When you say in the PennDOT manual, are you referring to PennDOT regulations or are you referring to a printed manual?
Is this a checklist that you follow when you go through Publication 201? I understand that you didn't physically make a checklist. Is there a checklist in Publication 201 or is there a checklist that your Department completes from time to time?
There's criteria in there. And you just essentially are going through the checklist.
When you say Publication 201, are you referring to Section 22 201 of the Pennsylvania Code?
I believe it's called Publication 201. I'm not sure it's part of the Pennsylvania Code. It's a regulation of 87 the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
Did you actually look at the regulation when you considered this particular project, or did you just go by memory?
How often do you do that, do you go by memory versus looking at the regulation? Is that something that you do normally or most of the time?
If I remember what the regulation is, I don't look at it. If I don't remember what the regulation is, then I look at it.
Can you just tell me right now off the top of your head in your memory what Regulation 201.51 requires? 88
It requires looking at the standard, volumes, crashes, circulation in the area. Then there's some specific --
Was your memory better 10 when you were doing this project in June and 11 July? 12
So how would you go through every criteria in 201.51 if you don't look at it and you don't remember all of them? I'm just wondering.
Well, this was a minor street. Most of the criteria really doesn't have effect, and making the particular minor street a one-way street is not going to cause a problem.
So in your mind, you just chose not to follow all the criteria to the letter because you felt it was a minor street and it didn't require complying with 89 all the criteria.
Well, you can't tell me what all the criteria are. How do you know they met it if you can't even remember them? You felt that you met the ones that you could remember, is that what you're saying?
I think the testimony was that if he can remember, he doesn't look at it; and if he doesn't remember it, he does. He hasn't really said that he didn't look at it in this particular case.
He said he didn't look at it. He said he remembered what it was. What about the community who live in that stretch of street, what investigation did you do to find out whether those residents supported or opposed this change?
We didn't do any. Councilman DiCicco would have been in contact with the residents, or his office.
How do you know? Did 90 you have conversations with Councilman DiCicco's office where they told you that they were in contact, or you're just assuming that?
I did have a conversation with a staff member in Councilman DiCicco's office.
I don't believe we discussed whether the neighbors knew, but I believe there was a request from the neighbors through Councilman DiCicco's office.
Do you know how many neighbors live on that stretch? Did you count the houses when you were there?
Do you know how many neighbors asked Councilman DiCicco to make the change?
I think if it was only one and there were a hundred against, I don't 91 think I would have gotten a request to change the street.
I don't believe most Councilpeople just do it on a request of just one person.
So you're just basing that on your assumption of how Councilpeople operate?
I think this is beyond the scope of his position. He's a traffic engineer and they make decisions based on the traffic patterns and the technical issues, and I don't think that he can testify regarding what decisions or actions are taken in the Councilman's office.
So you're saying you don't take into account any input from the community, it's not part of the criteria that you look at?
The community has input through the Council office and then Council 92 contacts us.
What about when the trial period starts, do you ever get input from the community at that point?
Sometimes, when there's opposition. When there's no opposition, we don't get any calls.
You don't get calls thanking you for doing something that they want?
Mr. Denny, did you also work on 800 Winton Street, or was Mr. Jordan working on that?
Okay. Even though that was also Councilman DiCicco's district? There was a change in the districts?
There's overlaps in the 93 districts with the traffic districts. Councilman DiCicco actually is in all four traffic districts the way the boundaries were drawn.
Were there any other jacket numbers that Mr. Jordan worked on?
The Darien Street change and the Commissioner Street change. Actually, maybe a Miller Street change.
Mr. Denny, are you familiar with these two projects in the absence of Mr. Jordan? Will you be able to provide us with information on them?
Well, I've read the response we sent to Councilman DiCicco's office on Commissioner Street and Miller Street which basically said that we found that the streets were -- there were requests to make them one-way and we found they were one-way streets so we posted the one-way 94 regulations. We didn't actually change the directions of the streets.
They requested you to make it one-way but you found that it already was?
Right, but they may have missing signs, so that's why there was a request. So we post the signs that were missing.
Okay, that's the case in Miller Street. That would be kind of an easy one for you guys, I guess.
