Submitted by RoverTheMonster t3_112zfyo in philadelphia
Got asked this Q in an interview thing morning and thought it might generate some fun discussion 🤷♂️
Submitted by RoverTheMonster t3_112zfyo in philadelphia
Got asked this Q in an interview thing morning and thought it might generate some fun discussion 🤷♂️
Personally, I'd get thousands of guys with gas-powered leaf blowers to blow all the abandoned cars into the storm drains
Remove every other bench in the Rittenhouse park - those new ones are too close to each other, I like me some space.
Re-open Bards with the time that's left.
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Missile defense system that targets the hospital helicopters
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I live in Queen Village. Can I have my 24 hours in the summertime? Because then I’d do something to get ATVs and similar vehicles off South Street. Don’t know if that’s confiscating them, setting up barriers, or what but it’s the one issue that unites basically all of QV
This question sounds like how the city handles every new project proposal
Those are being shipped to the Ukraine /s
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Start by picking up all of the trash and power washing EVERYTHING, install self compacting public trash cans, plant sidewalk friendly trees everywhere possible, install mirrors to aid pulling out of the small side streets, somehow implement a one car per household standard, there aren't many empty lots but turn the few that exist into pocket parks, add more murals, allow streeteries again.
Probably ambitious for 24 hours but a girl can dream...
Unlimited resources? Vastly increase the number of guidance counselors, social workers, and behavioral therapists in every school.
just get a couple temple students to work as interns
Oh, I was thinking external alterations, but this is probably the best answer. I'd also add the social workers and behavioral therapists (or other people with similar skill sets) to the local police force, and increase the salaries of our teachers by, like, a lot.
Speed strips down the block. We've had multiple accidents this year, including one that sent a fire hydrant into a home.
Make the Temple students who flipped the car on Sunday do it as community service
Trash, it’s always trash.
Replace the asphalt street surface with cobblestone or Belgian block. 1) To slow cars, e-bikes, etc and 2) it looks nice!
Close all the streets surrounding parks and schools to thru traffic
RESURFACE ALL THE GOSHDARNED ROADS!!!!
>You get whatever resources you need, but only 24 hours to complete your project
Yeah but
> whatever resources you need
If the district was suddenly offering mega salaries for social workers, you could absolutely hire a crapton of social workers in a day.
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Oo oo oo can we use a material that will last longer than one winter month????
I'd demolish the on/off ramp for I95. There's so much traffic to get to it and not a single person driving thru stops at any of the local stores, as evident by the rows of vacant storefronts. All it does is invite tons of traffic and noise.
Or I'd build a wall around Kensington.
Or paint Aramingos streets, from Old Richmond to Bridesburg — there's not a single line on that road that isn't deteriorated to the point of invisibility, and drivers treat it like a street in India. It's an absolute nightmare at night.
... and fire them after 24 hours, lol.
Anyway, it's nice to dream every now and then! enjoy your day :)
I'd install speed bumps, bollards, and plastic flex posts.
Pedestrianize South St., especially the East side. You can't have loud cars or ATVs if South St. is only open to pedestrians.
The dirtbikes ride on the sidewalks, what are you talking about?
If South St had hundreds of pedestrians on its streets and sidewalks, I don't think the ATVs would continue going down that stretch. Sure, I've seen ATVs ride on the sidewalks, but the majority are on the street.
You should ask for all civil engineers with ADA ramp experience to spend a single day designing and contractors building as many ramps as possible.
Currently 50% of the paving budget is going to ADA ramp design-builds because the city has been sued like 8x over it.
TREES
I’d put traffic controls on Henry Ave so people stop treating it like a race course.
Cut $100k home improvement checks to every homeowner with a 100% repayment stipulation if the property is sold within 3 years or if funds aren’t used to improve the property.
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Note: this only works with unlimited resources, per the OP
Tow all of the cars from the median on Broad Street and replace them with large planters. The planters can have trees, bamboo or whatever, but they have to be large enough so that cars cannot park there again.
Trash removal, trash cans at corners, street lights. Point Breeze.
I would fix the bathroom situation in the Wissahickon. In particular the bathrooms at valley green inn.
Infinite resources? Pay off everybody's student loans, car payments, credit card bills and prepay their rent until the end of their lease. Duh.
It’s crazy how many workers they have on those projects, how much concrete is used (never mind if it’s an already new sidewalk and you could totally replace one 3’x3’ square and get the same result), and how often they STILL don’t meet the street grade seamlessly.
People complain about the lack of a jobs programs but this clearly is one - for white guys from Jersey.
Trash. Omg trash. Including my neighbor’s hoard in front of her house.
