I did talk to members of the Councilman's office and made those statements and then I prepared a letter and sent a letter through.
Why didn't all of Stevens Road become one-way when the segments became one-way? Why did you leave a two-way segment in the middle?
The request came in at different times just for those sections. And I wasn't involved back when those two sections were made one-way so I don't know those particular details.
This is only a couple years ago, right, 2001? Isn't there somebody in the Department who looks at this says, "This makes no sense. If we're going to make this segment one-way, let's do the whole thing one-way." Why create one-way, two-way, 169 one-way within a couple blocks of each other?
As Mr. Jordan explained earlier, sometimes this is being done based on a traffic calming situation. I believe the first section of Stevens Road that was changed was right off of Byberry Road and was made northbound into Byberry Road, and I think that was back a number of years. The lower section was changed -- and I really don't know why, but it was really a request from them because they were the more direct route out to Bustleton Avenue. Could we picture this happening? Yes. And that's not only on Stevens Road, but also on Barlow. Yes, we could see the dominos falling, but --
But in this case you didn't turn them down. In Regina you said, "No, this is a bad idea." But this time you said --
If the Councilman did not accept our recommendation that Regina is a bad idea, we would be out there on a trial with Regina rather than Stevens. 170 Again, anecdotally, going back quite a few years ago, I'm now maybe talking 4 years ago, the streets south of Cottman Avenue 5 east of Torresdale were a one-way pattern 6 streets, it was one-way north, one-way south, 7 one-way north, one-way south, one-way north. 8 With the opening the I-95 on-ramp off of 9 Princeton Avenue, the one-way southbound 10 streets all of a sudden felt that they were 11 getting an increase in traffic, vehicles 12 coming east on Cottman not waiting or wanting 13 to wait for the traffic light at Torresdale 14 going down their streets. They made a request 15 in to us through the Councilman, the District 16 Councilman, to change the direction of one-way 17 street, the first one just west of Torresdale 18 to northbound. We objected to it. We felt 19 that there was a perception aspect rather than 20 an actual increase in traffic. And we also 21 felt that if we made the change here, it's 22 just going to go down the line. And within 23 three months of the first change, of trial, 24 every street southbound from Torresdale to 25 Frankford had a request to make it one-way 171 north. Within three months after that, they were all changed back to the one-way southbound and to make the pattern continue. And it stayed like that for quite a few years. Subsequently to that -- and I can't give you the specific dates -- only the first small street west of Torresdale has been changed to northbound. The Councilperson, I believe, also recognizes the domino effect in that area. Again, we could see that, yes, you make this change here, sooner or later -- the problem is we didn't know how sooner, how later -- this one is going to make a phone call, this one is going to get a petition, and we're going to be down the line. And what we have to do is try as best we can to put that together as these requests come in or to advise the Councilperson.
Doesn't that relate to the impact of traffic flow in adjacent streets that you're supposed to look at when you consider changing the direction of a street?
I would say yes, and that's why we said Regina Street is not a very 172 good idea.
What was the difference between Regina Street and Stevens Road, from an objective point of view?
It would have made the two-way section of Stevens Road dead-end. It would be no way for one of those directions to get out of Stevens Road. So de facto Stevens Road becomes a one-way street.
No, there'd also be worse impact making Regina Street the one-way.
I have not totally reviewed what's in this file. The letter on Regina does need to go into the file, but I don't know exactly what's in there.
All right, we'll take a look. The last one I wanted to look at was File No. TR30385 which would be Mr. Ali, the Haddington Lane 59 Street location.
Before you move on I'd like to clarify something. Please tell me whether or not I'm correct. In the Regina Street case that you recommended against, could the Councilman, as far as you know, still have introduced an ordinance and passed it and then you would have had to change all the street signs?
Yes. The Councilman could have insisted that we did the trial or the Councilman could have introduced an ordinance and then passed the ordinance and then we would have made the change. But that letter is basically a recommendation, and I 174 believe the Councilman followed the recommendation.
Right. The Haddington Lane 59th Street, it looks like in this case there was a bill 7 introduced by Councilman Nutter which predated the trial period, so it triggered the trial period. So I was wondering whether there was initially a request to have a trial period that was turned down and then he had to introduce legislation or he just started with legislation without contacting you first?
