Philly hopes to slow down traffic on Lincoln Drive by adding speed slots

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The city is installing speed slots along Lincoln Drive in West Mount Airy with hopes of slowing down cars on a residential section of the busy state roadway.

Crews with the Philadelphia Streets Department have started work on four sets of slots between West Allens Lane and Wayne Avenue. Speed slots are similar to speed humps but are instead designed to slow down cars without disrupting the flow of traffic.

Richard Montanez, deputy commissioner of transportation, said the goal is to get people to drive the speed limit — 25 mph — along the 1.4-mile stretch, where cars routinely move much faster.

“What we’re hoping to see at the end of this is a reduction of crashes. Overall, people driving the safe speed, which is the speed limit, and people not leaving the road and ending up in somebody’s property, damaging fences or trees or, God forbid, even hitting a pedestrian who’s just walking on Lincoln Drive,” Montanez said.

Between 2018 and 2022, there was an average of 13 crashes a year between West Allens Lane and Wayne Avenue, according to data provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. The highest total was recorded in 2018, when there were 16 crashes along that stretch.

Crews are installing a set between West Allens Lane and West Mt. Airy Avenue; West Mt. Airy Avenue and Mt. Pleasant Avenue; McCallum and Green streets; and West Hortter Street and Wayne Avenue.

The work is slated to wrap up by the end of May.

The speed slots are part of a pilot project with PennDOT that’s designed to make Lincoln Drive safer. The effort was launched after more than a decade of neighborhood activism around the issue, including from West Mount Airy Neighbors.

Getting speed slots installed was one of the civic group’s top priorities.

“If it’s an extra 30 seconds it takes me to drive down that segment of Lincoln Drive, it’s worth those extra 30 seconds to make sure that I’m not killing somebody,” said longtime resident Anne Dicker in October 2023.

During the first phase of the pilot, PennDOT installed rumble stripes, traffic lane separators and other calming measures between West Allens Lane and Wayne Avenue.

After the speed slots are installed, the city will spend about two years upgrading the traffic signals along that section, which will include erecting traffic lights that hang over the roadway.

The final phase of the pilot will seek to improve the flow of traffic in and around a traffic circle where Emlen and West Ellet streets feed into Lincoln Drive. Montanez said that work may change that stretch of Ellet into a one-way street.

He said the city is also discussing the possibility of installing speed slots south of Wayne Avenue after the pilot is completed.

“We want to see what the benefit is here and how it affects before we go ahead and start putting them in everyone on Lincoln Drive,” Montanez said.