A 3-point checklist is needed before 'Open Streets'

WHO OWNS city streets?

If it's those who live in the city, we should all get a say. Does anyone get a veto? I'll answer that a little later.

The issue of who owns city streets arose after the Papal Lockdown emptied our downtown core of vehicles. No citizen had a say.

The onetime "Francis Festival Grounds" gave some people the giddy joy of riding their bikes in the streets, or walking in them, or rolling in them, without cars.

A fair reading of what some had to say seemed like it was a psychosexual or religious experience.

Now, they want to turn a rare experience into a (pardon the pun) pedestrian one by doing it again. Their side has a distinctly Orwellian - "two wheels good, four wheels bad" - vibe to it. They even use Orwell's Newspeak to describe it: Open Streets. In reality, it is Closed Streets - to cars.

One father said how much he enjoyed tossing a football to his son in the street. When we played ball in the street, we were called underprivileged. Now we have playgrounds, and this guy gets his jollies in the street?

Pedestrians no more belong in the street than cars belong on the sidewalk. This understanding has been around forever.

You don't have to delve deeply to discover the anti-car lunatic fringe that rhapsodizes about a city without cars. Neo-Luddites in love with the 18th century, they fantasize about an urban landscape free of cars. We shouldn't encourage that kind of mental disorder.

A city is defined as much by cars (including buses and delivery trucks) as by tall buildings, dense population, noise and street lighting, each of which some people don't like. These people usually are called suburbanites.

To hear some of the Neo-Luddites talk, you'd think cars were some kind of invasive species, like Zebra mussels or kudzu, rather than an organic part of cities.

I haven't owned a car since the mid-'80s. I walk, use SEPTA and car-share.

But most adult Americans own or have access to a car.

Bicyclists love (Not) Open Streets. Mostly they are young and dominate social media. They "follow" people who think exactly as they do and delude themselves into thinking they are the majority. (The Open Streets Philly Facebook page has 5,500 "likes." Philly has 1.5 million residents.)

Even September's loopy Philly Naked Bike Ride didn't require street closures. They had their "fun" without trapping residents in their homes, keeping them from jobs, shopping, medical appointments or anything else they want to do.

"Fun" is not an organizing principle for a city - commerce is, and almost 90 percent of restaurants and retailers in the Papal Carless Zone lost money, the city controller reports.

"Fun" is a nice by-product, but not if it comes at someone else's expense.

Mayor Nutter has heard a tiny clamor for (Not) Open Streets and is favorably inclined, which is only natural because his Overbrook Farms neighborhood is not likely to be touched.

City Hall has an online questionnaire (that only the Open Streets people know about). It asks where and when they'd like a (Not) Open Streets event and what government entity should approve it. The address is alpha.phila.gov/news/mayors-office/open-streets-survey/. (There is no "I don't like the idea" option.)

For the citizen, City Council, as the representative of the neighborhoods, should have control. If a neighborhood wants temporary (Not) Open Streets, it should get it. If not, no. Let the people decide.

Sunday's Outfest, for example, had an organizing principle, it was compact and it was welcomed by a majority of neighbors.

Those are the three conditions that should be met before any street is "opened" - and by "opened," I mean "closed."

Email: stubyko@phillynews.com

Phone: 215-854-5977

On Twitter: @StuBykofsky