Well, initially they had contacted us and asked for our opinion. And we basically said that whatever your prerogative is, we will do it. And then they said, since it involved more than one block and it was getting difficult for them to kind of reach a consensus and we eventually had a community meeting also to get all the residents involved. And since the final say is with the District Councilperson, we were basically waiting for him to let us know which direction he would like us to post it and do a 175 trial. Somehow that fell through the cracks and the next we heard was it was ready to be presented in the Council. And in fact, it did go through the Council and an ordinance was passed. So then we just basically released the work orders we had already prepared and ready to kind of put them out and get the work done as per the ordinance.
The trial period started after the hearing. The trial period started after the Committee hearing but prior to the final passage of the bill.
He introduced the legislation, he scheduled a hearing, and then at that point you commenced the trial period?
It was that point that we -- as Mr. Ali explained, there was communication between the Council office, the Department and community. And it sounds like we're talking about three blocks of 59th 176 Street, with the Council office being the go-between, the point of contact with the community. There was discussion as to what they were looking to do. We were waiting for a response as to what they wanted to do, what direction, north, south. While we waited, legislation was introduced. We found out about it at the scheduling of the hearing and we quickly -- I believe we testified at the hearing and posted the signs on the trial. Our testimony at the hearing was we had no 13 objection to the bill because a lot of the work had been done from our perspective in advance although there had been no posting of the trial. We issued the work orders prior to the hearing and the signs were posted after the hearing.
Yes. We recommended that the bill be held for six months to allow the neighborhood --
I don't believe so. I 177 don't believe it was held, I think it just went through and was passed shortly after the hearing and then was signed by the Mayor shortly after it was passed.
The trial period may have ended up actually being maybe a month. I'm not sure how long it took from the hearing date until final signature. But if after we posted the signs, if there was a problem and the Councilman heard problems, he could have pulled the bill and not gone the final passage because I believe it required two readings before it would pass. So there was some time in there.
I'm not well versed enough on the PennDOT regulation to state definitively, but I was under the impression that the trial period was a mandatory prerequisite for a permanent ordinance.
The State Vehicle Code states that the direction of streets is the purview of local ordinance which, in the case 178 of the City of Philadelphia, is handled by Council. It doesn't state in the State Vehicle Code that the local authority has to actually following PennDOT regulations in those cases. PennDOT's regulations apply more to their state highways than they do to local streets in this case.
But under PennDOT regulations, the trial period is mandatory before an ordinance is enacted; isn't that true?
I don't know if PennDOT has regulations requiring a trial ordinance. That trial period is the City's requirement. It's not even a requirement. It's a process that the City has that allows the trial of trying something without making it law so that if it doesn't work or it needs to be modified, you don't need another law to modify it or change it back.
I don't have everything here with me, but I think it's part of our Traffic Code, the trial period, and that's not only PennDOT regulations, right? 179
It's something that we're permitted to do. It's not something that is required.
It is in the City Traffic Code, it is not in PennDOT's regulations.
I don't believe it's required. It's something that we are permitted to do and something that we in the Streets Department would strongly recommend that we do.
In terms of this Haddington 59th Street, there's a lot of diagrams in here, but were there actual studies that you did, Mr. Ali, concerning this?
Yes, an extensive study was done, basically reviewing the intersection, the street, all the blocks and looking at the crash history. If you look at the front part of my jacket, I have some comments over there. This was a typical street which was about 24 to feet wide. On 180 average it was about feet in width, parking on both sides and was typically used as a two-way street in the absence of any regulation. As traffic engineers, we know that parking takes way approximately feet. 7 A typical parking lane is 8 feet wide. 8 Parking on both sides at 16 feet are 25 total width. That leaves 9 feet which is barely enough for one vehicle to go through. So right from the start we were in support of making it one-way. The Councilman was having difficulty in determining which direction it would go because more than one block was involved and there were conflicting opinions. So they basically asked for our help, our assistance, in determining that. And so we had a major community meeting where all the blocks, the residents of all the blocks were present. And as a traffic engineer, I gave them a suggestion that one-way westbound would work better because they had one of the major concerns was traffic feeding in from 60th Street, that cut-through traffic, as you call it, and proceeding eastbound on this little 181 baby street. So I suggested westbound that would eliminate that movement. And basically everyone was happy, and we were just waiting for the final word from them to go ahead and post it, which somehow fell through cracks and took a long time. The meeting was in September of 2002 and the ordinance basically came up in June of 2003.
