a no truck parking p.m. to 6 a.m., which is covered in 4 the City Code -- truck parking, commercial 5 vehicle parking is prohibited within a hundred 6 feet of a residential property between the hours of 6 a.m. or 6 p.m. The only way that is enforced is having a sign up. If we receive a request from an elected official, and I'm not including committee people and ward leaders in that, the Councilperson, the State Rep, Congressman, State Senator, we would post that sign based on that individual request.
So to summarize, if the request requires an ordinance to be passed by City Council, you require the District Councilperson's approval, pre-approval of the request?
We require that the request -- for our action, that the request originate in the District Councilperson's office.
If a request comes in -- let's say this one came in from State 53 Representative Taylor and it went to Mr. Jordan. Let's say that it bypassed your political screeners and it got to the district engineer and Mr. Jordan began to investigate and commence a trial period without getting the District Councilperson's input and interest in this, would he be subject to discipline in your Department?
Mr. Jordan's position as a District Traffic Engineer, he should have the knowledge of the procedures and the policies. And he would take that request and respond back to the State Representative's office that that request needs to go through the City Council Office.
Through his training and experience as he's coming up within the District Council. A new traffic engineer or a new engineer, as they receive these requests, they are going to be asking the senior staffs what to do with them: "I just received a request for no overnight truck parking from a resident of the block; what do I do with it?" We inform them as they're coming through what to do with these things.
And is that part of the training materials for new engineers?
It's basically on-the-job training for new engineers, at least in the Traffic Engineering Unit
That's the case for whatever requests that come in even if it's from 500 neighbors in an area, if the one person doesn't approve, which is the District Councilperson, then that traffic engineer can't engage in any further work on that 55 request?
We, the Streets Department, have made suggestions on changing direction of streets to eliminate what I was talking about earlier, a three-phase intersection. And if we do not have the District Council support, we do not proceed with that change.
What about the Mayor? If the Mayor tells you that he wants you to do a certain project, are you telling me that you won't do it if the District Councilperson disagrees with the Mayor?
Again, the direction of the street is determined by ordinance, so a City Council ordinance is required. And I would strongly -- I can't say with the hypothetical how far, but I would strongly suggest that we get the District Councilperson on board.
You've been working in the Streets Department for 30 years; is that what you testified?
And in that 30 years, have you ever received a request from a Mayor wanting to change the direction of a street?
And would you always be the one who would have known in the past 30 years whether a Mayor has requested a change of direction?
And are you telling us in your testimony today that if the Mayor wants a street changed in terms of direction, that your Department will tell him, "No, you have to get the District Councilperson on board first"?
It sounds like the old days when at budget hearings the Councilmember would call in the Streets Commissioner and say, "I want a list of all 57 your employees." And as soon as he got it, he crossed off a number of them and said, "They've got to be off the payroll tomorrow morning." That's what led, you know, to the Charter reform movement, was that Council claimed to have that power, and in the opinion of many people had it. That's what led to the reform movement. It looks like we're back to the good the old days apparently.
Your testimony is that it's not an absolute no. The Mayor can weigh in and suggest a change of direction of a street and you guys are going to work on that?
If we receive -- we would work on it to determine whether it's an appropriate suggestion perhaps, but we would also inform the Mayor and the Mayor's Office that a City Council ordinance is going to be required for this.
Right. I would assume the Mayor would be aware of that when he made that request.
That does not mean 58 that we would necessarily post a trial.
But you wouldn't categorically say to the Mayor -- send him a letter saying, "Mr. Mayor, go to the District Councilperson and have the request come from him or her"? You wouldn't do the same thing that you did to State Representative Taylor?
All right. Now, what about if the Council President makes a request?
I would probably -- a letter may go back to the Council President if it's outside her district.
That this request should go through the appropriate District Council Office.
