The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia sent a letter with seven actions on Vision Zero to the City of Philadelphia, and nearly 1,500 of you co-signed on them. The requests, detailed here, were a direct response to the death of Emily Fredricks, killed while riding her bike on Spruce Street in Center City, Philadelphia.

Clearly, there is a support for stronger action on Vision Zero.

The City has recently responded to the Bicycle Coalition’s seven actions, which is below.

Letter to Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia 12.15.17 by sarah8328 on Scribd

Our read of the letter: The Mayor is committed to Vision Zero. And we welcome his invitation to the bicycling community to continue working with his Administration to make improvements towards the Vision Zero goal as fast as possible.

We agree with the Mayor that community engagement is critical and we want to see it expedited. We are doing that now. We conducted community outreach on West Chestnut several years ago that helped set the stage for the new West Chestnut protected bike lane and held a community meeting in far West Philly in November 2017 as a follow-up.

Last week, we met with Washington West Civic and the Cross Town Coalition to discuss where we held common ground about Spruce and Pine. Our work with those organizations is deepening and we welcome the opportunity to work with the Mayor on that. All stakeholders must be involved;  including those who use the streets, like Emily and Rebecca.

We believe that there is a need to see on-the-ground progress move faster. We appreciate the commitments made in the letter to work on some of the issues specifically, such as the protected intersections and safety measures for trucks.  We believe these issues should be addressed as soon as possible.  The test will be how quickly substantive improvements can get made on the High Injury Network and the most highly-biked streets.

All of this is going to take money and cutting through bureaucracy to improve project delivery.

This highlights why the FY19 budget for Vision Zero and Streets Department capital & operations is more important than ever. We will continue advocating for more money for the Vision Zero budget because, ultimately and unfortunately, more resources are needed to make more improvements on the ground.

Reaching Vision Zero will take work and dedication from all quarters and we recognize that everyone has a role to play. The Bicycle Coalition is committed to doing all it can to help make progress as quickly as possible. And we welcome Mayor Kenney’s commitment as well.