I'd like to clarify. That the community meeting he's talking about, he used the term "we," I believe the City Council office set that up.
Mr. Ali, you said in your jacket notes that you felt the current two-way operation was unsafe.
If it was an unsafe condition, why would your Department wait all that time and not implement the trial right 182 away?
Well, these little streets, as we call them, have been typically used two-way and the main users of these streets are people who reside on the block itself. And traditionally, they have been using them in either direction. And of course, if you live on a block for a certain time, you know, all your neighbors and everyone is basically understanding that, hey, there's a vehicle coming, let him go through. In the past we had tried -- and I recall specifically it was Councilman Happy Fernandez. We had picked up a couple of streets in West Philly which we wanted to make it one way. But since we need -- and tried to post it as one-way because we thought it was not very safe condition, and we were told to leave them alone because typically residents are used to using it two-way and if there is no crash problem or anything, why are we touching these blocks.
Why would you respond to an At-Large Councilperson with a change of direction request.
Because she was the one who objected to the posting of one-way. She wasn't happy with what we had done.
No. What we had done was basically there was one little street where people were complaining that it's difficult to go two-way because there is no physical room 16 for two-way traffic. So it was brought to our attention by the local residents. In this case, it was Drexel students. And we said, if you want to make it one-way they need to go through your local Councilperson. But a traffic investigator who was working there, he just went ahead and by mistake posted the one-way sign without the regular procedure. And as soon we had posted that, immediately we got a call. The phone call was from Happy 184 Fernandez's office basically asking us why we did it. We basically said that one of the people complained and the local traffic investigator looked into it and went ahead and posted it without doing the proper procedure. And we removed the signs.
That was like several years ago, more than seven years. And I believe we may or may not have records on it.
So you're saying that community members, residents asked for a 185 change; it was implemented in the trial period without the District Councilperson making a formal request and then an At-Large Councilperson intervened and you responded to what the At-Large Councilperson said?
Let me say it this way. We received a request. An investigator misinterpreted his instructions and posted the street one-way.
No. He misinterpreted his instruction as a missing one-way sign and posted the street one-way.
There was no ordinance 16 changing the direction of the street, so it had the effect of being a trial period.
There was a mistake. I'd rather say it as a mistake rather than a trial. We got a complaint from the Councilwoman-At-Large informing us of our error, and we corrected our error by removing the sign.
We basically informed Councilwoman Blackwell's office and if there is a request coming through them, we would respond to it. We never received any request or they never received any request from the block so that never happened.
But originally there was some request from the block, otherwise the mistake wouldn't have been made; somebody had to have requested it.
Yeah, but you need basically majority of the people living on the block to request a major direction change.
But that goes to the District Councilperson and the District Councilperson is the one who basically requests us.
But it doesn't have anything to do with how many people on the block you have.
The District Councilperson determines what they need to 187 institute the request.
It could be one person, because you guys never check and see who supports it and who opposes until people contact you.
You don't even know if anyone wants it. You just know that the District Councilperson wants it.
It could be the community is all opposed to something, in which case you'll hear about it and everyone will be in uproar as soon as the trial period starts.
Well, if everyone was opposed to it, I would think there would be an uproar and I think it would be made known to you that that was the case.
If you changed somebody's direction on their street where 188 they live and they don't want that, I don't think people would just sit back and just ignore it.
Mr. Trainor, to walk away from the several examples you just relayed to us, earlier you stated that approximately -- meaning yes as opposed to no, you granted approximately 90 percent of directional changes requested by a District Councilmember, is that correct, sir? Am I correct in my recollection?
I don't know that you can say that they grant because the Streets Department doesn't have the authority or ability to decide whether or not a direction will be changed.
Absolutely. The fact that they recommended and/or affirmed the request, they cannot grant it but they can affirm and recommend it. Would that be your recollection, Mr. 189 Trainor?
