Community Highlights

Philadelphia is designated as a Silver-level community due to their excellent wayfinding system, informational enforcement strategies, and planning efforts focused on supporting a healthier Philadelphia. Highlights of Philadelphia’s application include:

• Philadelphia has an excellent transit system, which is located within a half mile of 85 percent of all residents and provides wheelchair accessibility at 80 percent of bus shelters. Currently, the City of Philadelphia is replacing 300 existing bus shelters and adding 300 additional bus shelters citywide with a contemporary shelter design that enhances comfort and safety for transit riders.
• All new developments that require changes to the sidewalk or public right-of-way are subject to review under the City of Philadelphia Complete Streets Guidelines, adopted in 2012.
• Since 2010, the City of Philadelphia has coordinated automated pedestrian counts at major locations throughout the City with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, the region’s Metropolitan Planning Organization.
• Walk!Philadelphia is North America’s largest pedestrian wayfinding signage system. The Walk!Philadelphia system places disk maps midblock on both sides of the street and directional signs of nearby destinations on each corner. There are over 200 disk maps and 400 directional signs covering a 400 square block area in Philadelphia’s central business district..
• The City of Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health funds a Healthy Communities Coordinator at the Philadelphia City Planning Commission who works to integrate health and Health Impact Assessment tools into the community planning process. This staff member coordinates with the Managing Director’s Office of Transportation & Infrastructure Systems and the City’s Streets Department to recommend policy changes and projects for implementation.
• The Philadelphia Pedestrian & Bicycle Plan was adopted by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission (PCPC) in April of 2012. A detailed progress report was released in December 2015, which reflects the efforts by the PCPC, Streets Department, Managing Director’s Office of Transportation & Infrastructure Systems (oTIS), Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), and other entities towards expanding the pedestrian and bicycle networks and creating policies for safety and traffic enforcement over the past three years.