Society Hill group approves $25,000 to fight bike lane protections on Spruce and Pine

The board of the Society Hill Civic Association voted Wednesday night to donate $25,000 to lawyers helping a group of residents fight to block the city’s proposed safety changes to bike lanes on Pine and Spruce Streets.

An overwhelming majority of board members approved the gift to Friends of Pine and Spruce (FOPS) during a contentious meeting at Pennsylvania Hospital that revolved around safety and transparency.

In August, acting on a suit from the FOPS group, Common Pleas Court Judge Sierra Thomas Street ordered the city to stop work on loading zones designed to allow residents to park briefly without idling in the bike lanes.

Lawyer George Bochetto and his firm filed the suit, which argues the city did not have the authority to create the loading zones absent an ordinance to change parking rules. The group is also challenging planned curb-high concrete barriers to separate the bike lanes from motor vehicle traffic and a new ordinance banning stopping in the lanes.

Members of the civic association, cycling advocates, and several board members argued for nearly two hours against the donation, calling it inappropriate in part because of widespread neighborhood opposition to the lawsuit.

“This is beyond our mission,” said Bonnie Halda, a retired historical architect who worked for 35 years in historic preservation for the National Park Service.

She noted that the lawsuit could block bike-lane safety measures across the city. If the lawsuit succeeded, “we’d be in effect paying to impose our [will] on other parts of the city,” said Halda, also a former civic association director.

“We have all been kept in the dark until now, and this lawsuit is the only vehicle that we have to find out what’s really going on behind the scenes,” said Paul Boni, a lawyer who is representing FOPS for free. “We deserve to have a voice.”

The Pine and Spruce bike lanes, established in 2009, run from river to river and are heavily used. Then-Mayor Michael Nutter allowed stopping in the bike lanes for up to 20 minutes, which had been the case until last year, when City Council made it illegal for vehicles to idle in bike lanes following a series of rider and pedestrian deaths in Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Streets Department later attempted to add loading zones on Spruce and Pine in Center City to allow residents space to briefly park their vehicles when dropping off passengers and unloading, without idling in the bike lanes.

Meanwhile, on Sept. 11, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker sent City Council a bill to fix the current legal issue that halted the bike-lane revisions.

Parker spokesperson Joe Grace said Council granted the streets department independent power over parking regulations in Center City and University City in 1982. Although the ordinance was never incorporated into the city’s code of laws, the department has issued thousands of regulations under that authority.

The bill, introduced by Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr., would incorporate the 1982 law into the city code.

“It also clarifies that the Streets Department can create loading zones and legalizes all existing regulations,” Grace said. “The bill doesn’t actually change anything in law. It just makes it clearer and more transparent.”

Judge Thomas Street rejected the city’s argument that it thus did not need a specific ordinance to establish the loading zones.

Society Hill Civic Association president Robert Kramer ruled against a challenge to Boni on conflict-of-interest grounds because as a pro bono lawyer for the FOPS he did not have “a substantial financial interest” in the lawsuit, which bylaws define as a conflict.

A move to table the donation failed to pass.

Board member Brooke Marshall urged a yes vote, saying that in the future, other areas of Society Hill may need help. “They would want their voices to be heard, and they would want the SHCA to fight for them.”