April 15: Doug Oliver courting SEPTA voters | New E. Passyunk gateway renderings | In defense of Awareness Cone

PennFuture says the state of Pennsylvania subsidizes fossil fuel industries to the tune of $3.2 billion annually, mostly as tax expenditures in the tax code. The exemption of gasoline from the state sales tax plays a big role, and also has some clear anti-urban impact on the built environment.

Doug Oliver says his campaign has talked to over 25,000 voters on the subway.

Passyunk Post has new renderings of the East Passyunk Ave gateway pedestrian plaza at Broad Street.

The Smart Growth for Conservatives blog responds to Inga Saffron’s Fast Company piece with a defense of higher population density.

To be clear, Saffron is narrowly taking issue with density done poorly, that fails to take into consideration the street-level experience for people. Here’s an older Saffron piece in which she takes apart some anti-density remarks from Darrell Clarke.

On a related note, Shane Phillips says “Manhattanization” isn’t a thing. Philly would need 6.2 times the population to reach Manhattan-level density.

The case for eliminating one-way streets.

The case for “awareness cones”, or at least the ones outside of deep potholes. For non-Twitter users, the satirical Awareness Cone is very popular Philly urbanist Twitter.