If I may interject briefly, Mr. Trainer. Earlier, the question of a no truck parking sign, an example that you brought up -- if several neighbors were to call or a couple hundred neighbors or an entire block 59 and said, "I don't want the truck parking from the hours of p.m. to 6 a.m. on said block," 4 you would refer them to the District 5 Councilperson? Would that be a fair 6 assessment, sir?
Well, then would you walk me through how that would work if me and my neighbors decide that we didn't want truck parking?
If you alone made the request in writing to prohibit overnight truck parking on your residential block, we would post the signs. It takes one resident on the block in writing to make the request. If the request came from an elected official, District Councilperson, a Councilman-At-Large, State Rep, State Senator, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator, we would post the signs.
Thank you. Now, something such as truck parking does not require an ordinance, but looking at things that require an ordinance, one of the things you spoke to earlier -- and please, 60 sir, correct me if I'm wrong. The directional change of a street, that requires Councilmanic ordinance, correct, sir?
And you went through the entire litany of individuals that could request but would not be granted a request, only the District Councilperson could be granted such a request, correct?
And looking at that, sir, prior, for something as simple as truck parking, community input would be worthwhile. In something like a directional change, is the community's input of little or no consequence, or is it something which goes into the factors of your assessment?
The community input would be factored in with the Council Office, not in traffic engineering.
Okay. Looking from a traffic engineering point of view, earlier there were examples mentioned during the testimony today that perhaps politics more 61 than safety or more than traffic engineering or more than signs was at the root of some of these changes. Looking at that, how does one assess the safety? I guess the question I'm asking, sir, is, there are certain requests that come to you that you must not do. There are other intersections you look at and know they're unsafe. Is it possible that in a reactive system such as this, positive changes are missed, proactive changes for the general safety are missed because they're not requested properly?
The actual end of the question, can you repeat that question again, the end of it?
Yes. Is it possible in the way that this system is structured requiring Councilmanic ordinances for certain types of traffic changes that if a request is not made, positive impact for the public safety is missed?
If a request is not made, I would say, yes, there could be a 62 positive impact that is missed.
So, for example, the community could ask -- they could petition you, but the District Councilperson may not agree and, therefore, nothing can be done?
That is correct. At that point in time or even during the course of receiving a petition or a request, we would try to find out what is problem, what is the concern that they are trying to address with that particular change, and is there another way of addressing that concern.
Okay. If I may ask Mr. Jordan quickly, and then I will yield to either Mr. Masters or Mr. Jaffe. Mr. Jordan, in your earlier testimony, you were talking about vicinity of one of the cases that you and Mr. Masters discussed. How do you define vicinity in one of your traffic assessments? How large an area of impact would you say is relevant to making your judgments?
Oh. Sorry. Vicinity, a couple of blocks because you need to see how people would logically get to the street if you change the direction, how you're going to go there, how you're going to leave there, and what your most apparent O&Ds would be, origins and destinations would be, and try to figure out how the traffic would be forced to go and whether that's a benefit to those people in time savings, can they get there from here type of thing, will it overload another intersection that may be congested and we actually prefer that it be going the other way. So vicinity is a couple of blocks until you're -- in this case, it's a baby street until you get onto a real live larger road that kind of goes someplace.
So for a small residential street, maybe you're looking at an area of three squares, north, south, east and west? 64
Yeah, by 3 is 3 probably about all you'd need unless there's some peculiarity of the traffic flow and you got boxed in and needed to look a little farther. A railroad track through there and some of the streets don't get through or whatever.
And in doing what you do, sir, you would consider yourself an expert in how traffic should flow, correct?
As a result of that, do you get to do much proactive work, or is most of it reactive to requests? Do you go out and independently assess what is going on in your district and you make recommendations to the appropriate people who make the requests; or are you forced to wait for requests to come in and make a judgment based on the request?
