Philadelphia spends millions of dollars annually on traffic safety efforts like speed bumps and bike lanes, road-narrowing projects, red-light and speed cameras, and educational programs for schoolchildren.
Yet year after year, more than 120 people die in traffic accidents, a rate much higher than in most big U.S. cities.
Now, as City Councilmembers head into annual budget negotiations with Mayor Cherelle Parker, they’re considering advocates’ calls for a major funding hike of $5 million for the city’s Vision Zero traffic safety program — and trying to understand how to justify the added spending.
“When you talk about advocacy around speed cameras and things like that, red-light cameras, we fought for all of that stuff. We’re fans of it,” Councilmember Isaiah Thomas said at a council hearing Tuesday.
But legislators are concerned about “why the needle is moving so slow,” he told Christopher Puchalsky, director of policy and strategic initiatives in the Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS). “We recognize that we have tools that work, but we flatlined ourselves at around 120 fatalities a year. Do you think that if we see expedited investment in some of the solutions … those numbers would drop?”
Puchalsky argued that they will, eventually. Past work has reduced serious injury crashes at individual locations by 20%, he said. And current projects — like the construction of a roundabout at the intersection of 20th Street and Penrose, Packer and Moyamensing avenues — should make the streets safer for pedestrians.
But he also noted that it takes 3 to 5 years to complete projects, and said it will require substantial work to meaningfully reduce fatalities.
The city has dropped its “overly ambitious goal” of achieving zero traffic deaths by 2030 and is instead focusing on making improvements on all of its most dangerous roads by then, he said. It’s also still part of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission’s regional 2050 goal.
“If we look at the track crash trends, we were not, definitely not even before the pandemic, on a trajectory to meet the 2030 goals,” Puchalsky said. “It will be a challenging goal to get to zero by 2050, or to get meaningfully close to zero by 2050, so I think it takes all of us working together to meet that goal.”
A call for better bike lane protections
Before the pandemic, 80 to 90 people died in crashes annually in Philadelphia, Puchalsky said. During the pandemic it soared to 158 people in one year, and since then has hovered at a little over 120 annually.
In 2024, 125 people died, including 54 pedestrians and 3 cyclists, according to the Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia. In 2023 the toll included 10 cyclists, the highest number in years.
Puchalsky attributed the elevated numbers to “social dislocation” and fewer people following traffic laws during the pandemic, when streets were virtually empty for months and speeding became more common. “Putting that genie back in the bottle, where people respect social norms, is difficult,” he said.
Testimony by grieving family members and friends of crash victims demonstrated the ongoing impact of what they described as “traffic violence.”
Speakers at the hearing included the mother of Robert Evans, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver on North Broad Street in 2020, and a friend of Dr. Barbara Friedes, a cyclist whose death on Spruce Street last July galvanized calls for concrete barriers along bike lanes.
“We miss her every day and often reflect together that she did not have to die the way that she did,” said Noreena Lewis, a CHOP administrator who co-founded the group Pediatric Advocates for Transportation Health. “If that bike lane had been truly protected, she might be alive today.”
After Friedes’ death, the city ended the practice of allowing drivers to park in certain bike lanes for 20 minutes, and OTIS proposed concrete bike lane barriers on Spruce and Pine streets.
Once “no stopping” signs are installed, likely this spring, parking enforcement officers will start immediately ticketing any cars in the lanes without giving them a grace period, Philadelphia Parking Authority executive director Rich Lazer said.
The new “no-stopping” rule has drawn pushback from some residents, who created a group called Friends of Pine and Spruce to lobby against the ban on parking in the bike lanes.
Steven Wigrizer, an attorney who lives on Pine Street west of Broad, told councilmembers that when the bike lanes were created about 15 years ago, the homeowners were told they’d still be able to pull over for short periods, to drop off children, unload groceries or allow passengers with disabilities to safely get to their homes.
“Those promises, respectfully, in our view, were breached when this body passed an ordinance prohibiting stopping in bike zones, no exceptions, signed into law by our mayor,” he said. “We look at that as a very serious breach of trust. We look at that as a broken promise.”
