Broad Street could soon get speed cameras in an effort to cut down on crashes

City Council could pass a bill before its summer break to put speed-enforcement cameras along the length of Broad Street, the first of five crash-prone Philadelphia corridors in line to get them under a new state law expanding use of the technology.

Planners and engineers from the city’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems recommended that Broad Street and a portion of Old York Road, designated State Route 611, go first — as the most dangerous high-speed city roadway based on analyses of PennDot traffic crash data from 2018 to 2022.

They ranked roadways with a scoring system that took into account the number of fatal and serious-injury crashes on the route; collisions in which police identified speeding as a factor; and crashes involving pedestrians. The top five are all state highways and major city arterials.

Roosevelt Boulevard, which has had cameras since 2020, is currently the only road in the state with automated speed enforcement, except for work zones on divided highways and interstates.

The technology clocks vehicle speeds, much as radar does, and it captures images of the car’s license plate so that violators can be ticketed.

The Philadelphia Parking Authority will administer the program, as it does on the Boulevard. The timeline for installing the system is not yet firm.

Once cameras are running, drivers are to be mailed warnings for the first 60 days. After that, $100 tickets will be issued for traveling 11 miles or more over the posted speed limit.

Vehicle crashes with fatalities, serious injuries, pedestrian-involved crashes and average vehicle speeds have dropped sharply on Roosevelt Boulevard — as have violations — since the cameras went up on Roosevelt Boulevard in June 2020.

“Through this work, I have learned that we have been taught to think accidents are unavoidable incidents, but they are crashes, and they can be avoided,” said Nicole Brunet, policy director for the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, which works on traffic safety issues. “These cameras have been proven to save one life every month that they’ve been on the Boulevard.”

A law enacted last December said the Boulevard speed cameras, installed on a trial basis, can stay permanently, and the state also allowed City Council to choose five more roadways in the city for camera-enforcement systems.

On Broad Street, 169 people were killed or seriously injured; speeding was a factor in 165 collisions and 465 pedestrians were struck from 2018 to 2022, the PennDot data show.

In descending order, OTIS also recommended placing cameras on:

A Council committee passed a Broad Street speed-camera bill on Monday, clearing way for lawmakers to vote on it June 13, the last scheduled meeting before summer adjournment.

The measure appears to have enough support to pass, though there are some concerns.

Council Member Jeffery Young, who represents the 5th District in North Philadelphia, pushed OTIS during Monday’s committee meeting to detail an advertising and education campaign as soon as possible.

“I would love for my constituents to be able to fully understand what’s happening here before we hit them with $100 [speed] camera tickets,” said Young, the chairman of the Streets and Services Committee.

“I represent some of the most challenged residents in the city, so that $100 is something that can be taking food away from their families,” he said. OTIS is developing a robust education program, planning chief Chris Puchalsky promised.

OTIS gathered data on driver travel patterns and concluded that the corridors proposed for automated speed-enforcement are most heavily used for commutes rather than local trips.

Overall, 68% of all proposed automated speed enforcement corridor trips were more than eight miles, ”indicating that a large number of corridor drivers are commuters,” the report said. If that trend holds, local residents on the high-speed routes should get fewer tickets than through travelers.

The Rev. Stephanie Evans’ son, Robert, was killed in 2020 by a speeding car on Broad Street at Champlost — across from the 35th District police station, she told Council members.

“My thing is stop calling it an accident because it is a homicide,” Evans said. “We talk about gun violence, but the vehicle is a bullet. It is a bullet.”

Speed cameras are an “enforcement-for-profit racket, not a safety program,” Tom McCarey, of Berwyn, wrote in an open letter to Council. That is a frequent argument of opponents, but there has been no evidence of wrongdoing in Pennsylvania’s Roosevelt Boulevard program.

State law requires money collected after paying the system’s vendor to finance safety programs. The enforcement-system companies are prohibited from being compensated based on the volume of tickets issued.