Plan Philly: Engaging in Urban Dialogue

(PHILADELPHIA)—A new study from The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia Research Initiative finds that Philadelphia’s 311 contact system succeeded during its first year of operation in giving residents improved and easier access to information about city government. It did so at lower cost than other cities and won strong ratings from its customers.  But the system also mishandled thousands of service requests, and nearly one quarter of all service requests were not completed in the promised timeframe.

The study, A Work in Progress: Philadelphia’s 311 System After One Year, reviewed Philly311’s operations in 2009 in relation to 14 other communities that operate 311 systems.  Among those communities are most of the largest with such systems—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami-Dade County (FL), Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Detroit, Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC), San Francisco, Columbus (OH), Baltimore, Denver and Pittsburgh.

Almost all of the 311 centers in the study had reduced their budgets and staffs in the past year due to recession-driven city budget cuts.  Philly311’s own startup funding was reduced by at least 60 percent in 2008 and 2009, a cut that forced it to rely on a temporary computer system and delay hiring agents with outside call-center experience.

“The Philly311 contact center had a rough start but improved dramatically by the end of 2009, particularly in handling requests for information,” said Thomas Ginsberg, project manager of the Philadelphia Research Initiative and author of the report. “But the city struggled with service requests because it made only modest progress toward integrating the 311 center with the departments that actually do the tasks.”

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Managing Director Camille Barnett have said that making the system better will require investments in technology at Philly311 and in other parts of city government. Nutter and Barnett have not said when or whether they would seek those investments. The Pew study found that achieving significant cost savings and efficiencies would require a major technological upgrade. Philly311 did not save the city money in its first year, nor was it expected to.

In a companion poll conducted for the Philadelphia Research Initiative, Philadelphians generally expressed satisfaction with Philly311, although only 28 percent of those polled could recall the number without prompting and only 15 percent had called it. Both results reflect the administration’s decision to do little or no promotion of Philly311 to save money and avoid overwhelming the fledgling system.

Among residents who called the number looking for information, 68 percent said they were satisfied and 29 percent dissatisfied. Among those calling with a specific complaint or request, 60 percent were satisfied and 33 percent dissatisfied.  And 53 percent of residents who were aware of the service said that Philly311 represents a “major step forward” for the city while 28 percent said it “won’t make much of a difference.” The poll was conducted in early January, after the first major snowstorm in the region but before the next two.

A Work in Progress also reviewed cities’ 311 performance across key measurement areas. For the year as a whole, out of 15 cities, Philly311 had the second highest percentage of calls abandoned before an agent answered (26 percent.) And out of 13 cities, Philly311 had the second longest average wait time to speak with a live agent (1 minute, 45 seconds.)  Much of that was due to start-up problems. As the year progressed, the experience for Philly311 callers improved dramatically. Callers spent less time waiting for agents and more time talking to them, with fewer calls being lost. While Philadelphia’s abandoned-call rate was one in four for the year as a whole, it dropped to just one in 17 by year’s end.

The contact center had several shining moments, providing fast and easy updates during spikes in calls in October during the World Series and a transit strike. The center also had recorded audio updates for the historic snowstorms in December 2009 and February 2010.

Between January and December 2009, about 1.1 million calls were made to Philly311, roughly the same number made a year earlier to the City Hall phone numbers it replaced. About seven in 10 calls were for general information. The others resulted in roughly 64,000 service requests, which Philly311 agents transmitted to the appropriate agencies through a patchwork of computer links and manual routines. In one major fumble, the system mishandled thousands of routine housing-inspection requests intended for the Department of Licenses and Inspections—requests that either were not submitted to the department or were submitted and not reported back as done.

One purpose of a 311 system is to reduce the load on the 911 emergency lines by giving residents with non-emergency requests one number to call. In its first year, however, Philly311 diverted fewer such 911 calls than city officials had hoped.

The Managing Director’s Office, which set up and runs Philly311, appeared to make the most of its limited funds in the startup year (2008) and first operating year (2009). It patched together low-cost software to emulate aspects of a more costly full-blown 311 system and assembled a large database with answers to hundreds of questions.  Philly311’s FY2010 operating budget of $2.8 million amounted to 0.08 percent of the city’s general fund expenditures, among the smallest proportions in the localities reviewed. The average 311 call cost Philadelphia taxpayers $2.20, compared with a median of $3.39 for the group.

