Also this issue: From Blight to Right Making sure there is real transformation in the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. -Patrick M. Starr

October 24-30, 2002

cityspace

Victim of Success

by Daniel Brook

Center City District (CCD) has taken aim at the growing number of cars heading into Center City with a new campaign to encourage people to take transit downtown. While most Center City office workers use mass transit, most visitors drive. This has resulted in the bizarre fact that Saturday evening inbound traffic jams on the Schuylkill Expressway are frequently worse than those during weekday rush hours.

"We see this as a really important issue in terms of quality of life and in terms of the business environment downtown," says CCD spokesperson Elise Vider. CCD has to "promote alternatives to the automobile to help Center City stay competitive," she says.

In terms of traffic, Center City has become a victim of its own success. The boom in restaurants, nightlife and entertainment downtown is luring suburbanites. According to CCD, there was a 170 percent increase in fine-dining restaurants in the past decade. But the success has led to more traffic and a seemingly unquenchable demand for downtown parking lots.

How much can CCD really do to discourage driving? In its quarterly newsletter, the organization singles out Jefferson University of all institutions for praise on this front. Center City's largest private employer provides a 20 percent subsidy for its students and employees to use mass transit. But this is the same institution that is planning to build a massive 700-car garage on Chestnut Street.

When the plan went before The Philadelphia Planning Commission, CCD took no position. "We don't generally take positions on individual projects," Vider says.

Since all Center City business owners pay mandatory dues to CCD, a good chunk of its budget comes from private parking lot operators.

CCD is as hamstrung as Philadelphia's politicians in encouraging alternatives to the car. Local politicians' campaigns are often funded in part by parking interests. In 1999, Mayor Street, for example, received a total of $50,000 from eight executives with the Tennessee-based Central Parking Corporation, which operates lots throughout Center City.

Don Nigro, who heads The Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, calls this "a situation where the interests of a few are outweighing the interests of the many."

While he offers "high words of praise" for the CCD campaign, Nigro says you can't just tell people to take transit -- you have to get them to want to. And only improvements in the regional rail system, which Nigro says is currently the slowest in the nation, can do that.