Sonia Szczesna, director of active transportation for the Tristate Transportation Campaign, a nonprofit transportation advocacy organization, said Black and brown communities and low-income communities are often the most impacted by high-fatality roads.
“They divide these communities, and often residents have to travel these roadways by bike or by foot without access to high-quality public transportation. So there is an inequity in this infrastructure,” Szczesna said.
Data for the first four months of 2022 showed more pedestrians died on Philadelphia roads so far this year than people in cars. And hit-and-runs were higher in the first four months of this year than the same timeframe in the previous two years, worrying police and other city officials.
But fatalities on Roosevelt stayed steady during the pandemic rather than increasing, Yemen said, largely because, she believes, of the pilot speed cameras.