Nothing's ever stopped us from -- if something occurs to us and then if it's a one-way or a parking thing, since that is per the pleasure of Council 65 ordinances, it's not me who decides; it's people at City Council, not State Council, not the Mayor, not the President. But there's nothing to stop me from calling up. And one of the beauties of the district engineers is that we know the staffs of our Councilpeople quite well. So it's easy for me to call somebody in Darrell Clarke's office or in DiCicco's office or Anna Verna's office and say, "Have I got a suggestion for you to alleviate this problem." Because sometimes people will enunciate a problem and then ask for a solution which may not be the best solution. Sometimes you have a solution that might work a little better and you could suggest that back to them because we have this back-and-forth. Let me make one more comment about one-way street changes.
I suggest that in some cases where it's controversial or not everybody agrees that secret ballots are more effective and more accurate than petitions. 66 Petitions have a problem of one person on the block wants the change, and you like that person. You don't agree with the change, but your kids play together, you're neighbors and you say, "Well, Frank said okay," and so a lot of people sign petitions just because they don't want to get in trouble with their neighbors, they value their friendship, neighborliness, et cetera, et cetera. And also, when a petition goes out, the facts of the case may not be completely presented by the person who wants said change. Whereas -- I learned this from some of the Councilpeople. What they do in those situations is they say, "What I want to do is send every house owner a letter saying, 'This is being suggested, here are the plusses, here are the minuses, what do you think? Please mail it back to my Council office.'" And we can count without the peer pressure and then be more certain that everybody got the correct set of information. So sometimes when it's a little controversial or people disagree, the Councilpeople will do 67 that voluntarily and sometimes that's a good idea.
Now, following one of the secret ballots you described or a petition, a District Councilmember -- and it's no consequence whom -- would approach you and say, "My constituency has requested a directional change and I'm asking you as an expert in traffic whether or not this is a good idea," do you respond in that capacity to say that circulation would be negatively impacted or may have a negative impact on the general traffic flow? Or do you say, "Sir or ma'am, if your constituency asked for it and you request it, you shall have it"?
I'd like to raise a few routine questions, and you can tell me who might be in the best position to answer them. They're general questions about the Department, the number of employees, how it's operations are directed, what are the main 68 functions and how are those main functions performed organizationally. Is there someone here who could testify briefly to that? I understand -- is Mr. Doyle here? I don't know the organization chart enough to know whether you're the highest level person here or not. I'm not familiar with all your titles, but it seems to me that you or somebody in a like position could answer them. Do you know how many employees the Streets Department has?
My name Joseph M. Doyle, Chief Street Lighting Engineer. Councilman, my sole responsibility is the Street Lighting Division within the Department, and we currently have employees in the department 18 in our FY 2005 budget. That's the extent of 19 my responsibility for the Streets Department. 20
So then you would 21 not be in a position that I thought you would be as a result of your title. Ms. Heep, do you have a suggestion? Just generally I'd like some background information about the Streets Department, its 69 functions and how it operates, what kind of divisions does it have or departments does it have that relate to each function.
Councilman, I don't think anyone here can tell you about every other department because they're pretty specialized. But what I can do is I can get a chart for you and provide that information for you.
Could you have it at the next hearing that we have? We'll be announcing the date of it before the end of this one.
All right, thank you. Mr. Doyle, I understand that there will be no questions that would involve you so that you may feel free at this point to leave the hearing if you wish to, or to remain as an observer or whatever other capacity. But there will be no questions in view of your clarification as of today.
