By: Shamyra Taylor, Sydney Shapiro, Milan Holland, Nate Kuhn, and Liam Duke
On July 17, 2024 a young woman named Barbara Friedes tragically lost her life in a biking accident in Philadelphia, leaving the community mourning. The incident, which occurred in Rittenhouse square, was caused by a 68-year old drunk driver. This incident raises concerns about cyclists’ safety while navigating urban areas. This has raised a various amount of questions for WHYY- Young Journalist, one specifically being what is the importance of bike lanes and how can we improve them? Local residents and cycling advocates have expressed their sorrow and frustration, emphasizing the need for improved bike lanes to ensure road safety for cyclists. Nicole Brunet who works for the Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia says,” It’s time to upgrade bike lanes to have more protection, curved protection, raise the bike lane and expand the sidewalk. We’re behind.” This tragic event is a reminder that our city’s streets must be safer for cyclists and pedestrians.
In the past three budget cycles, Mayor Kenny increased the city’s contribution to vision zero from $1M in 2022 to $2.5M in 2024. These budgets were to build safe infrastructure on city roads, add more and upgrade protected bike lanes and more. However on June 13th, 2024 City Council voted to pass Mayor Parker’s first budget for the year 2025. This budget will include a 60% decrease to the vision zero budget less than three months after Mayor Parker signed an executive order infront of safe street advocates, families of road traffic victims and transportation planners. Nicole Brunet said “One fatality is too many.” For this reason the bicycle coalition requested a budget increase to $3M with the goal of reaching $5M each year. In order to meet the goal of reaching Vision Zero, the city not only needs to meet Mayor Kenny’s Vision Zero for the 2024 budget of $2.4M but increase it.
In order to improve this tremendous problem in today’s society, local biking companies like the Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia are committed to solving this problem as soon as possible. “We started vision zero back in 2016 under the Kennedy administration, we had to create an action plan with the goal of getting the fatality rate to zero.” Say’s Nicole Brunet. Peter DeCarolis, who is a Safe Routes Philly Coordinator, is also highly invested in solutionizing today’s problem. He focuses on creating infrastructural deterrents, such as speed cameras and speed bumps. DeCarolis says, “ The slower people go, the safety improvement will increase.” Both Companies have the same plan but can’t proceed because they don’t have the money. They both have the question, “When trying to make the city streets safer, what funding are we going to get?” The hardest part about it all is finding a budget, once they get the right amount of money they will immediately take charge and make the city safer for cyclists and pedestrians.