October 8: Bike survey tech | Grays Ferry Triangle life cycle | Affordable housing RFPs | Philly bubble? | Geography of opportunity

Happy Wednesday, Philly. Did you catch the blood moon early this morning?

The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia is doing its fall bike counts, with volunteers recording data using pencil and paper, all of which has to be manually entered into a database. Technically Philly reports that Code for Philly has developed a mobile app to speed up the bike counts and automatically pull data entered in the field into a database. Should be helpful next time around.

PhillyHistory’s Ken Finkel takes a look back at the history of the three-way intersection of South and 23rd streets with Grays Ferry Avenue and wonders about its cycle of life. It was “uproarious” with life 100 years ago according to Christopher Morley, then by the 1970s David Bradley described the horse fountain’s neglect – “forgotten by the city and the ladies’ guild, functionless, except as a minor memorial to how They Won’t Take Care of Nice Things.” Will the delightful pedestrian plaza meet a similar fate or will it endure?

The Office of Housing and Community Development and the Philadelphia Housing Authority have both issued requests for proposals to build affordable rental housing. The Daily News reports the effort is part of City Council’s push to build 2000 units of new affordable housing.

Speaking of housing, Emma Jacobs takes a look at Philly’s mid- and up-market housing construction boom on Next City. Is Philly heading for a housing bubble or are we just playing catch up after 50 years of not building much new housing?

Philly ranks 7th in a recently study of cities with the best “geography of opportunity”, aka access to jobs via transit, notes Streetsblog.