All right. 70 There's one question I have. When the request comes in from, say, from his or her Holiness, the District Councilmember -- I say that with respect. I served for some years as a District Councilmember before I graduated to become Councilman-At-Large. Is there any contact between the Streets Department and any other agency government to see how it impacts? For example, where I live at home on 16th Street and Olney, there was a recent fire and I've been getting complaints at the corner of Ogontz and Olney that -- newspapers were covered with it for a few days. But I got many complaints from people who tried to get down to the expressway through 20th Street, and that's been the subject recently of an ordinance passed by Council that apparently acted on what was presumed to be the approval of the Streets Department to eliminate the southbound traffic. I'm told that the people in the Fire Department were very upset when they learned that because they all tried to get down to Center City or to Broad Street or 71 to the expressway and were blocked in doing that. Then I've had other occasions over the years as a Democratic Ward Leader in that area to receive complaints, for example, on snowy days. If the street was a one-way street and somebody got ill and needed the attention in the medical department or the Health Department and a street was one-way and it had not been noted or it had been changed recently, I would get called sometimes in the middle of the night saying, "There's no way. We got a request for help for a certain person, but there's no way of getting into the street; it's now one-way up hill," or something like that. Now, I've always assumed, but I don't know whether it's so or not that before changes are made that they're carefully checked with other departments. Now, is there a routine procedure for that or does that happen only when somebody calls attention to a problem or does it never happen?
The shake-down during the trial period would be something that we would hear about, but that's a situation that we may want to have to correct as far as our notifying them like we do with permits. When a street is closed for construction or for development, we issue a permit from the Streets Department, and the Fire Department and Police Department are on the receipt of that. So this is a good -- we can take that back, and as we go into the trial stage prior to the posting, we can notify and we probably should notify both police dispatch and fire dispatch that this is occurring and when it will occur so that they can ensure the apparatus is notified.
Doesn't it seem strange not to involve the other departments? Wouldn't that be part of a study made of traffic requirements?
Again, the biggest 73 thing what we're looking at is the circulation perspective and a safety aspect and efficiency of the intersections. As far as the emergency vehicles, we do have one-way streets all over the City and it is a normal situation for the City to have one-way operation. And Streets notifying them ahead of time that we're making the change allows them to then reorganize their aspect.
You're going to make me think about that. Thank you. Mr. Masters.
We didn't excuse him. Do you know if he's temporarily gone or if he has left the building?
Ms. Heep, it looks 74 like we had requested Jacket No. DS12262 which was a change of direction on Almond Street. And instead, we've seem to have provided with Jacket No. DS13414 which was a change in no 6 truck parking signs on Almond Street.
I think that particular piece of correspondence got inadvertently inserted in with the other correspondence.
Well, there's a lot of documents dealing with no truck parking on Almond Street, two that are labeled DS9868, but there aren't any that are labeled DS12262. The 9868, I believe, was a request from State Representative Taylor and then DS12262 was a request that was done by Councilman DiCicco, but I don't have any of the documents here.
The three work orders deal with the one-way pattern. And unfortunately, the wrong DS number is entered on all three of those work orders. But that actually dealt with the request from Councilman DiCicco to change the direction of Almond Street. In the inclusion of the letter from 75 Representative Taylor about no parking signs is inadvertently attached to these work orders
Okay, but it also says Taylor DS13414 and not DiCicco DS12262. You're telling me that these are actually from the jacket of the 12262 from DiCicco?
The individual who wrote the work order was given the instructions to write the work order to change the direction of the street and inadvertently put the wrong DS number down on it. He had two jobs on Almond Street, he wrote the wrong DS number down on these work orders.
These appear somewhat illegible, at least my copies on those three work orders. There's notations that are very difficult to read. I also wonder whether there are any other documents associated with that jacket since there's no request from Councilman DiCicco that I have and there's no 22 record of any telephone conversations like Mr. Jordan did in the other one. All I have are three work orders that are graph paper looking sheets that sketched out intersections with 76 arrows and then illegible notations next to them. Is it possible that there are more documents in that jacket that I don't have?
There is an e-mail correspondence from Councilman DiCicco to our office requesting the change in direction of Almond Street. And I had also had talked to someone from DiCicco's office concerning these changes.
Yes. Mr. Jordan was not available at this time. This was done to do the work, so I was the one who was involved in the communication with DiCicco's office.
Again, this work isn't finished. We haven't finished it and closed out the jacket. Not everything was in the same general location.
Could we be provided with the extra documents that we don't have?
There are other 77 documents we need to provide you on this particular one, yes.