Thousands of linemen with trucks and directional drilling rigs put all the electrical and telephone wires underground where they belong. Aaaahhhh.
In my hypothetical fantasy situation, the positions are funded in perpetuity by some dead rich guy's grant.
I need a spoiler tag for how lewd this comment is.
I'm shutting down east passyunk to traffic permanently between Snyder and Dickinson.
Our office (burbs) does a lot of them but the people that do the engineering and inspection live in the city.
Curb ramps are surprisingly finnicky. I fail about 75% of the ones I've inspected, though I rarely do inspection much anymore.
They're supposed to come back and do a pavement adjustment so that they meet street grade (and so that water can flow correctly around them) but often that step gets missed.
That's almost cheating, but I'm allowing it 🥹
I don’t want to give away my neighborhood, but I would try to lay as much trolley track as I could in 24 hours down a main arterial road in hopes that I can get a trolley route that gets very close to my house. Might be tough to do in 24 hours.
We can and should do this in a grassroots way. Keep large jugs of water, soil, planters and whatever we want to plant in there. Have a discord chat or something to communicate, and whenever someone notices an empty spot, mobilize whomever is available in orange vests and plant that shit. What could anyone say about it? The parking there is technically illegal.
EDIT: I’m not kidding. Vigilante beautification since the city has absolved themselves of any responsibility for this.
I'm convinced those speed cushions are a full grift. Every time I see them they are absolutely shredded to bits.
Free local composting center
Jettison my neighbors into the stratosphere.
Turn the vacant lot into a tree and picnic park
Remove all abandoned and low-use cars. I think this would free up enough parking to defuse the single-issue people for whom parking is a barrier to anything. Then, after the one day car removal blitz, we could have a whole different conversation about street cleaning, building more housing units, and bike lanes.
hahahaha. This was Port Richmond last week! I was like this doesn’t make sense.
The trash
I would tear down all of the obviously abandoned houses and make sure the empty lots are treated for lead in the soil so they're all available for anyone with a green thumb who wants to urban farm the land. While the teams are out working on the various properties, I would spend my time creating a digital map of all the newly available garden locations and work with folx like Sankofa Farms to share the map.
i would plant a tree in every available space. easily something that could get done in 24 hours, then they grow for years.
Take the closure down to Wharton and then extend it up 9th to Christian street.
Even better!
give people a bunch of money and let them do with it what they will
What about mini roundabouts, like they have in the UK?
Plant trees.
I feel like this is the only answer
Public trash cans in front of convenience stores, corner stores and take out food places. I love our local corner store but there is so much trash that comes from there. Candy wrappers, lottery tickets, etc. A trash can out front would solve a good bit of the litter
Which one? I feel like there are so many!
the ones I'd want to see more of (not exactly sure what they're called) but it almost seems like road paint with grit worked into. They had some on Castor ave for a while doing road work (unsure why they were removed)
Trash cans that live out front of peoples properties all the time, and never get taken inside.
If it had to be ONE thing that is 100% doable and enforceable, that’s the thing for me.
In fishtown, so my priority is to completely rip up frankford of all of its asphalt, completely rip out all of Girard's trolley tracks, trolley stops, and all of the road.
Why? I only have a day, so there is no way we can repave everything, but if I take out all of frankford, all the cutouts with shitty patches would get repaved.
Rip out Girard's trolley tracks and stops, and cross my fingers they'll get reinstalled in a way that the road can be aligned so that assholes aren't driving in and out of the trolley path at shit speeds when they go back and pave it and/or reinstall the tracks.
I’ll aim small and just install a speed bump on my street. There’s a park down the block where children play, doesn’t stop people from speeding up the street.
Point breeze reality check: within 72 hours, the trash levels would return and the trash cans would be overflowing (and no one would ever come empty them).
Street lights would be nice though
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Problem = roaches & mice, Solution = an army of rats and enough trucker pills to fuel a 24h all out conquest to reclaim the city
This is the most philadelphian answer
Everyone from Rhawnhurst (however few of us that may be) knows this, but demolish that hookah bar by Castor and Rhawn, and the Albanian Cafe with the jet black windows and steel door on Buselton by Farrell Elementary because those establishments are nothing but trouble.
More trash cans… actually not “more” but ANY street trash cans in south Philly
This is dumb. Broad street is a snow emergency route and state route. They will be removed no matter what
Remove every Nissan Altima and Dodge Charger permanently in a 1 mile radius from my place.
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Speed bumps on 5th from Girard to Montgomery. I've seen two cars flip on 5th between Master and Jefferson, two bad accidents where the traffic lights and multiple cars were totalled at 5th and Thompson, and many more smaller accidents between Girard and Master on 5th, just within the past few years. Human Robot's streetery also feels very dangerous with how the cars behave. As soon as people get past Girard and the speed bumps south of it on 5th they gun it.
fruit trees
And yet…the cars are still there! Every day!
