From Center City and University City to the Roosevelt Boulevard and South Broad, neighborhoods citywide experience their share of traffic woes.

In East Falls, vehicle speed is a frequently talked about topic, rearing its head at community meeting after community meeting.

Civic leaders have long complained about high rates of speed on major thoroughfares - Henry Avenue and Lincoln Drive in particular - and claim law enforcement and Streets Department officials are slow to fix the problem.

While police say they have bumped up speed patrols, and highway workers have acknowledged that traffic-calming methods are being considered, the problems persist.

Some neighbors have decided to take action.

Enter the "Pace Car" program, an initiative in which residents try to curb speeding simply by driving the speed limit.

"They're going to follow the rules of the road. That's all it is," said Gina Snyder, executive director of the East Falls Development Corp. "It's pretty minimal."

Snyder first proposed the pace car idea to the East Falls Community Council's Traffic Committee around four years ago. She had been doing research on traffic calming measures employed in other communities, and saw this as having the potential to benefit East Falls.

Due to lack of interest, however, the committee never ran with the idea, and it fell by the wayside.

Recently, however, committee chairman Ray Lucci, a strong proponent of traffic mitigation, decided to revive the concept. Soon after, the pace car program was born.

The initiative is simple: Each East Falls resident in the program signs a pledge to drive the posted speed limits on all neighborhood roads and each gets a bumper sticker or window decal that warns a "pace car" is being driven. Basically, pace car drivers are showing others that driving the speed limit can be done.

And if you get stuck behind one of them, you're not going anywhere fast.

"With something like this, the old saying is, only time will tell," Lucci said when asked if he envisions the program helping to prevent speeding. "I think the success of this program really depends upon us building a critical mass of volunteers."

To date, Lucci said between 60 and 75 people have signed up to participate in the program. Momentum really built for the program around four or five months ago, Lucci said, and there was an official kickoff at the Arts by the River festival earlier this month, where around 30 people signed up.

According to Lucci, the program didn't take off when first proposed because Traffic Committee members were then working with the Streets Department and PennDOT to put together "passive" traffic calming measures, such as bump-outs, or other ways to "reconfigure the physical structure of the streets."

But those fixes aren't quick, since it takes time to study the roadways, and money to implement changes. While waiting for those developments, Lucci began accepting suggestions on ways to help make the roads safer immediately. The pace car program was viewed as one such solution.

"There was a much more receptive ear on the committee to pursue it as one part of an overall strategy," he said.

Lucci began doing his own research, and learned of various communities across the country utilizing the program. Studies showed a little community volunteerism in the form of driving the speed limit goes a long way.

"One resident of East Falls will be out there in their pace car helping to set the pace for other drivers," Lucci said.

Lucci talked about the idea of "changing the paradigm in the area," simply by "people making a conscious effort to drive the posted speed limit in East Falls."

Of course, the program is only as good as its participants, since drivers are essentially going by the honor system. The success of the program depends upon how long people will stick with driving the speed limit, said Lucci, who plans to send out e-mail reminders to participants about their pledge and "praise people for their efforts."

The only real cost related to the program had to do with the design and production of the bumper stickers and window decals. Former council president Adam Carangi, who works for a design firm, had one of his graphic artists create the logo, and offer the stickers at a discounted rate.

Carangi is familiar with the pace car program, since it was an idea proposed by the traffic committee during his time as community council president.

"Everybody was in support of it," he recalled. "It was a great idea."

One initial question, however, was who would oversee the program, Carangi said. At that time, it was a toss up between the community council, development corp., and the local town watch chapter. Town watch is charged with vehicle and pedestrian safety, Carangi said, but it was eventually decided that community council, particularly its traffic committee, would be best suited to oversee the program.

Community leaders once again tried to implement the program around two years ago, Carangi said, but again, interest waned.

"It just wasn't there," Carangi said. "We sort of talked about it a lot over the course of a couple years."

During that time, the community council was attempting to secure grants to offset the cost of the program, but none came through. Eventually, Carangi, realizing he could do a lot of good due to his work at the design firm, accepted that if the program was going to be implemented, it needed to be implemented from within.

"We never really found the right grant, and just decided to launch it," he said.

Carangi views the program as having the ability to make a huge impact, since everyday folks have made a commitment to making their neighborhood safer.

"It's a simple concept. It'll pace people to slow down," he said. "In some ways, it might be a tough sale, because you're always rushing out of your home, but the reality of it is the neighborhood has to take care of itself."

Carangi compared the program to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, in that it began as a grassroots effort to circumvent bureaucracy.

"It's not unlike the whole idea of MADD," Carangi said. "You basically make a commitment to yourself that that's what you're going to do. There's nobody policing it. It's about people regulating themselves."

Meanwhile, the traffic committee's Lucci cautions against viewing the pace car program as a cure-all. He said he remains "adamant in his position that this is not a panacea," and considers this initiative as just one part of an overall strategy to make the roads safer.

Lucci said the traffic committee and community council continue to converse with Nutter administration officials and PennDOT engineers on ways to improve East Falls streets. Some are receptive, while for others, the message seems to have fallen on deaf ears, he said.

As for the pace car program, Lucci said he believes East Falls is the first community in Philadelphia to implement the program, something he's quite proud of.

Reporter Jon Campisi can be reached at 215-354-3038 or jcampisi@phillynews.com