As part of the City of Philadelphia’s Vision Zero program, they’ve introduced a neighborhood slow zone program which was won by two neighborhoods, including Fairhill in North Philadelphia.

The City of Philadelphia recently released initial plans for the Fairhill Slow Zone, which is available here.

The Slow Zone program is an important part of Vision Zero. And while Philadelphia needs Slow Zones in all of its neighborhoods, we are happy to see this program getting off the ground.

The City and the Fairhill Neighborhood are still in the process of holding community meetings, with construction concluding in Fall 2020. Among the tools the city and Fairhill are working with are speed cushions, raised crosswalks, pavement parkings, changes to street direction, corner clearances, and diverters—but, ultimately, the decisions will be made by the community.

The application was written by neighborhood organization HACE, and will include traffic calming between 2nd and 5th Streets, and Allegheny and Glenwood Avenues.

Stasia Montiero of HACE noted at the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia’s 2019 Vision Zero Conference that the motivation for applying was partially motivated by a listening session HACE, the Bicycle Coalition, AARP and the Vision Zero Alliance held on N. 5th Street. After the listening session, residents asked what they could do to enact the ideas they came up with at the session, and Slow Zone applications had recently become available.