The Bicycle Coalition has a grim but nicely done map and infographic of traffic deaths in Philadelphia. 115 and counting, including 52 pedestrians, 2 scooter riders, 11 motorcyclists, and 9 bicyclists (but I believe there was a 10th since these numbers were updated.) This is the worst in 24 years, according to the site.

Public opinion tends to blame the victims – pedestrians to some extent, and certainly bicyclists and scooter riders. Public opinion thinks motorcycles are just awesome, despite how deadly they clearly are. I see a trend of people riding motorcycles without helmets, which is just taking a huge risk with absolutely no reward to go along with it. Public opinion tends to blame the police to some extent for lack of enforcement. And last but not least, drivers tend to blame other drivers, because of course every driver considers themselves well above average.

As an engineer, I blame ignorant, incompetent street design first and foremost. I blame the engineers who are not up to date on best practices, ignorant bureaucrats who constrain them even if they are, and ignorant politicians who constrain the bureaucrats and engineers. On the latter, the outgoing Philadelphia mayoral administration at least has a Vision Zero program on the books, massive failure though it has been. The incoming mayor is not known to be a friend of safe streets, and is a proponent of the corrupt “councilmanic prerogative” system that allows ignorant politicians to overrule competent planning and design decisions in our city. The poster child for the latter, Kenyatta Johnson, is set to become the leader of our city council, by most reports.

So I am keeping my hopes and expectations under control. If in some parallel universe the incoming mayor asked my opinion, I would advise her to bring in new management for our streets department (I have no personal knowledge or experience with our current streets department leadership, except to note that they have failed to design safe streets, maintain streets, or pick up garbage and recycling as effectively as other cities.) I would ask that new management to at least bring our street design standards up to the safest level our state transportation department allows. I would ask that new management to put a professional asset management program in place to keep those streets in the best state of repair possible with the funding available. I would give that new management challenging yet achievable metrics and deadlines, and hold them accountable. That’s the relatively easy stuff. The harder stuff is dealing with the police, dealing with the state legislature, and chipping away at public opinion. On the latter, if pictures of dead and suffering children in Gaza are upsetting to people, can we maybe learn something and focus on showing and telling more stories about the risk and suffering street violence is causing to our own children here at home?