PennDot is considering safety improvements on Philly’s perilous Lincoln Drive

PennDot is conducting a safety study of Lincoln Drive in West Mount Airy to figure out what traffic-calming measures might work there to reduce speeding, aggressive driving, and crashes.

It seems to be the first tangible result of a new campaign by residents to highlight the high number of crashes along the northern portion of the drive and demand fixes. They say they are tired of cars whizzing by far above the 25 mph speed limit, sick of squealing tires and crunching metal, and afraid to cross intersections.

“I truly was gobsmacked — and pleased,” said Anne Dicker, chair of the Traffic Calming Committee of West Mount Airy Neighbors, who received a positive response from PennDot two days after she wrote requesting a traffic study. “Lincoln Drive has been a dangerous road for decades and it seems to be getting worse.”

» READ MORE: Fed-up Lincoln Drive residents use radar guns, flags, and boulders to fight speeding cars and dangerous curves

The move comes amid a renewed focus on road deaths in Philadelphia, part of a national movement to rethink highway design so motor vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists can safely share the same roadways in densely populated areas.

Traffic fatalities dropped 20% last year from an all-time high of 152 deaths in 2020, according to the city’s annual Vision Zero report released last week. But 2021 was still the second-deadliest year, the report said.

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission just published a guide to speed management projects for arterial roads in the city based on their size, traffic volume, role in the overall street network — and the land uses in the neighborhoods around them.

That’s important because it will enable planners and engineers to take a more holistic approach to street safety. PennDot’s District 6, in charge of state roads in Southeastern Pennsylvania, wanted a data-driven matrix with which to choose appropriate traffic-calming strategies for Philadelphia’s through streets — a system that could be incorporated into the agency’s design manual.

As it stands now, the rules restrict what PennDot engineers can do to slow traffic on state-owned arterials, which are classified as thoroughfares meant to move large volumes of vehicles. For instance the designers couldn’t use some devices, such as speed cushions or slightly elevated traffic tables, which make drivers slow down to avoid rocking their cars.

But Philadelphia has been using traffic-calming measures like them since it adopted a Vision Zero policy in 2016 of seeking to reduce fatalities to zero by 2030. Half the 623 miles of arterials in the city are controlled by the Streets Department and the other half are state-owned, so similar roadways near each other sometimes were vastly different.

“Jurisdiction shouldn’t be the deciding factor,” said Marco Gorini, a senior transportation planner with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. “If a technique is appropriate in the roadway’s context, then it should be on the table.”

Lincoln Drive is such an arterial road, and the section from Allens Lane to Cliveden Street is dense, with mixed commercial and residential buildings, and is designated a state highway.

In a Sept. 21 letter to Dicker, the West Mount Airy safety advocate — which came two days after The Inquirer wrote about the perils of Lincoln Drive — PennDot regional official Eugene J. Blaum said the agency was launching a comprehensive traffic study, collecting vehicle counts and data on speeds, and analyzing the crash history on the corridor.

The study will use DVRPC’s new decision-making guide to evaluate and recommend short and longer-term safety improvements for the state-owned part of Lincoln Drive, “including automated red-light enforcement” and changes to traffic signals, Blaum wrote.

PennDot also will study the feasibility of a roundabout at the triangular junction of Lincoln Drive and Emlen Street, with other roads feeding into it at oblique angles. Neighbors say it’s a crash hot spot.

Nick Pipitone said he witnessed several accidents in the 18 months he lived in the Lincoln Terrace apartments above the Emlen Street intersection, including one in which a woman slammed her car into another vehicle, got out, ripped off her dangling bumper, and sped away.

“It was bad, and the biggest problem was just the noise,” said Pipitone, who moved to South Philadelphia earlier this year for unrelated reasons. “A couple times we got woken up in the middle of the night and someone was doing doughnuts around the traffic island … a loud screeching noise. Freaked our dog out.”

Along Cobbs Creek Parkway, a curvy and dangerous road in West Philly, PennDot has installed some calming designs as part of an experiment, including speed tables and phosphorescent safety markings on the pavement. It plans more.

At the same time, in the city’s revised budget for fiscal 2023, the Vision Zero program will have $23 million to spend on capital projects, the most since the program began. It’s a combination of mostly state and federal funds, and the city increased its annual contribution from $1 million to $2 million after advocacy from the Livable Communities Coalition.

“The need is great. We’re seeing an extreme increase in aggressive and distracted driving,” said Nicole Brunet, policy director for the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, which works on traffic safety for all.

Dicker, of the West Mount Airy group, said she’s encouraged by the money becoming available for traffic calming. She noted that the federal infrastructure act has grants that are earmarked for those safety projects.

“The money will be far better spent than on another road-widening project,” she said.