Again, much, much, much earlier we discussed the matrix that is used or not used to make these kinds of determinations. The question I have is, is it only based if there is an adverse effect, a neutral effect or positive effect? Meaning that to grant this change to the District Councilmember and for you to recommend that this change would be all right, would it have to have a positive impact on vehicular circulation, or would it only have to have no 15 negative impact?
Sir, you stated earlier as well -- and these are just the unrelated questions that wrap up the day. You stated earlier that most of the training is on-the-job training, correct?
What is the general qualification aside from the Civil Service 190 Exam for someone to become a traffic engineer? Are they generally civil engineers by training?
They are hired as a graduate engineer with a degree in civil engineering. And at that point in time, with our resources right now, we throw you in; you sink or swim.
Now, I know that, for example, surveyors, actuaries, other professions, there is a professional association, there are standards, there are examinations that are taken. Is there any comparable for the study of traffic?
The Institute of Transportation Engineers is the national institute. Locally we have MASITE, Mid Atlantic State Institute of Transportation Engineers which is a chapter of ITE. The ITE has recently come out -- and by that I mean about in the last five years -- with a certification, a national certification called PTOE, Profession Traffic Operations Engineer. A requirement for that is a professional 191 engineer registration within the state that you're working in.
Do you require and/or recommend to your traffic engineers that they join these type of professional associations for their development?
The Traffic Unit as a whole has a governmental membership within ITE. All the engineers are covered by that membership. The unit also has the ITS of America which is Intelligent Transportation Systems. We have a membership with that. A subcategory of that is ITS Pennsylvania, and I'm not sure where we stand with our membership on that because they changed the fee structures.
In terms of these organizations that the Traffic Unit collectively belongs to, how much professional development comes out? Because we do rely upon the expertise of the Streets Department and its recommendations. And you stated that it's a sink or swim situation with recent university graduates, you receive a lot of 192 OJT. How much professional development opportunity are they afford through these professional groups?
I'm going to say it's really very little. There's really no 7 requirement of a continuing education nature within the profession.
Sir, finally, the last thing I'll ask is, in a civil service position such as this, there is an exam, correct?
Someone of your capacity who would be the Chief Traffic Engineer, do you help design the exam?
The actual title Traffic Engineer only occurs in three -- I take it back; we just had a change. There's a Chief Traffic Engineer, the Traffic Engineer which are the two assistants, and we now have the District Traffic Engineer which is a civil 193 service title. Ms. Del Rossi who testified here today is not District Traffic Engineer. Her position title is still Civil Engineer I, I believe. She's, again, a recent hiree and she's working her way up through the tests. If it came about or when it comes about that it's time for her promotion that she reaches the level of a Civil Engineer II with, I'm going to say, five years experience and she's the only one qualified, we open the announcement, she's the only one that meets those qualifications, there is no test.
I just want to make sure I have this straight, you have a qualifications rubric for Civil Service type promotion. And if you only have one person with the entire Department that would qualify on paper regardless of direct knowledge and/or experience for that job, they get the job?
The announcement would go out it's promotional. If only one person applies for that job, they are No. 1 on that list. Then it is up to the division hiring authority whether they will be appointed. 194
Thank you, sir, for your time and patience today. I appreciate it.
The Committee is going to stand in recess until Thursday, August the 19th. And everyone under subpoena today should be attending the next session, they should regard themselves as being under subpoena also. And that includes, I think, Mr. Jordan who left earlier.
Councilman, with Mr. Jordan, I'm really not sure whether he can make it. He's undergoing specific medical treatment which, when he receives it, he is out for a week at least.
We wish him well. We think also he has important testimony to give. For that reason, we'll accept the proposal you will keemp in touch with us. Ms. Heep, perhaps you will be.
I will notify everyone of the date of continuance of the hearing.
There is a stenographer here so transcripts will be made of this procedure.
The hearing will stand in recess until Thursday, August 19th at 11:00 a.m. Thank everybody for coming today. (Hearing recessed at 3:00 p.m.) - - - - 196 C E R T I F I C A T I O N I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings of the Council of the City of Philadelphia of Thursday, August 5, 2004, were reported fully and accurately by me, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. RE: JOINT COMMITTEES ON LAW & GOVERNMENT and STREETS & SERVICES _________________________ Lisa C. Bradley, RPR