Repaving is beginning on Washington Avenue. Less than half will get new safety features.

Washington Avenue will be repaved in August but only sections east of Broad Street will be put on a lane-slimming road diet with features designed to calm traffic, city transportation officials said Friday, writing a coda to a nine-year struggle over making the thoroughfare safer.

Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson did not introduce implementing legislation for the road diet, reflecting the concerns of residents and business owners in his district west of Broad Street who wanted no traffic changes.

As a result, Washington Avenue will get new pavement but no new safety features — and will remain five lanes wide — from Grays Ferry Avenue to 16th Street. Opponents in Point Breeze feared a road diet would encourage more development and gentrification.

» READ MORE: How a redesign of Washington Avenue got detoured by a clash of competing needs

Only “time will tell” whether the western portion of the avenue becomes less safe, and the city will respond to speeding and other dangerous driving, said Mike Carroll, the city’s deputy managing director for transportation.

“It’s going to be in some ways less of an inviting pedestrian environment, I think that’s clear,” Carroll said in a virtual press briefing. “People aren’t going to have the same level of comfort.”

Repaving the busiest 2.1-mile corridor of Washington Avenue, from Fourth Street to Grays Ferry Avenue, will begin late this month and be finished in August, Carroll said.

Johnson had hoped some safety improvements could be installed while keeping the roadway in his district at five lanes, but Carroll said that wasn’t feasible because those features are designed to work in concert with fewer travel lanes.

The “time frame is the issue,” Carroll said. “We have a paving project that’s been waiting in the wings for a long time.” It’s more efficient and cheaper to make road design changes while it’s repaved, he said. The city will consider adding traffic-calming features for the west end of the avenue in the future, he said.

Johnson said he didn’t see why some of those features couldn’t be added now, west of Broad Street. “It doesn’t have to be either/or,” the councilman said. “We’ll continue to advocate for speed cushions, curb bump-outs, and longer [traffic] light countdowns,” he said.

Johnson added that more lanes are needed where the avenue passes through his district because of several large residential developments under construction.

Carroll also said the city eventually wants to install red-light enforcement cameras along the entire avenue, including on the side west of Broad Street.

» READ MORE: After all that, Washington Avenue could end up with two separate safety configurations

From Fourth to 12th Streets, the number of traffic lanes will vary from four to three, a parking-protected bike lane will be built, and speed humps and slots installed. The plan also calls for bus-boarding islands and turning wedges to keep cars from cutting corners.

The mixed-lane plan itself is a compromise, which came after a backlash against the city’s original plan, announced in September 2020, to narrow the entire stretch of Washington Avenue from five vehicle travel lanes to three — a design meant to cut vehicle crashes, make walking safer, and protect cyclists by placing bike lanes between parked cars and curbs.

City officials abandoned that plan Feb. 6. They had reopened the public-engagement process last year because they said the earlier round in 2020 did not adequately represent the concerns of people of color in the Grays Ferry and Point Breeze neighborhoods, as well as business owners along the avenue.

“Our city has failed every user of Washington Avenue, especially its most vulnerable,” said Dena Driscoll, co-chair of the urbanist advocacy group 5th Square. Fresh new pavement on five lanes “will attract speeding and bring back drag racing” on the avenue west of Broad Street, she said.

The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia bemoaned hyperlocal city politics that it believes gives registered community organizations and district councilmembers veto power over needed changes. “Never has a safety project that held so much promise ended up on the ash heap of Philadelphia politics,” it said in a statement.