A Million Stories

[ a million stories ]

Vince Fumo is a heart attack waiting to happen — or so it seemed at Tuesday's sentencing for the former state senator. Fumo, who held office from 1978 to 2008, was convicted of multiple corruption charges in March.

After the sentencing was moved to a bigger courtroom to accommodate a massive crowd, prosecutors and Fumo's attorneys launched into an exhaustive review of the former state senator's health history. Reporters, law students, offended residents and Fumo's family listened as the lawyers argued about the health of the 66-year-old, and whether he could withstand time behind bars.

Fumo, his lawyers argued, may only be 66, but he has the health of a 76-year-old. With everything from diabetes, hypertension and acid reflux to insomnia, anxiety and cardiovascular disease, Fumo, they said, is falling apart. To top it off, he's currently on enough medications to fill a hospital pharmacy.

So why can't he go to prison? Well, the defense argued, that would only exacerbate the problems. His attorneys emphasized to U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter that the "stressors" of prison life would probably kill the man, or at least harm him.

Dr. John Manenti of the Federal Buearu of Prisons, a witness for the prosecution, disagreed. He testified that prison stress is similar to life stress. Inmates have the same health-related decisions to make that they would outside of prison, Manenti said, but don't have to deal with the stress of rush hour, work and cell phones. Besides, he added, many other inmates in the aging prison population suffer from the same illnesses, and are on the same medications, as Fumo.

"There are thousands of individuals in the Bureau of Prisons that present some if not all of those," Manenti said, referring to Fumo's multiple medical conditions.

We wonder how many of those inmates got two hours to argue that their health should prevent them from spending time behind bars.

A major roadblock to biking in Center City — the absence of a reliable east-west corridor of bike lanes — is set to be removed, at least temporarily, starting this summer.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

Pine Street and Spruce Street, one-way streets running east and west respectively, will be converted from streets that carry two lanes of automobile traffic to streets with one lane of auto traffic and one lane of bicycle traffic.

According to Andrew Stober, director of strategic initiatives in the Mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities, this will be a pilot program in which both streets will be re-lined, converting two 9-foot traffic lanes into one 11-foot traffic lane for automobiles and one 7-foot lane for bicycle traffic. Parking on the streets will remain unchanged.

"This will be river to river," Stober stresses, "a crosstown connection. We will be conducting a study and see it how it works."

Of interest to the city will be the effects the change has on traffic flow and bike ridership.

"We need to make sure it doesn't snarl traffic," says Stober. "We don't think it will, but we need to study that." The department is also looking for "major increases in cycling along that corridor."

Bicycle advocates have been calling for a move like this for some time.

The streets are expected to be re-lined at the end of August, says Stober. Pending the results of the study, the lanes will become permanent or be scrapped when the streets are scheduled for repaving next spring.

—Brian Howard