The Mayor’s Response:
The Bicycle Coalition was invited to participate in a press conference with the Mayor’s office and a short bike ride on Friday, August 30th at 11am. The goal of the press conference was to respond to the almost 6,000 petition signatures and 4,000 comments that were delivered to City Hall on August 15th.
We joined Mayor Parker and Managing Director Thiel as they reaffirmed the City’s commitment to Mayor Parker’s pledge to reach zero traffic fatalities and build infrastructure improvements on every mile of the High Injury Network. The Mayor’s office presented a letter responding to the petition and the 3 requests, their response is below:
- “FULLY PROTECT the Spruce and Pine Streets and Allegheny bike lanes and other protected bike lanes throughout Philadelphia with permanent concrete barriers
- OTIS has developed proposals for increased safety on the Spruce and Pine Streets bike lanes and we are committed to begin community engagement immediately to gain feedback. We are eager to finalize the short-term and long-term measures we can use to protect the bike lanes.
- END the legacy practice of allowing parking in bike lanes on weekends
- OTIS is working with community partners to relocate parking away from the Spruce and Pine bike lanes and this process will take several more weeks to finalize. We have received cooperation from many houses of worship along this corridor and look forward to a full resolution. There are complications around where to move parking as it can impact future multimodal planning for different corridors.
- REPLACE all of the “No Parking” signage with “No Stopping” signage along protected bike lanes.
- We intend to replace the No Parking signage with No Stopping signage along the Spruce and Pine corridor. This replacement process requires community engagement, which will happen simultaneously with the community engagement around increased safety proposals.
- We are researching other areas where there are No Parking signs along protected bike lanes and will review our options for removal.”
First, we want to acknowledge the quick turnaround from the Mayor’s office in responding to our petition. It is encouraging to see a positive response to our requests and we look forward to continuing our advocacy to make bicycle infrastructure protected throughout the entire city.
Secondly, we want to thank the office of Infrastructure and Transportation Systems specifically for prioritizing safety and we look forward to seeing their recommendations for the Spruce and Pine Streets corridor.
Along with responding to the petition directly and once again reaffirming her commitment to ending traffic fatalities, the Mayor pushed back on our analysis of the Vision Zero budget. She claimed that our analysis showing a decrease in Vision Zero funding was incorrect. We were surprised but stand by our original analysis of the budget. (The full analysis can be found here.)
The FY25 budget allocated $1M to a specific budget line labeled “Vision Zero City Capital Traffic Safety Improvement Funds.” In the FY24 budget, passed by Mayor Kenney, this line was at $2.5M. In Mayor Parker’s budget there was an additional $1.25M added to the Paving Budget allocated for Speed Cushions. Part of our budget requests in our Better Mobility platform included a specific line item for speed cushions as part of the Paving Budget but that was in addition to the existing incremental increases to the City’s Vision Zero line (Better Mobility, page 8).
Included in our analysis of the Vision Zero budget are other budget lines like Automated Red Light and Speed Cameras, and Federal and State matching funds. You can see in the graphic below tracking overall investments that the FY24 budget had a total of $39.3M, not including the paving budget. In the FY25 budget there was a total of $23.4M. We recognize that the biggest difference in this graph is that State and Federal matching funds decreased from FY24 to FY25. However, the budget line the city has the most control over is “Vision Zero City Capital Traffic Safety Improvement Fund” – therefore this has been the focus of our budget requests.
On Council President Johnson’s response:
We are encouraged by the recent actions Council has taken to respond to our requests. On Wednesday, September 4th, Council President Johnson invited the Bicycle Coalition, Families for Safe Streets, Philly Bike Action, and 5th Square to meet with him and his legislative team to discuss Council’s role. Not only were we able to talk in detail about our petition to improve bicycle infrastructure across the city, we made great progress on the importance of addressing traffic violence on the same level as other violent crimes in Philadelphia.
The Council President introduced a bill on the first day of council, September 5th, that would change parking regulations in bike lanes from “no parking” to “no stopping or standing” CITYWIDE. This bill will make it illegal to load in bike lanes across the city and allow the Philadelphia Parking Authority and the Police to hand out tickets to violators immediately instead of after 20 minutes. This is a necessary step to protecting bike lanes across the city.
At-Large Council Members Thomas, Landau, and O’Rourke also introduced a resolution on September 5th asking for a hearing on Vision Zero and how the City can best support the program to reach 0 traffic fatalities, specifically focusing on vulnerable road users (people walking and on bicycles).
As we said during our press conference on Friday, August 30th, we are committed to working with the Mayor and Council because only together can we make our city streets safer for everyone.