Can you tell me briefly about this? So Councilman DiCicco did forward a request at the initiative of State Representative Taylor on this? Is that what happened?
Either the constituents who contacted State Representative Taylor also contacted Councilman DiCicco at the same time or after our response from -- they got a response back from us to Representative Taylor. They then contacted Councilman DiCicco. But somewhere in the process, the people who live on the street contacted Councilman DiCicco's office.
The notations in the database I have is that this involves Almond Street, Huntington, Albert Street and Almond Street and Almond Street and Harold Street. But the notations in the work orders I have something that looks like T something Street, T something K Street and Almond Street, Gordon 78 Street and Almond Street and Dakota Street and Almond Street. Are these related to the same job?
I think when someone got the request, the wrong work orders were grabbed here, from the looks of it, and you didn't get the right work orders. So we inadvertently gave you the wrong information.
But again, this wasn't a completed file so we'll have to go and find the particular file for this. Again, the work was just recently done but we haven't closed out the file.
Was the street changed from two-way to one-way, or was the one-way changed from one direction to the other direction?
Well, we can run the trial period up to eight months. It started in July.
Right. So we need to gather the data up and send the information over that we did the work to Councilman DiCicco's office. He would then introduce an ordinance and have a hearing.
I understand. You're the one, Mr. Denny, you're the one who conducted the preliminary work on this before the trial period was put into place?
I looked at the streets, 80 I checked crashes, I checked what volumes we had.
Let's back it up. When you looked at the street, did you physically go out there or did you look at a map?
What does it mean to go out and look at the street? Do you do it during certain times of day? Do you do it a certain number of times? Or do you do one quick go-through and that's it?
It depends on the street in question. Almond is a very minor street, so generally it's one visit. If it was a more major street, there would be more visits involved and probably we would do traffic counts also if it was a more major street.
So you didn't do traffic counts, other than when you were there you must have counted the cars that went by?
We observed the cars there, but it's a dead-end street on both ends 81 of its run.
I, at the moment, don't know the date that I visited. Maybe July or June. I don't remember.
It was a narrow street with parking on both sides. It was two-way. There was only room for one vehicle to go through on the street so it would have been better to have it as a one-way street than as a two-way street. There was only room enough for one through travel lane.
In other words, there's three lanes; there's parking in one lane, then there's a travel lane, and then there's parking in the other lane?
It's a dead-end. There's a little stub of a section north of 83 Lehigh Avenue. It runs to the railroad tracks. And then from Lehigh down to Huntington, it dead ends at both ends, yes
It's hard for me without looking at a map to understand this. I would think a street that dead ends on both sides would be a difficult street to enter.
I'm sorry, it's a T street, yes. I'm sorry. I'm using the wrong phrase.
A dead-end on both sides would be a difficult street to enter, I would think. So besides going there for 20 minutes and looking during the morning on a weekday, you said you looked at crash data?
I don't know that I recorded it, I just looked at it. If I needed to record it I would have printed it out when I looked at it.
In any of the intersections, less than one per year. And I don't believe we had 10 in 5 years for the stretch involved. It was several intersections involved.
If you can't remember exactly, wouldn't that be a reason to actually print it out and put it in the file so that you knew exactly what you looked at?
If I wanted to look at it again, I can always go and bring it back up again and look at it. 85
I can provide you with a copy of the crashes for the stretch, yes.
What else did you do besides look at crash data and visit the site?
Made the evaluation and then talked to the Council and then gave the instructions to the investigator to go out and prepare the work orders.
When you say made the investigation, I'm trying to understand what that means. So you looked at the site, you looked at the crash data; did you consult any criteria?
I considered all the -- what I observed. I knew what the criteria was; I didn't actually look at the criteria.
Well, there is criteria that's in PennDOT's manual for making streets one-way, but it's basically what the circulation is in the area, where would the traffic go -- the traffic that you're 86 detouring, where does that traffic go to, can that be accommodated on the parallel Streets.