The Christian Street one, though, looks a bit thicker. That looks like you did change from northbound to southbound direction. I see here an e-mail from Robin Schatz saying that they have a petition signed by everyone on the street supporting a change and that they understood that it would be an eight-month trial, but I don't see any engineering study showing any of the investigation that was done to determine whether it was a proper change. 95 Do you know if anything was done to investigate it?
Well, it's a minor street. It's a very narrow street. It's got parking on one side and it really has only one moving lane so it doesn't take a lot of investigation to determine it should be a one-way street. It's just a matter of determining which direction.
Well, if that was true, Mr. Denny, wouldn't every minor street in the City that has parking on both sides and one lane of travel be a candidate for a one-way designation? And in that case, why wouldn't your Department just be changing every street in every part of the City to one-way.
You mean narrow streets that have parking on one side? Yes, most of those streets could be changed to one-way streets without too much trouble except in cases where they do run into a dead-end. But most of those streets can be easily made into one-way streets; and if we get a request to do 96 so, we do so.
So when you decide that it's a small street and it's a easy decision on your part, is there any investigation that takes place?
We look at the street, look at the surrounding circulations, check the crashes, and make a decision based on that.
If something's going on in terms of crashes, it may make us look at that. Generally in most minor streets we don't have crash problems, but we do look at it before we react.
Right. But what would it suggest if you have crashes at a location? Does that suggest not to change it to one-way or does it lean towards supporting changing it to one-way. 97
If there were crashes, it probably would lean towards supporting making it one-way. If they were head-on crashes on a minor street, that would certainly indicate making it one-way. If they were intersection crashes, making the street one-way may eliminate a problem that exists.
But if there's no 10 crashes, you testified that you change streets to one-way without any crashes. It doesn't indicate that you should keep it a two-way just because there's no crashes, right?
It doesn't indicate that if there's a request to make it one-way on a minor street like this that we should keep it two-way, now.
Right. Whenever we look at anything, we look at the crashes just to see if there's anything there because we don't always see some of these minor streets. So when we're looking at a street, we look at the crashes just to see if anything else is going 98 on.
So is it the position of your Department that if a street is a minor street that the PennDOT regulations don't have to be followed to the letter, because you testified that you don't follow them to the letter, right?
No, they don't have to be followed to the letter on minor streets.
Familiarity with the regulations and familiarity with minor streets and how they operate. Some minor streets would be better as a one-way street than as a two-way street.
I understand that some streets would be better as one- or two-way, but when I looked at the PennDOT regulations, I didn't see exceptions.
PennDOT regulations are basically written for PennDOT in dealing with major streets, not with dealing with minor streets. They list a lot of criteria that 99 wouldn't apply to minor streets in there.
So you're saying there's an exception to minor streets in the PennDOT regulations?
There's not an exception, but some of the criteria just doesn't become applicable for minor streets.
Right, but that doesn't mean that you don't apply them. You can say, "This doesn't apply, this doesn't apply," but you can still go through the checklist of 13. But you say you don't even do that.
You basically disregard it if it's a minor street and just look at the crash data?
And the circulation. We're looking at the circulation and the impact patterns on that change.
We don't do a traffic 100 count. When we look at this from a trial perspective, we're looking at it -- in most of these cases, these are minor streets that we're getting requests for. We're looking at it with a minor street and its circulation and the impact on the circulation that it would have, how would people get in, how would people get out of that particular block.
You're talking about from a design point of view, not the actual -- you can't spend minutes one day and find 13 out what the traffic flow pattern is for a 14 street. But you're saying when you look at it 15 on a design perspective, what's the ingress 16 and egress throughout the whole section of the 17 street; that's what you're saying? 18
From a perspective 19 I've got a street that's coming in there. 20 I've got a request. I've got a hundred houses on the street. I've got a request from City Council to change the direction of the street from northbound to southbound.
Well, those houses now 101 will have 100 cars a day entering on different intersections and exiting from a different intersection. What is the impact of basically a hundred cars a day, maybe cars an hour in 6 the peak hour on that intersection? Does it 7 appear to be safe? Can we operate it safely? 8
Based on experience 11 from a minor street, a hundred houses, each 12 house has a car, so a hundred cars. You've 13 only got so much room that you can put a car 14 parked on the street. A house is 20 feet 15 wide, you got a 20-foot car, it's 100 cars that can park on that street. If all those vehicles got up and left that day, you've got a hundred vehicles exiting that intersection that day. That's what we're looking at. A hundred cars may seem like a lot, but a hundred cars are not a lot.
