Tanya Seaman, environmentalist and cofounder of PhillyCarShare, dies at 54

Tanya Seaman, 54, a cofounder of PhillyCarShare, South of South Neighborhood Association leader, committed environmentalist, and noted traffic safety advocate, died Thursday, March 17, of metastatic breast cancer at Penn Hospice Rittenhouse.

Born in 1967, Ms. Seaman grew up in Menlo Park, Calif., and came to Philadelphia in the late 1990s to attend graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied city planning. She graduated from the school in 2000 and previously earned a bachelor’s degree in design from the University of California, Davis. In part, she decided to attend Penn because of the school’s green campus.

“She was so happy, because of all of the campuses she had seen, University of Pennsylvania was the one with trees, and with seasons that we missed in California,” her sister Peggy Wonder, who moved to Philadelphia to take care of her, said. From there, Wonder added, Ms. Seaman adopted Philadelphia as her home as “she felt like this was a place where she could make a contribution.”

In 2002, she made her most well-known contribution to the city by cofounding PhillyCarShare, a nonprofit car-sharing service. Under her leadership as executive director, PhillyCarShare grew to include up to 55,000 members, according to a 2008 Inquirer report. In 2004, the organization entered a partnership with the city that eliminated about 330 municipal vehicles from the city’s fleet, saving an estimated $6 million. In 2011, PhillyCarShare was sold to the car rental giant Enterprise and in 2014 was renamed Enterprise CarShare.

“We’re giving them a way to have access to a car when they need it,” Ms. Seaman told The Inquirer of the service in 2003. “We’re trying to make some social change.”

Meenal Raval, a fellow climate activist and friend, recalls meeting Ms. Seaman two decades ago, when she first began work on PhillyCarShare. Raval was researching car-sharing services at the time, and met with Ms. Seaman to discuss them — typically in the lobby of a hotel on Broad Street in Center City.

“How spunky to just show up in a hotel lobby where you don’t have a room booked, and just hang out. I would never have dared if I didn’t have a booking. That is the person she was — feisty and determined,” Raval said. The pair later authored a climate action platform for Philadelphia’s 2019 elections and that year hosted a radio show — Philly Talks Climate — that aired on PhillyCAM’s 106.5 WPPM-LP.

Her involvement with South of South Neighborhood Association for more than a decade was also impactful, leading to a number of improvements in the Graduate Hospital area. As chair of SOSNA projects such as the Vision Zero Committee, Ms. Seaman worked to better pedestrian safety in the neighborhood through efforts such as the Safe Pathways for Our Schools project, the 22nd Street protected bike lane, and the SOSNA Triangle pedestrian plaza at 23rd and South Streets.

Ms. Seaman also served on the boards of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and South Philly Food Co-op and planted trees in her South Philadelphia neighborhood as a tree tender with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

“She was the embodiment of ‘think globally, act locally,’” said Dan McGlone, who cochaired SOSNA’s Vision Zero Committee alongside Ms. Seaman after her health began to decline. “All of her views stemmed from being a staunch environmentalist.”

That environmental focus was central in Ms. Seaman’s personal life as well as her civic life. She was a longtime vegan and did not own a car herself, preferring to walk, ride her folding bike, or use public transportation to get where she needed to go — including when she was sick.

“When she was undergoing chemo, she would ride public transportation to her treatments,” said friend, architect, and fellow SOSNA organizer Robin J. Kohles. “She never complained all through her treatment.”

In addition to her civic and environmental work, friends remember Ms. Seaman as an avid knitter who not only made many of her own clothing items but developed patterns and designs for other knitters to use, posting them to her personal webpage, Designs by Tanya Seaman, on the knitting community website Ravelry.

“She was the kind of person who doesn’t follow a recipe — it might be an inspiration, but she goes off and uses her own ingredients. She did that with knitting, too,” Wonder said. “Amazing, beautiful pieces.”

In addition to her sister, Ms. Seaman is survived by her mother, Elisabeth; her brother, Mark; and other relatives. Her father and a sister died earlier.

A celebration of Ms. Seaman’s life was held Sunday.

Donations in her name can be made to a GoFundMe campaign organized by Wonder, Kohles, and McGlone. Proceeds from the effort will be used to create artwork to adorn the SOSNA Triangles.