October 19: CCT failing disabled riders | Global Street Design Guide | Learning from Copenhagen

The Alliance of Community Service Providers, made of roughly 90 organizations serving disabled adults, says SETPA’s Customized Community Transport (CCT) isn’t serving its clients with physical and intellectual challenges well – endangering riders by leaving them unsupervised or missing appointments. Helen Ubiñas writes SEPTA and the alliance say they are discussing improvements, but she gets a “customers just don’t understand our system” feeling from SEPTA. City Council’s transportation committee will hold hearings about CCT.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) and the Global Designing Cities Initiative released the Global Street Design Guide, a worldwide set of standards for street design that puts transit, pedestrians, safety, and sustainability first. Next City reports, “The guide contains input from 72 cities in 42 countries, boiling ideas down into 21 street typologies and 50 street and intersection layouts, with before-and-after 3D model comparisons. The overall philosophy holds pedestrians in the highest priority, followed by cyclists and transit riders, businesses including street vendors and public service providers, and lastly, people in personal motorized vehicles.” Check out the guide here.

The Bicycle Coalition’s Sarah Clark Stuart went on a Knight Foundation-backed study trip to Copenhagen, alongside Philadelphia’s Managing Director Mike DiBerardinis and then-Deputy Manager for Infrastructure and Transportation Clarena Tolson. She brought home two major recommendations for Philly: Build a network of protected bike lanes, add bike traffic lights.

Donald Trump keeps talking about voter fraud, calling out Philadelphia (among other cities) and calling on his supporters to become poll watchers. The New York Times spends some time debunking the idea that there is widespread, organized voter fraud in Philadelphia, and that Trump troops are signing up in droves. The Times writes: “‘There’s a real disconnect between the intensity of the buzz at the national level and anything we’ve seen on the ground,’ said Al Schmidt, a Republican who is the vice chairman of Philadelphia’s election board. ‘We haven’t received a single call from somebody outside of Philadelphia looking to be a poll watcher.’”