Gihon Jordan, 58, traffic engineer - Philadelphia Inquirer
By Gayle Ronan Sims
Inquirer Staff Writer

 

Gihon Jordan, 58, a Philadelphia Streets Department traffic engineer who worked to make the city safer for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and the disabled, died of colon cancer Thursday at his home in West Philadelphia.

Mr. Jordan battled bureaucracy, and combined vision and common sense in his quest to make Philadelphia a better place. He was responsible for just about everything involving traffic in Center City, North and South Philadelphia, and the river wards. This included street signs, malfunctioning traffic signals and the closing of streets.

 

But he also solved bigger problems. While scientifically designing and implementing convention-defying solutions, he earned a national reputation as an expert traffic calmer.

"I don't want to move vehicles around," Mr. Jordan said in a 1994 article in The Inquirer. "I want to move people around. Philadelphia was designed for the pedestrian, not for the car."

 

When he took over as traffic engineer for the city in 1993, Mr. Jordan worked to get more people to walk, bike and take mass transit.

 

Especially biking. Mr. Jordan, who never owned a car, was responsible for putting city policemen on bicycle patrols; he designed cross-state bike routes for the state Department of Transportation, and bike paths along the river drives and on city streets.

 

After earning a bachelor's in electrical engineering in 1973 from the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Jordan pedaled solo across the United States three times and through 21 countries, including Uganda, Ethiopia and Senegal. Along the way, he spread the word about bicyclists' rights, safety, pollution, health, maps, crime, energy demands and road design.

 

Mr. Jordan was an early and active board member of the Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia and numerous other biking organizations. In 1984, he wrote "Bicycling, Transportation and Energy: Handbook for Planners," one of dozens of such publications he wrote. He was on the pedestrian committee of the National Academy of Science's Transportation Research Board.