About the Report

To prepare this report, Thomas Ginsberg, project manager of the Philadelphia Research Initiative, reviewed the history of 311 efforts in Philadelphia and analyzed contact-center data from Philly311 and other cities. The poll was conducted by telephone between January 8 and January 19, 2010, among a citywide random sample of 1,602 city residents, ages 18 and older. Interviews were conducted with 1,302 landline users and 300 cell phone users to reach a broad representative sample of Philadelphians. The final sample was weighted to reflect the demographic breakdown of the city. The margin of error for the entire sample is approximately +/- 2.5 percentage points. The margin of error is higher for subgroups. Surveys are subject to other error sources as well, including sampling coverage error, recording error and respondent error. Abt SRBI Public Affairs designed the survey and conducted the interviewing, working with Cliff Zukin, veteran pollster and professor of political science and public policy at Rutgers University.

 

SEPTA transit workers appear to have conceded defeat in a legal challenge to the authority’s new policy on drug testing.

Transport Workers Union Local 234 had sued SEPTA to stop it from subjecting so-called vehicle readiness coordinators to random drug tests.

The union said that the tests violated the workers’ constitutional rights, while the authority said it was permitted to test them under federal regulations.

Vehicle readiness coordinators drive SEPTA vehicles in depots and schedule maintenance work. Many are front-line operators who are assigned the job when they are placed on medical disability.

U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg ruled summarily against the union in December, but the TWU had filed a motion for reconsideration shortly afterward.

The TWU withdrew that motion Jan. 27, allowing the ruling to stand and apparently ending the lawsuit.

Posted by campisi.anthony@gmail.com

Philadelphia, December 16 – The City of Philadelphia announced today its intention to purchase the existing wireless network assets from the Network Acquisition Company (NAC), the first in a series of steps towards creating a multi-purpose public safety and municipal wireless network that will improve government operations as well as providing free internet to citizens in targeted public spaces.  The City is exercising an option, contained within an agreement signed in August 2009, to purchase the assets from NAC for the low price of $2 million.

“Acquiring these assets is a major step forward for the city,” said Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank.  “With this investment we will have the capability to build a robust public safety and municipal network, enhancing public safety and government operations, at the same time as achieving long-term savings for the taxpayer.  This is a win-win for Philadelphia.”

With the build out of this network the City of Philadelphia will be a national model for how to operate and economically leverage a broadband network for the benefit of its citizens.  Over the next several years, improvements will be made to the network to support the following:

Enhanced Public Safety

    * Enhance video surveillance capabilities through real time crime surveillance and faster deployment of field officers
    * Enable data transmission for field officers and increase access to crime information in the field
    * Provide another communication option for officers in the field


Improved Government Efficiency

    * Enable use of handheld devices by field workers to file reports and access information
    * Improve deployment of workers and productivity due to the fact that workers will spend more time in the field than in the office


Reduced Operating Expenses

    * Allow the City to reduce vendor costs for data communications by reducing network and Internet requirements
    * Reduce operating budget as workers are deployed more efficiently and with better access to real-time information
    * Further reduce the City fleet from improved worker deployment and routing


In addition to the City government use, every effort will be made to reach out to other key City institutions to leverage the network to improve their services to Citizens.  Already discussions have begun around how the network can be used by local transportation and utilities for field use. 

In order to build a public safety network and realize the full benefits of acquiring these wireless assets the City would need to make capital investments to upgrade and build out the existing infrastructure.  Over a five year period from Fiscal Year 2011 through Fiscal Year 2015 the City would invest close to $17 million in Capital Funding to build out both its existing core fiber network as well as the wireless mesh network acquired from NAC.  This initial investment will allow the City to realize close to $9 million in operating expenses over a five year period as well as significant other savings.  By Fiscal Year 2012 operational savings will outweigh expenses and by Fiscal Year 2015 the net savings over the five year period will total almost $350,000.  Without acquiring these existing assets the City would have to spend in excess of $30 million and several more years in order to create from scratch a capability like this.

In order to complete the acquisition of the network assets, the transaction closing process may take as much as 150 days, including getting City Council approval for the transfer of 25 operating leases for the existing towers around the City which host the wireless radio equipment.  During this time, the City’s Division of Technology is working with NAC to transition operation of the network and to identify both immediate operational cost savings and technical improvements.  It is expected that the network will start to be used in a pilot mode as early as this Spring as the City implements handheld and public safety applications requiring broadband connections.