Can we go now to DS11035, which is 17th Street, Lindley Avenue and Ruscomb Street? Who is the district engineer for that? 102
Did you want to cover Alder Street or not? There's one last one in the 1st District, 1300 Alder, DS5665.
Actually, we just noted it was a small street, it was two-way, we could make it one-way either way, but we didn't have a request for which direction to make it so we had asked if it could be clarified as to which direction to make the street.
We haven't gotten a response back on that request, on our response. We haven't gotten a response on our 103 response.
All right, thanks. Kristen Del Rossi is in the 3rd Traffic District.
Could you come forward and state your name on the record, what district you're an engineer for? Thank you for being here today.
My name is Kristin Del Rossi, and I worked on 17th and Ruscomb and Lindley.
Ms. Del Rossi, was this change put into place as a trial period?
Was there any subsequent ordinance that was introduced for it?
Can you tell me the first contact you had concerning this area?
What led you to look at this as a possible change of direction?
I got a request from Donna Reed Miller's office to change the direction of 17th Street to one-way via e-mail, and we investigated and wrote up work orders to have it changed to one-way.
What did Donna Miller's office tell you was the reason they wanted to change the street?
We basically investigated the area, checked out the request and basically changed it one-way based on the 105 fact that there was a school in the area. That was why the request came in, safety of the children.
What did you do to investigate the impact on the school? I just want the different steps that you took.
Well, the steps are the same in every case. I mean, we check crashes, check the vicinity, check the pattern, you know, the same.
I don't know. I guess there wasn't anything significant 106 sticking out.
Is it the policy in your Department to look at the crashes but not to record the information?
Basically we look at crashes for everything, but we don't necessarily always write it down.
When there's a study, the crashes are in the jacket and, yes, it's written down.
So why would you write it down for stop signs and not for change of direction?
Because that would be a request for an all-way. We need to know how many crashes because it's one of the 107 warrants.
Isn't it also one of the warrants in the PennDOT regulations for changing directions?
But the one warrant for the all-way stops you do record it, and for the other warrant for change of direction you don't record it?
Excuse me. The one-way warrants and regulations, with the one-way or the change of direction of street, the ultimate authority is City Council. As far as an intersection control device, the ultimate authority is the warrant. The all-way stop sign and/or a traffic signal or modification to the traffic signal, we cannot put them in unless the warrants are met. But with the one-way regulation, again, the 108 ultimate authority is within the City Council.
Well, Mr. Trainor, I'm not going to argue law with you, but the way I read the regulation, the warrant for crash data and all the other criteria are for the 7 trial period, not for the ordinance for City 8 Council. You have to meet 13 criteria in 9 order to do a trial period. And that is 10 something that your Department does before 11 City Council takes action on an ordinance. 12 What I'm learning is that sometimes when 13 PennDOT tells you to take into account crash criteria, you do it to the letter of the law, and other times you basically treat it very informally.
From the intersection controls, yes, we look at them very closely. From a change of direction, again, majority of the change of direction that we receive are for small streets where the impact from a crash perspective is very -- even the existing crashes are minor in number.
Right, but it's a question of do you document it and write in 109 the file or whether --
The answer to that question is no because with an intersection control request, this type of request, the responses and the discussions that we have wind up taking place over a period of time, both with City Council and other people. So we have the documentation as to what we've looked at and what we've seen. In a change of direction of a street, we do not normally have a controversial situation. We look at it, we determine whether we see a problem with the accidents and the crashes. We look at it and we determine whether we have a problem with the circulation. If we do not have a problem with either of those cases, we inform the City Council that we do not have a problem with the change or the trial for the change, we make the trial change and we see basically what shakes out, to see if what we have observed from a crash perspective and from a circulation perspective is what we expected or is there something there we didn't expect. 110 Anecdotally, again, we had a situation at Second and Erie where we had a request to change Second Street south of Erie from two-way to one-way. It also affected Second Street north of Erie Avenue. We knew there was businesses that would be affected north of Erie Avenue and felt they could handled via Rising Sun Avenue. What we did not know was that a scrap metal company had a facility not only on Second Street but also on Sedgely which traveled back and forth between the two facilities all day long. And now all of a sudden this facility had to go around to Fifth Street up to Glenwood -- I take it back, it was on Glenwood, over to Fifth up to Sedgely back to Second. That was one of the things that shook out with that trial aspect, and everything wound up going back into place based on the company's and others conveying that information to the Council office that there was a problem with this new circulation, and we removed the trial.
