Northeast residents want fast transit and slower cars on Roosevelt Boulevard

Red, blue, yellow, and green sticker dots stuck on a poster board told the story by the end of Tuesday night’s “Boulevard Reimagined” open house in Northeast Philadelphia.

Attendees were asked to use stickers to “vote” between two goals by which to judge alternative plans for remaking Roosevelt Boulevard by 2040.

Which was more important to them?

Clustered dots showed, respectively, a preference for “safety” over “speed” on a redo of the 12-lane Boulevard; a neighborhood more like a “walkable main street” than a drive-in shopping center; and fewer lanes for pedestrians to cross vs. more opportunities to get from one side to the other.

And, finally, more dots indicated people favored express transit service along the Boulevard between Bucks County and other parts of the city over local service with more stops.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, SEPTA, and the city’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems are working together to plot the future of the dangerous roadway, with local lanes running side by side with express lanes and confusing crossovers between the two. They also want to make transit more accessible and reliable there.

They are considering turning the Boulevard into either a partially capped expressway — a sunken limited-access highway with green space on caps and local road crossings at grade level — or a wider, neighborhood-centered roadway with ample green space and slower speed limits.

The revamped road would be accompanied by light-rail transit or bus rapid transit with dedicated rights-of-way for part of the route, or a subway.

For those who did not make it to an open house or fill out a paper survey there, the transportation agencies offer an online option, including a link to the information about Boulevard options displayed at in-person events.

“The Boulevard is a roadway that served its purpose at one time, when traffic volume was a lot lower,” said Fernando Mascioli, an engineer and associate vice president for HNTB Corp., PennDot’s consultant on the project.

It started as a semirural, 14-mile parkway, built between 1903 and 1914 to link the sparsely settled Far Northeast to other parts of Philadelphia. Roosevelt Boulevard, named for the 26th president, Theodore, eventually grew into a dangerous monster of 12 lanes often overwhelmed by traffic.

On the Boulevard between 2019 and 2023 there were 52 traffic deaths. Each month, one person died and three were severely injured. More than 25% of those killed were pedestrians or cyclists.

“I-95 doesn’t even have 12 lanes,” Mascioli said, adding that the road’s configuration has outlived its usefulness. “You’d like to be able to start all over if you could.”

Much of the discussion in the media has focused on the transit options. Residents have long been frustrated by how long it takes to get to other parts of the city and region by taking buses and transferring to the Broad Street Line or Market-Frankford Line.

In particular, the idea of building a subway to the Northeast — a shelved plan from the early 1900s — has generated enthusiasm from public-transportation advocates and urbanists from around the city who push for alternatives to the car.

James Lubin, who grew up in Oxford Circle, remembers well how hard it was for him to get to Center City two or three times a week from Northeast High School for a college prep program then known as Philadelphia Futures.

“I remember it being long, especially after a school day and then trying to get home afterward at night,” said Lubin, 27, a software engineer who now lives in Center City. Sometimes he would get home as late as 8 p.m.

“It all depended on me catching a specific bus at the right time to get to the Frankford Transportation Center to transfer to the El,” he said. “If I missed it, I’d have to wait for the next one.” The process was the same in reverse on the way home. A fast trip was about 45 minutes. A slow one, an hour or more.

Lubin was wearing an orange T-shirt in support of building the Roosevelt Boulevard Subway, featuring a train icon and the U.S. Route 1 highway sign.

“In my experience, the subway is the most reliable,” he said. “In Philly, I default to the subway.”

Hearings about transportation projects often get heated, with neighbors who disagree with one another squabbling. But at the open-house event on Red Lion Road, attendees didn’t raise their voices to one another and asked questions of the public officials on hand, rather than confronting them, as sometimes happens.

“We can disagree respectfully,” said Jay Arzu, a University of Pennsylvania doctoral student who has become the chief evangelist for the subway option, both blasted and touted online. He has attended almost all the sessions and said he has found a calmer tone than on social media.

“People aren’t as far apart as they imagine,” Arzu said.

Several of the planners and engineers who have run the open houses agreed they’ve been quiet.

Arzu said he’s still going to advocate hard for the subway, while acknowledging that concerns he has heard from some residents, such as fears that a subway connection would bring more crime and drugs to the Northeast, need to be addressed.

“How can we make the entire system safer, so that every station, everywhere, is safe?” he said.

Tuesday’s open house was the fourth and final meeting in the first round of public engagement to solicit opinions on what should be built.

Other meetings will happen through the year and into 2026 as the alternatives get whittled down to a draft plan.

The goal: finish the transformation of the Roosevelt Boulevard that has proceeded in fits and starts for decades, ideally by 2040.