About NAC
Network Acquisition Company LLC (NAC), the company that acquired the former EarthLink Wi-Fi network in the City of Philadelphia.  NAC is a private company.

The SEPTA Board finally put last month’s transit strike behind it on Dec. 10, when it approved, without discussion, a new contract with Transport Workers Union Local 234.

The five-year contract will provide wage increases of 11.5 percent to covered employees over five years and will provide pension enhancements totaling about 11 percent for a 30-year employee.

The TWU membership ratified the contract Nov. 20.

The board’s administration and operating committees also reviewed a series of contracts, including one regarding a pilot study on sleep apnea.

The $19,960 contract with the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’s Center for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology will allow 250 bus and rail operators to enroll in an 18-month treatment study, which will diagnose and provide treatment to workers suffering from sleep apnea.

The study was prompted by several accidents in other transit systems that have been linked to workers being drowsy or falling asleep on the job. Sleep apnea can cause daytime drowsiness, and the authority wants to get ahead of pending federal regulation regarding treatment of the disorder.

SEPTA is also hoping that the program will be an important educational tool in convincing more workers to get cases of sleep apnea diagnosed and treated. The contract will provide confidentiality to workers who participate and $51,000 to reimburse study participants’ copays for renting continuous positive airway pressure devices to treat the disorder.

In choosing Penn, SEPTA turned down an offer by Drexel University to perform the study at no cost. SEPTA administrators said they chose Penn because of the prestige of its sleep center and the greater flexibility it provided — the university has offered to perform the inpatient portion of the study at satellite facilities throughout the region.

Other agreements the committees reviewed included:

    * A $2.8 million contract to GE Security and Transit Marketing Group for the supply and installation of video surveillance systems on SEPTA buses and subways.
    * A one-year, $1.5 million contract extension to Edens Corp., which sells SEPTA tickets. The contract will also support the expansion of service to the Temple University regional rail station.
    * A one-year, $1.4 million contract extension to First Transit Inc. to provide paratransit service to Bucks County.
    * A $316,500 contract to Sytech Corp. for an upgrade to the radio interoperability system for the SEPTA police department. The contract, paid for by Homeland Security money, will allow SEPTA police to communicate with Philadelphia police and other law enforcement agencies in tunnels in the vent of an emergency.
    * Leases to Upper and Lower Saucon townships, in the Lehigh Valley, for the right-of-way of the now-defunct Bethlehem Branch for use as a trail. The 30-year leases cover about 6 miles of the right of way and allow SEPTA the right to recapture the right of way if it decides to reinstate service. The line is currently inactive north of Quakertown.

Posted by Anthony Campisi. Contact the reporter at campisi.anthony@gmail.com

SCRUB, the Public Voice for Public Space, in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Planning Association (PPA) Southeast Section is sponsoring a seminar on the Regulation of Digital Signage, featuring Stacey Graham, Counsel at SCRUB, Jerry Wachtel, CPE, author of “Safety Impacts of Emerging Digital Display Technology”, and Alfred Borden, FIAD, PLDA, Principal, The Lighting Practice, designer of the new PECO crown lights.

With the advent of new technology in signage, many municipalities are behind in offering sign codes that address digital signage. From on-premise signs to large digital billboards, the impact of this technology will be immense. Presenters will focus on the legal issues of regulating this emerging technology, the health and safety aspects of increasing visual clutter and driver safety, as well as a presentation on the capabilities of the technology.
 
The event will be held on Friday, December 4, 2009, 8:30AM-12:00 noon at the Philadelphia Bar Association Conference Room, Aramark Building, 11th Floor,1101 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA. The cost is $20 for PPA members and $30 for non-PPA members. Breakfast is included. To  register send check payable to PPA SE to ATT:/Martha Cross, Group Melvin Design 3 S Broad, Suite 3C, Woodbury, NJ 08096 –or register by PayPal using a credit card: 1) Go to www.paypal.com. 2) Go to “Send Money” and 3) Send your payment to: ppasepdi@gmail.com

For more information visit  www.publicvoiceforpublicspace.org  or  email  Fran Ryan at  Ryan@publicvoiceforpublicspace.org or Stacey Graham at Graham@publicvoiceforpublicspace.org  or call SCRUB at  215-731-1775.

