Action 2: Ensure Safe Access to Parks and Institutions
The 2011 streetscape improvement project has laid the groundwork for restoring the Parkway as a place hospitable to both pedestrians and vehicles. Recent improvements include widened pedestrian-refuge islands, bumpouts, and tighter corners. This action plan recommends building on the improvements that have already begun, namely: • Modification of striping to demarcate parking lanes more clearly • Addition of off-peak, on-street parking to the inner lanes of the Parkway • Transformation of further parking along the outer lanes into permanent parking; this will encourage a greater share of traffic to use the inner lanes and thus lessen the “weave, merge, and diverge” issues at Eakins Oval. Though the area has benefited from recent trafficrelated improvements, people continue to perceive the Parkway as largely inaccessible to pedestrians and as a barrier between neighborhoods. The actions the plan recommends will continue the momentum that has already begun; helping to make the Parkway and its surrounding assets—parks, institutions, and neighborhoods—accessible and fully integrated into the life of the city. Upper Left: Existing parking conditions along Pennsylvania Avenue between 23rd and 25th Streets. Upper Right: The new entrance to the Schuylkill Banks at Martin Luther King Drive. Lower Left: Existing bicycle conditions around Eakins Oval.