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Wow this mirror idea is amazing
No more loudass cars/bikes that feel like it’s necessary for you to hear their engines revving from multiple blocks away.
I see it every now and then, I don't know why it isn't ubiquitous, it's such an easy fix. Especially when people park past the curb corners making an exit even more dangerous.
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I’d plant a tree in every viable spot in the neighborhood. You can never have enough trees when that summer sun comes calling.
I’m not sure if you mean to drop off your compostable or to get compost.
Either way I figured I would share this: https://www.phila.gov/services/trees-parks-the-environment/get-organic-materials/
Thanks for sharing! Both - a local community garden where all my neighbors could drop off their food waste and yard clippings and get compost back a few months later
(I use a composting service but it’s unaffordable for a lot of my neighbors)
Oh no, here its a small pilot study that gets renewed once, then funding dries up and we just stay with the status quo
We now have two of them on concourse dr in west Philly near the mann/please touch :)
...all the signage was run over in the first week :(
Nah fruit trees require a lot of maintenance and make a big mess. Not good street tree candidates
They could put timed bollards in place so that you could still get deliveries and remove waste during certain hours
Love this
It’s truly the most jarring thing about this city vs others is the amount of trash!! Why no corner trashes?? Do we feel like it would be too much of an overflow of dog poop or what?? More available would hopefully eliminate the overflow. I feel like the ones in popular areas get overfilled because they’re like the only one in a 4 or 5 blocks radius sometimes, if at all.
Destroy all my neighbors homes and live on a majestic grand estate
You want speed bumps on castor ave?!?
You can claim abandoned cars and scrap them
You put too much faith in people to actually use them. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen people throw trash on the ground with a trash can within 5 feet
Wtf? Your solution to mice and roaches is to bring in an army of rats?!?
Can we attach every heroin and meth addict plus the dealers? Maybe even everyone who owns an illegal firearm.
I got one on my block, I’d like to sign up.
Swarm North Philly with drug treatment staff for 24 hours and try to get people into free rehab.
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Cleansing fire
They weren't raised! They were very cool
Then you deal with the army of rats with an army of snakes, which in turn is dealt with by an army of mongooses.
Alright fair enough. I don’t remember them but speed bumps on that road would be a nightmare
Ahhh then the mongoose take over the city so we release the lion army! I like where you’re going with this.
Wait, wouldn’t the snakes kill the mongoose?? I’m confused
I’d buy out Snowden’s properties and make Germantown Ave. a destination again.
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Awesome 🙌🏾 This is the way!
I’d get rid of Kensington. Zombieland is very depressing and I can’t stand getting on the train with zombies either on my way to work or coming home at night in the train
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NO MORE RACOONS
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Fear not of rats for Gritty is the pied piper of Philly
All of this but somehow repave the street and lay all new sidewalks too.
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You should not attach a chain to an abandoned car and pull it so that it blocks a street. Then the city would have no choice but to tow it away. That would be a big inconvenience.
It really is... thinking of the pickup that parks on the corner and reserves "their" spot with a cone. Can't see anything when I turn at the end of my street
Less of the gentrification waking me up with jackhammers at 7am
You didn’t realize that the Philadelphia home charter is drafted entirely off of Reddit polls?
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I come home every day to a work van parked on the end of the block on the right, and cars approaching from the intersecting block from the right don’t have a stop sign. Fun stuff
speed build a subway line
New fun solmanov restaurants on every corner
Yeet the homeless from the El.
Block off both ends of my alley with dumpsters and declair myself an independent country.
If I had a dollar for every time I was passed by one of those cars from the left turn/oncoming lane on a city street I could probably fund it myself.
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Close Germantown Ave to cars, make it just bikes, trolley, and outdoor seating for businesses.
ALL OF THE TREES
trash regulation and punishment for those who don’t comply
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And the damn crumbling roads. I commute down walnut through west Philly and it’s like fucking Baghdad with all the potholes.
I would split a bus route in two, make one of the parts have at least 30 minute frequency, and then extend it to a regional rail station.
either that or i would somehow get sidewalks installed along a few side streets
if I had a lot more time, I'd get at least one bridge over train tracks installed too
also trees. a lot of trees. that seems most likely because there's a lack of them here too.
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uptown_gargoyle t1_j8mzt10 wrote
I'd get dumpsters for each entrance to the park. People short dump there and the garbage that gets produced from people enjoying the park is way too much for the provided cans to handle.
I'd also get artists to paint the outsides of the dumpsters so they look good.