The Chinatown Stitch: Reconnecting Philadelphia to Vine Street is a study to cap the Vine Street Expressway between Broad Street and 8th Street to reconnect Chinatown and Chinatown North. The study is a partnership between the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Transportation Infrastructure and Sustainability (OTIS) and the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC).
Earlier in 2023, the City and PCDC released a survey and held a public visioning meeting to understand community goals and vision to address the problems with the Vine Street Expressway. See Blog Post #1 for a summary of what we heard.
Based on the project goals and vision, the project team spent the summer developing three concepts or alternate ways of improving the Vine Street Expressway corridor. The three concepts are:
- Two-Block Concept: This concept adds caps for the full block between 10th and 11th Streets, and 12th and 13th Streets. There is an open gap between 11th and 12th Streets, which allows for required ventilation for the expressway.
- Three-Block Concept: This concept adds a full continuous cap from 10th to 13th Streets, between the surface lanes of Vine Street. While this concept covers more of the expressway than Concept #1, it is significantly more costly and difficult to build.
- Three-Block Shifted Street Concept: This concept is like the Three-Block Concept, but westbound Vine Street is shifted south to run next to eastbound Vine Street at 11th and 12th Streets. This concept is the most expensive and difficult to build but would create the most space of inclusive development.
In addition to the capping part of the project, each of these alternatives will be paired with traffic safety measures and streetscaping of the local lanes of Vine Street.
Each of these alternative concepts has pluses and minuses, and each is responsive to the goals and vision we heard from the community in March and April. To move the project forward we need to narrow down to a single alternative.
We are releasing a second survey (in English and simplified Chinese) to unveil and solicit feedback on the three concepts for the project. Residents are encouraged to fill out the survey:
Residents can also attend a public meeting on Monday, September 18 from 6-8 p.m. at the Chinese Christian Church and Center (1101 Vine Street).
