Bike lane and traffic safety advocates warmly applauded Council President Kenyatta Johnson at a Vision Zero conference Friday, some three years after he earned their lingering wrath for killing a road-narrowing project on a section of Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia.
In a keynote speech that the urbanist group 5th Square described as “truly incredible,” Johnson vowed to fight for more Vision Zero project funding in the city budget, called for “a real shift away from car dependency,” and said Philly should follow the lead of Paris in prioritizing “clean mobility” like cycling and transit.
“I know some folks said, ‘But you didn’t support protected bike lanes on Washington Avenue. So how can you actually advocate to make sure that we’re going to be a more pedestrian and bicycle friendly city?’” said Johnson, who sported a bicycle-shaped pin as he spoke. “And I always say: ‘Well, listen, don’t make one act define who I am as an individual.’”
He noted that last year he helped secure passage of the Get Out the Bike Lane bill that bans cars from stopping in the cycling lanes, and lobbied his fellow councilmembers to have it cover the whole city, not just his district.
The annual conference put on by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia included a number of moments when safety advocates, city planning staffers, traffic engineers and others celebrated the movement’s accomplishments — as well as acknowledgements of the continuing high toll of car crashes and the possibility of diminished federal funding for road improvement projects.
“Vision Zero is a racial justice issue. We know that roads are more dangerous by far in Black and brown communities, which falls into the President’s racist crusade against anything that he can classify as DEI,” Councilmember Jamie Gauthier said. “We should be suing him every week, but the reality is, until we win, we’re going to have to fund the things that we need.”
It would cost about $2 billion to complete all the Vision Zero safety projects needed in Philadelphia and the region, said Greg Krykewycz, director of transportation at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.
Here are a few other notable moments from the conference.
Cameras for red lights, speeding, bus stops and more
Several speakers lauded the increasing use of automated enforcement to slow down traffic and reduce illegal parking.
This year marks two decades since the installation of Roosevelt Boulevard’s red light cameras, which send photos of red-light runners to the Philadelphia Parking Authority for possible ticketing. The system has been credited with reducing fatal crashes on the road, which is considered the city’s most dangerous.
The program is “an unmitigated success — [fewer] lives lost, accidents down, revenues gained, and more liveability for our citizens,” state Sen. Christine Tartaglione said. Revenues go toward funding traffic safety projects in the city.
In 2020, the city also installed automated speed cameras on the Boulevard, which has slowed traffic there and is estimated to have prevented more than 36 deaths so far. The PPA plans to install 30 such cameras on Broad Street this summer and has been authorized to put another 42 on Route 13, which snakes along several streets in West and North Philadelphia.
A bill allowing speed cameras in school zones was held up in City Council hearing last month, but Johnson said another hearing has been scheduled. “You have my word that bill will be passed out of the Streets Committee,” he said to applause.
The PPA is now launching two new automated enforcement programs.
This month, a system created by the company Hayden AI will start using cameras mounted on SEPTA buses and trolleys to detect vehicles that are parked in bus stops, bus lanes, and on trolley routes, or are double-parked, and send photos to the agency for ticketing. It will operate in Center City, on Market, Chestnut and Walnut in West Philly, and on all the trolley lines except the G (formerly the 15).
Matt Zapson, SEPTA’s manager of planning programs, said illegally parked vehicles cause bus delays and congestion, and create serious hazards for riders, especially people who use wheelchairs or have mobility issues.
“You can see people squeezing between illegally parked cars to get from the sidewalk to the bus,” he said. “It creates a real risk for them, stepping off the sidewalk, squeezing between cars, waving for the bus to see them from behind a pickup truck or a box truck.”
The PPA this week also launched 22 Smart Loading Zones on Chestnut, Walnut and Sansom streets. Delivery companies can sign up for Curbpass and pay a 10 cents per minute fee to park in the zones for up to an hour, which is enforced by a camera system. Unregistered vehicles detected in the zones will be ticketed $51 after a three-minute grace period or $76 for double parking.
“Please slow down”
Despite the enforcement push, rates of traffic deaths remain higher in Philadelphia than many other cities, with more than 120 pedestrians, cyclists, vehicle passengers and others killed in crashes annually.
That toll was the focus of a panel that included Nereda Jones-Pugh, whose son Nyier “Nas” Cunningham was killed in a hit-and-run in 2022, as well as a grief counselor, a fire paramedic lieutenant and an attorney specializing in bike crashes.
Cunningham was a multi-instrumentalist musician, martial arts instructor, and father of young children who was riding his bike late one night near his home when he was struck and killed by a person driving a pickup truck.
Jones-Pugh, a member of Families for Safe Streets Greater Philadelphia, described being overwhelmed by the process of responding to his death. She found some solace in tributes to her son from his large circle of friends and by advocating for safer roads.
“I’m going to implore everybody to please slow down, to please care about others, care about safety for yourself,” she said. “Wait for the next light, please. You do not have to jump the light. You don’t have to swing around the bus. You don’t have to swing around the trolley. The lights are right there. You know it’s illegal.”
“Meaning-making” and restructuring the narrative around a lost family member is an integral part of the grieving process, said Jacquelyn Agins, a therapist in Montgomery County who works with people who are dealing with loss. For those who loved ones died in road crashes, that can include setting up ghost bikes and other memorials, and for some like Jones-Pugh it includes advocacy.
“Advocacy is a tremendous, tremendous part of meaning-making,” Agins said. “Not every person can move to advocacy. It takes an incredibly special person to create their meaning-making connected there.”
Make a nuisance of yourself
Another session included residents who have advocated for slow zones, bike lanes, road narrowing or other traffic safety projects in their neighborhoods.
Leonard Bonarek, a planner who used to work at the Bicycle Coalition, described lobbying city officials to halt a repaving project on 48th Street, where he lives, and getting it redesigned with a protected bike lane and new road striping.
The street had seen a number of crashes where drivers struck people and homes, he said. He and a neighbor collected more than 700 petition signatures, created a video of cars not stopping for a child who was trying to cross the street, and won their councilmember’s support, he said.
“Sometimes you have to make a nuisance of yourself,” said Mark Green, the Democratic 38th ward leader.
Green said he worked with state Sen. Vincent Hughes, his state representative, PennDOT, and other officials to get traffic calming measures on a stretch of Allegheny Avenue where two children and two senior citizens had died in traffic crashes.
“Stay on top of people from City Council, your elected officials. Stay on top of your state representative. Because these people represent you. If you don’t hold them accountable, you won’t get nothing done,” he said. “They want to get reelected…. They’ll do things for you.”
Nia Daye of Mercy Neighborhood Ministries in Tioga said she’s spent years trying to get a Slow Zone with speed bumps, corner clearances and other safety measures installed in an accident-prone area bounded by Ontario Street, Erie Avenue, and 17th and 22nd streets.
After the city initially turned down her application, the project was approved in 2022 and construction is supposed to begin soon. She noted that neighbors have been very interested and generally supportive of the project, but at times skeptical it would happen.
“Residents in general actually are more engaged and want to be more engaged than I think people expect,” she said. At the same time, “people are tired, or they feel like they’ve been asking for things a lot, and maybe it’s a feeling of, like, it’s not going to get done. They’re like, ‘You can try it. I give up.’”