He also said the no-stopping zone and concrete barriers could deny some residents access to their garages, which would be an unconstitutional taking of property. Councilmember Thomas responded that the city will not build any bike lanes that prevent people from getting to their homes.
“Convoluted” Vision Zero funding
Parker last year officially pledged to support the city’s traffic safety goals. Advocates hoped that would lead to a boost in funding, but in her first budget, passed last June, the Vision Zero line was cut from $2.5 million to $1 million, and the city projected spending $9 million on the program over six years, compared to $15 million during the Kenney administration.
That drew a rebuke from the Bike Coalition, Philly Bike Action and others. City officials said the criticism was misplaced because other budget lines contributed to traffic safety efforts, such as speed camera funding and the Street Department’s budget for traffic-calming projects.
Four or five years ago, city staffers tried to calculate how much money was actually being spent on Vision Zero projects, including funds from the federal government and other sources, and it amounted to well over $20 million, Puchalsky said.
Advocates are now calling for an increase of the official Vision Zero line to $5 million in the next budget, which must be approved by the end of June. Thomas and other councilmembers suggested Tuesday that they support that ask.
Last year, council’s advocacy “was not necessarily met with open arms,” Thomas said. “Now we’re in a different position, because we’ve seen a number of catastrophes. We want to … put on the record that we are challenging and pushing to see more funding specifically for Vision Zero.”
Councilmembers said that’s in part because of pressure they’re getting from advocates and other community members, who are under the impression that funding was cut last year. Councilmember Mark Squilla said it would be helpful if the administration could put together a list of related budget lines to show the public how much is really being spent and by which city departments.
“When we have a budget request for Vision Zero, it seems to get convoluted,” Squilla said. “A lot of the consistent questions we get is that we’re not funding Vision Zero. If we put $1 million in here, $1 million there, $500,000 there, it doesn’t look like we’re putting a plan together.”
Puchalsky said OTIS is working on a study of the costs of installing and maintaining traffic safety measures like speed cushions and bike lane flex posts, and could make a list of staff working on relevant projects. He deferred a question about OTIS’s support for a $5 million budget line to the mayor’s office and the Finance Department.
Fears of gentrification
Among councilmembers’ other concerns was the slow pace of repaving the city’s pothill-studded roads. Councilmember Rue Landau said the city has been budgeting more for that work, but is still only paving about 60 miles of road rather than the goal of 131 miles per year, and has not hired a planned third paving crew.
Michelle Brisbon, chief of staff in the Streets Department, said the city has had a hard time finding qualified applicants for the jobs of operating asphalt paving machines and rollers, as well as asphalt rakers and drivers. The department requires new hires to already have six months of general labor experience.
“We opened up the exams, I would say, at least three times over the last three years, and we may get 20 candidates on each list,” she said.
Given the number of residents who need jobs and could be trained for the positions, Landau said the city should be doing more to develop the labor pool.
“Why doesn’t the city just start a workforce development program that puts people through a six-month apprenticeship and then they’re prepared for the job, they’ve got the experience?” she asked.
Brisbon said Streets would look into whether it would be possible to start such a program.
Councilman Jeffery Young, meanwhile, said he’d heard concerns from his constituents about the siting and economic effects of installing bike lanes and doing other street projects. Some people are concerned that the work is only happening in areas that planners are trying to gentrify.
“Sometimes perception is reality for a lot of folks. They see, only in certain places, these measures are being [put] in place, and then at the same time, coming behind that, they see the neighborhood changing,” Young said. “We have to figure out in what neighborhoods — let’s say, solid minority neighborhoods where we know that gentrification isn’t happening right now — are these improvements still happening there as well?”
Puchalsky responded by mentioning a 2021 study that found that installing bike lanes and trails is not associated with displacement of people of color and lower-income residents.
He also said “traffic fatalities hit residents of color worse than white residents,” making it particularly important to do improvements in their neighborhoods. He added that OTIS employs Vision Zero ambassadors who work to build up trust in neighborhoods by attending community meetings and helping people connect with other services, like job and health programs.
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