PennDOT rolled out two safety improvements to West Philadelphia earlier this year. One project is to extend the Chestnut Street parking protected bike lane from 34th to 63rd Street. The other project will be on Market Street from 30th to 34th Street and it will begin later this year.
The goals of the project are to:
- Calm traffic by decreasing speeding, weaving, and aggressive driving.
- Create shorter and safer pedestrian crossings.
- Improve parking and loading operations.
- Increase safety for people riding bikes by separating them from motor vehicle traffic.
- Reduce illegal parking behaviors, like double-parking and blocking the crosswalk.
Since the announcement, the city has begun repaving the entire length of West Chestnut Street and installing a new parking protected bike lane, travel lanes, and parking from 63rd to 45th and restriping the existing parking protected bike lane from 45th to 34th Streets. This project is in progress and not yet completed. We have heard from many of our members that drivers are not following the striping and parking in the bike lane between 45th and 34th Street. The posts will be returned to this section of the bike lanes at the end of the project. The city is aware of this and will continue to monitor the project.
“The new roadway layout will provide traffic calming, a necessary safety upgrade on this section of roadway. Listed on the City’s High Injury Network, West Chestnut Street is a part of the 12 percent of city streets that account for 80 percent of serious and fatal traffic crashes in Philadelphia.”
Read more about the improvement project on the City’s website.