This is an article probably only of interest to people who live in Philadelphia, although the average U.S. city may not be run a lot better. I firmly believe however that the average major city is run a lot better. We have a new mayor, and despite saying it is a priority to make our city “clean and green” she has not made it a priority to actually appoint anyone to run the Philadelphia Streets Department. Her main campaign promise, as I understood it, was to make sure that no people who have lived outside Philadelphia and no new ideas not invented in Philadelphia will be allowed to penetrate Philadelphia.

The Streets Department is in charge of designing, building, and maintaining all our streets and in charge of garbage collection and recycling. Some of the other candidates for mayor proposed to split this into two departments, with competent professionals in charge of each. As you can see from the article, the trash situation clogging our streets, storm inlets, and ultimately streams, rivers, the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean is blamed on littering and illegal dumping by citizens. But what I see is that much of it is the result of incompetent trash pickup and the nearly complete lack of a street cleaning program. I also see broken and damaged traffic and pedestrian signals all over town, often functioning but pointing the wrong way. Stripes wear off a couple years after they are painted and are not repainted for decades. And the number of drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists killed on our streets continues to climb. The police are no help on this last one, but I still think the majority of it is caused by incompetent design, incompetent construction oversight, and a virtually complete (incompetent would be overly generous here because it implies at least some minimal effort) lack of maintenance. The department undoubtedly has limited resources like all municipal departments everywhere, but a modern asset management program run by competent professionals would be the key to making the best use of the resources it has. Meanwhile people are literally dying on our streets and we are dumping more trash every day in the ocean, and it will literally be there forever.

I have come to believe that Philadelphia may be the most incompetent major city in any developed country in the world. Mayor Parker, prove to me that you understand and care about this, do something about it, and I will be your biggest fan.