Four takeaways from Philadelphia’s Washington Avenue redesign, according to the city

After nearly a decade in the making, the improvements to Washington Avenue seem to have delivered on many of its proposed benefits, according to a new city report.

Two years ago, the City’s Streets Department and Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability (OTIS) began repaving, block-by-block, Washington Avenue from Grays Ferry Avenue to 4th Street — a makeover overdue by two decades. The renovation strategy involved reducing driving lanes, introducing traffic calming measures, and establishing new public parking and loading zones to enhance safety for pedestrians and cyclists.

It wasn’t an easy decades-long effort to get to this point. The Washington Avenue redesign completed in 2023 is not the one originally proposed. A 2020 proposal aimed to condense the avenue’s five lanes to just three.

When the COVID-19 pandemic put the project on hold, the original plan was scrapped, and in its place was a hybrid of the three, four, and five lane layouts throughout with traffic calming measures implemented along some sections, while other parts didn’t see any. The entirety of Washington Avenue was repaved regardless.

“Washington Avenue is extremely complex. It’s in the middle of a dynamic urban area that has a multitude of uses and it would be challenging to find a corridor in the country as complex as Washington Avenue,” said Christopher Puchalsky, director of policy and strategic initiatives for OTIS, about the project’s scope. “There’s a reason that it took as long as it did to come up with these concepts and get people on the same page.”

Now, the city is required to release its one-year post-evaluation on the project’s impact on Washington Avenue for users of the roadway. City staff alongside third-party consultants took the last year to study traffic, parking patterns, and other transportation statistics, before and after the project’s implementation — including installing cameras at every intersection on Washington Avenue to gather insight. A second report will be released in 2025 for the two year post-evaluation.

Here are the initial takeaways from the report on Washington Avenue’s improvements one year out.

In areas where new timed parking regulations and loading zones were introduced, particularly from 4th to 11th Streets, OTIS reported a significant increase in parking and loading capacity.

Casey Ross, OTIS’s Complete Streets district manager, highlighted that this improvement led to a substantial decrease in the need for illegal parking. Specifically, illegal parking incidents dropped by over 50% from 4th Street Broad Street since 2017, with double parking down by 88% and median parking by 75%.

In terms of travel times for cars and public transit, shrinking the road from five lanes to three or four lanes didn’t create major changes for cars and public transit.

“Travel times essentially stayed the same as there was only a several seconds increase, including on the west side of Broad Street [which didn’t receive traffic calming measures],” Puchalsky said. “Driving is a little bit slower, but we’re talking less than a minute. One of our big goals with these types of projects is we want to slow down the speeding driver without slowing down the average driver going the speed limit.”

The introduction of speed cushions on Washington Avenue has led to a significant reduction in speeding, with up to 83% of drivers slowing down as intended. Ross highlighted that the most notable impact was observed among the avenue’s fastest drivers, who reduced their speed the most.

Between 2017 and 2023, both the top 85 percentile speeds and the number of drivers exceeding speed limits declined, even though there was an overall decrease in vehicle volume. This contradicts the usual expectation that fewer cars would result in higher speeds due to more available space. Ross pointed to pandemic trends, where reduced traffic led to increased speeding and crashes, but noted that Washington Avenue saw a decrease in high speeds despite fewer cars.

This suggests the roadway redesign effectively curbs speeding. However, comprehensive data on vehicular crashes is pending, as analysis relies on PennDot’s statistics, which are not yet available for 2023. Ross emphasized the need for multiple years of data to accurately assess crash trends, with more insights expected in the two-year evaluation and beyond.

Bus ridership on Washington Avenue has seen a significant increase, with SEPTA Bus Route 64 experiencing a 17% jump in the past year, outpacing the citywide bus system’s 10.5% rise.

This growth indicates a shift towards public transit among residents and commuters. Additionally, the avenue’s bike lane enhancements have led to a surge in bicycle traffic, with volumes in certain areas nearly tripling and overall bike ridership soaring between 62% and 101%. A standout example is the intersection of Washington and Passyunk Avenues, where bicycle counts escalated from about 20 in 2017 to nearly 60 in 2023.

Fewer cars on the road and more people choosing to bike or ride the bus means less pollution on the roadway.

“It’s a positive benefit on traffic safety, pollution, and the feel of the roadway,” Puchalsky said. “People are able to choose how they want to travel — I think that’s a benefit”

While illegal parking took a nose dive since the redesign, there’s still one type of parking that the city can’t curb. Sidewalk parking, especially along the 700-900 blocks of Washington Avenue.

The biggest offenders are in areas next to construction or auto repair shops, said Ross. “With those types of land uses and businesses, you tend to see sidewalk parking in general, not just on Washington Avenue. We’ve spoken to Council members and we’re going to go out to talk to those businesses to see what their needs are and if there’s a way to find solutions,” she said.

As researchers look to find solutions, sidewalk parking is an issue that, anecdotally, has seemed to increase across the city, said Puchalsky.