So you're basically saying that when you institute a trial, then 111 if you learn of problems by people contacting you or the Council office, then you take that into account to determine whether it should be made permanent?
The people contacting us, in most cases, we will refer them back to the Council office if it's an objection. If it's a specific problem that they are pointing out, we will not only refer them to the Council office but we will investigate the particular problem that they're pointing out. If they contact us and say they do not agree with the change of direction because we cannot get from Point A to Point B like we used to, we will refer that information to the Council office. We refer them to the Council office. If they are calling up and saying that this change of direction has resulted in a situation at another intersection, we will look at that intersection to see what is occurring there specifically at that time, what is occurring there and is there a way to address that issue.
When you're dealing 112 with a bigger street than these little streets that we've been talking about recently, is there more investigation that takes place before the trial period is put into place?
So you could take a large street like Roosevelt Boulevard -- that's a little extreme. You could take a large thoroughfare that has a significant amount of traffic, Lincoln Drive, and make it one-way if a Councilperson wants you to?
If a Councilperson requested a change to Lincoln Drive -- let's leave Lincoln Drive because we can wind up involving the Fairmount Park Commission.
Okay. Let's take something in my neighborhood, Wissahickon Avenue.
Wissahickon Avenue, we would object to that, obviously. We would then build a case to support our objection.
But what if a District 113 Councilperson says this is what he or she wants?
I would say we were going back into the situation where I mentioned about St. Vincent where we would ask the City Councilman -- I would try to get the City Councilman, with St. Vincent Street which is smaller than Wissahickon Avenue, have a hearing. And from the hearing, we went out to the trial.
City Council. The Councilman actually introduced an ordinance to change that particular street.
No. We objected to that from a circulation perspective and an intersection safety perspective.
Can you give me that location and the approximate time that was?
It was St. Vincent Street just west of Castor Avenue, from Castor 114 west. It was one block. And do I not know the particular time. I don't remember that, but I'm sure I can find that.
When you object and refuse to do a trial period without being compelled by ordinance, in that case, did you do a study? Or what did you do to support your contention that you did not want to engage in a trial period?
I'm trying to recollect how much of a study we did. I believe we provided information regarding traffic. I believe we did provide information regarding the crash data. I can look to see what we have on record on this for that location.
Ms. Del Rossi, on this 115 one, you said you basically -- you went to site? Did you go to the school also?
There was a meeting at the school prior to Ms. Rossi starting with the City and prior to the request coming in from the Councilwoman. The Councilwoman had arranged a meeting because of the Ogontz Avenue project that we had under design at the time. So there was a meeting and it discussed making several streets one-way, including changing Ruscomb and possibly also changing 17th Street between Ruscomb and Belfield. The two decisions that came out from the meeting was that we were going to proceed with making Ruscomb Street one-way westbound from 17th to Ogontz and also making 17th Street one-way from Ruscomb to Lindley. Now, that was done because of the -- we were concerned about school children on a two-way street and they felt it would be safer to have just a one-way street with buses coming discharging 116 passengers. Children would only have to look one direction to cross the street and they thought it would be a safer condition. We looked at it at that time and we did agree with it. The formal request came in from Councilwoman Miller's office. I'm not sure what the time was. That's why we went and then made the street one-way. A lot of the work was done subsequent to Ms. Del Rossi coming.
You're testifying that was a situation based on construction happening in the area?
We went to the school because of construction that was planned in the area, and while we were at the school, they brought that to our attention that they would like to have 17th Street one-way. So we looked at it at that time and agreed with it. And when the correspondence came in from the Councilwoman to make the change, we made the change.
You're saying the school wanted a permanent change, not just 117 during the time period of construction?
Besides the community meeting and the sentiments of the people there, did you do any study to determine the impact of the change?
Yes, we did an investigation and made a determination after the meeting with the community at the school.
I think because that was in a subsequent project. When we got this request yesterday, we found what we could find. This is what we found. We didn't get a chance to find that other older information.