Philly shares its roadmap to reducing traffic-related deaths and injuries
The city has made significant progress in lowering the number of traffic-related injuries, though traffic deaths remained stubbornly higher than comparable American cities.
That was one conclusion that could be drawn from the most recent data, for 2024, that was released Tuesday as part of the city’s latest Vision Zero Action Plan, a five-year blueprint aimed at reducing traffic fatalities and injuries to nill.
The report, which fulfilledMayor Cherelle Parker’s executive order from earlier this year, included input from almost 3,000 residents and stakeholders, officials said.
“This is a plan by and for the people of the City of Philadelphia,” the mayor said in the plan’s release. “The voices of nearly 3,000 Philadelphians are reflected in this document and will help guide my administration’s work to make Philadelphia safe, clean and green with economic opportunity for all.”
The number of traffic-related injuries in 2024 fell 18%, from 442 to 362, while fatalities decreased by just three, from 123 to 120, from the previous year.
The plan concentrates on improving safety in the city’sHigh Injury Network (HIN) — the 12% of Philly streets where 80% of traffic deaths and serious injuries occur. It aims to assist the Streets Department with road safety compliance and educate students and the public about safer traffic practices, all by 2030.
Philly’s traffic-related death rate spiked in 2020, and has “remained elevated” ever since as compared to peer cities like New York City, Boston, Chicago — and even slightly higher than a more vehicle-oriented city like Los Angeles,National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data showed.
That said, Philly is not an outlier in its difficulties in lowering traffic-related deaths. In fact,numbers are higher across the U.S. than they were a decade ago.
The report did highlight the city’s progress in implementing various physical measures over the past nine years. In that time, 154 miles of HIN projects were completed or remain in progress, 1,200 speed cushions were installed, 32 speed andred light cameras were installed, more than 30 schools were engaged in safe route programs, and 35 miles were added to the city’s bike path network.
Jessie Amadio, an organizer with the cycling advocacy group Philly Bike Action, said he was concerned the improvements do not go far enough, fast enough.
“We are still reviewing the plan, but our initial reaction is that the goals set forth are not transformational enough to address the climbing traffic death statistics,” he said. “Vision Zero safety interventions work in the places they are installed, but if we are only doing 5 miles of bike lanes or five segments of the High Injury Network per year, we aren’t going to reach the City’s Vision Zero by 2050 goal for a century.”
Among the data points in the report:
- While less than 10% of crashes in the city involved people travelling on foot, bike or motorcycle last year, those incidents accounted for almost two-thirds of fatalities.
- Black and Hispanic residents were more likely to be impacted by crashes, as well as residents living in ZIP codes that encompass underserved communities.
- Fatal crashes involving children surged in 2020 and have not receded, with an average of four children a week struck by a vehicle between 2020 and 2024.
Philadelphians were asked in a variety of ways for their input — through surveys, roundtable discussions and polling. Their greatest safety concern was vehicles speeding, followed by running red lights or stop signs, and distracted driving.
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Roundtable participants felt infrastructure improvements would do the most to protect non-drivers, but they also want to see behavioral changes and more traffic enforcement.
The city’s safety plan also included actions that would require state legislation. This included measures that would grant the city more control over speed limits, let Philly deploy more traffic cameras, adjust the definition of a curb in the vehicle code to allow for construction of parking-protected pedestrian lanes, and authorize more bike lanes.
Thefull report is available at the Vision Zero website, along with ashorter summary version. A Vision Zero Capital Plan is scheduled to be released next summer.