(November 23, 2009) –   Festive times are fast-approaching and for Thanksgiving, at the beginning of the holiday season, the Center City District (CCD), Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) and downtown building owners are lighting Center City in festive colors to mark the occasion.
 
On November 27, the nine buildings on the Avenue of the Arts lit by the CCD with permanent light-emitting diode (LED) façade lighting will celebrate with a red, orange and gold kinetic light show, repeating every 15 minutes, up and down South Broad Street. Also joining in the festivities will be the Cira Center, Symphony House, One & Two Liberty Place and DRPA, who will light the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in shades of yellow and brown for the holiday. The Crown Lights atop the PECO headquarters will be emblazoned with a holiday message featuring an animated turkey.
 
“There’s plenty to be thankful for in Philadelphia this year,” said CCD President Paul R. Levy. “Not the least of which is the spirit of cooperation between those public and private sector organizations that bring more visibility and memorable experiences to Center City through lighting."
 
Many of the participating buildings use color-changing LED lighting, due to its energy efficiency, long life, its effectiveness in highlighting distinctive architectural details and its ability to provide fanciful, brilliant light shows for holidays and city-wide celebrations at a much lower cost.
 
Participating building managers/property owners include: Delaware River Port Authority, Brandywine Realty Trust, Hyatt, Cushman & Wakefield, PECO, Dranoff Properties, ACP Mid-Atlantic and the Center City District, along with property owners on the Avenue of the Arts.
 
The Center City District, a private-sector sponsored business improvement district dedicated to making Center City Philadelphia clean, safe and attractive, is committed to maintaining Center City’s competitive edge as a regional employment center, a quality place to live, and a premier regional destination for dining, shopping and cultural attractions.
 
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RJ White
Manager of Media Relations and Interactive Marketing
Center City District
P: 215.440.5550
f: 267.440.4450
rwhite@centercityphila.org
http://www.centercityphila.org
 

For Immediate Release                                   Contact: RJ White, 215.440.5550
                                                                       rwhite@centercityphila.org

Center City Buildings, Landmarks Rooting For Phillies With Special Themed Lighting

(October 28, 2009) –   To show support for the championship Philadelphia Phillies in their second straight World Series, property owners, the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) and the Center City District (CCD) will light Center City in brilliant red and white throughout the series.

Everyone  walking down the street will be reminded by the festive lighting on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the PECO Building,  One Liberty Place, Two Liberty Place, Cira Centre (also featuring a massive Phillies ‘P’) and the Mellon Bank Building  to root, root, root for the home team, who are playing the New York Yankees . The nine buildings on the Avenue of the Arts that were lit by the CCD with permanent light-emitting diode (LED) façade lighting will celebrate with a red and white kinetic light show, repeating every five minutes, all up and down South Broad Street.

“The Phillies have fought hard all year to get to this point once again,” said CCD President Paul R. Levy. “It’s only right that we use this lighting to show our support for all they’ve done, as the entire world invites Philadelphia into their homes for this, the 105th Fall Classic. All Center City District on-street staff will also be wearing Phillies caps for the duration of the Series.”

On Halloween night (the night of the series’ first home game), the following will also have brief/partial orange holiday lighting, alternating with Phillies red & white: Cira Centre, the PECO Building, the Hyatt at Penn’s Landing, Two Liberty Place and Symphony House. The Avenue of the Arts buildings will highlight their customizability, by alternating their red and white light show with orange and white Saturday evening.

Many of the participating buildings use color-changing LED lighting, due to its energy efficiency, long life, its effectiveness in highlighting distinctive architectural details and its ability to provide fanciful, brilliant light shows for holidays and city-wide celebrations at a much lower cost.

Participating building managers/property owners include: Delaware River Port Authority, Brandywine Realty Trust, Hyatt, Cushman & Wakefield, PECO, Dranoff Properties, REIT Management, ACP Mid-Atlantic, and the Center City District, along with property owners on the Avenue of the Arts.

The Center City District, a private-sector sponsored business improvement district dedicated to making Center City Philadelphia clean, safe and attractive, is committed to maintaining Center City’s competitive edge as a regional employment center, a quality place to live, and a premier regional destination for dining, shopping and cultural attractions.

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