Last week, City Council passed bill # 240434 enabling automated speed cameras on the entire length of Route 611/Broad Street. This is the first corridor of five allowed in the state legislation passed in December 2023.
In 2023 the PA legislature passed HB 1284, making the Roosevelt Blvd Speed Camera pilot permanent and expanding it to 5 additional corridors. Roosevelt Blvd has historically been one of the most dangerous roads in our city, since the cameras went up in 2020 violations dropped by 95% and 36 lives were saved. In sharp contrast, since the pilot on Roosevelt went in, Broad St has become more dangerous, with 11 traffic fatalities in 2023 alone.
Between 2018-2022, Route 611 experienced:
- 169 fatal and serious injury crashes
- 165 speeding-related crashes, and
- 456 pedestrian crashes
With a majority of those fatalities occurring in the fifth district, as seen below:
- 108 fatal and serious injury crashes
- 107 speeding-related crashes, and
- 250 pedestrian crashes
We applaud the swift work done by the office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems, the Philadelphia Parking Authority, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, Mayor Parker, and Council Member Squilla for introducing the bill ,and the rest of our City Council members who passed this legislation unanimously. The goal of this legislation is not to raise revenue but to change driver behavior. We look forward to seeing this technology save lives on more dangerous roads throughout Philadelphia.
Policy Director, Nicole Brunet stands with Families for Safe Streets members, Latanya Byrd and Rev. Stephanie Evans
Now that the program has been expanded it is necessary to prioritize other dangerous, high-speed and high-fatality roads. Almost 70% of all bicycle fatalities in the past five years have occurred on State-owned roads. These cameras on Broad Street and the 4 other high-speed corridors will slow drivers and begin to curb careless and dangerous driving behavior, but the technology is not a silver bullet. We need additional city and state funding to improve the safety of all the roads in our City using a variety of proven interventions.