February 11: Pop-up beer gardens coming to city parks | PennDOT phasing out stickers | Tacony-Disston National Register District

The Department of Parks and Recreation and Fairmount Park Conservancy are working on a Mobile Food and Beverage Garden Program that would bring true pop-up beer gardens (as in, open for up to five days) to a variety of Philly parks this summer, reports Michael Klein. The program would run for 12-18 consecutive weeks from June through October. See Klein’s article for the long list of parks they’re considering. 

The state’s His­tor­ic Pre­ser­va­tion Board un­an­im­ously ap­proved the Ta­cony-Dis­ston Com­munity De­vel­op­ment Dis­trict as a Na­tion­al Register His­tor­ic Dis­trict last week, the Northeast Times reports. The District’s nomination will be up for consideration by the National Park Service this spring. 

PennDOT is phasing out vehicle registration stickers in favor of automatic license plate readers, the Carlisle Sentinel reports. The readers have major accurancy and efficiency advantages over visual inspection of stickers. Pennsylvania is also moving toward using license plate scanners for cashless tolling.

Melissa Romero has a dispatch from Scout, Ltd.’s community meeting with East Passyunk Crossing neighbors about their liquor license application for the Bok rooftop. Neighbors voted 36-6 in support of the license. 

A new report from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office looking at the state’s growing housing affordability crisis found that neighborhoods with higher levels of market-rate construction saw less displacement of lower-income residents, and the effect was independent of inclusionary housing programs. Daniel Kay Hertz at City Observatory pulls out the key finding: “The effect is strong: changing from a low-construction neighborhood to a high-construction neighborhood was associated with a decline in the probability of displacement from 46 percent to 26 percent.” 

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is weighing the possibility of requiring annual inspections for curbside intercity bus operators like Megabus and BoltBus, The Hill reports. “The inspections would not apply to traditional bus operators like Greyhound or public transportation buses, but they could hit companies such as Megabus and BoltBus.”