Philadelphia is often ranked among the best cities in the country for cycling. And yet, leading up to the 2023 mayoral election, cyclists had reason to fear for their safety on city streets. That year, 10 cyclists were killed in vehicular crashes, one third the number of cyclist deaths reported in New York City — a city with five times the population — that same year.
As a candidate for mayor, Cherelle Parker didn’t have much to say about cycling safety. She didn’t respond to the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia’s candidate questionnaire, and she skipped the organization’s candidate forum.
What little she did say about the issue made advocates anxious. Responding to a questionnaire from Grid (March 2023, #166), Parker said that “ideally, everyone should only be a few blocks away from a protected lane,” but in a questionnaire from Billy Penn, she said that “there are enough protected bike lanes already.”
“Having a mayor that was not responsive to our issues during the campaign made me really nervous,” says Nicole Brunet, the Bicycle Coalition’s policy director. According to Jessie Amadio, a cofounder of Philly Bike Action, the sense among advocates was that “traffic violence and alternative transportation were just not on her radar of priorities at all.”
One year in, that has changed. But only after a string of tragedies and a flurry of activism. (The Parker administration did not return a request for comment for this story.)
Activists have continued to put on the pressure, and we have finally gotten results because of it. But it’s just kind of incredible how they’ve had to work for it.”
— Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, 5th Square PAC
Early on in the administration, advocates saw a few hopeful signs that Mayor Parker was heeding their concerns.
In February 2024, the City updated its traffic calming request process to be more user-friendly, an initiative that had begun in the Kenney administration. That same month, Parker both requested a charter change to separate the Department of Streets into Streets and Sanitation and appointed Kristin Del Rossi as the Streets commissioner. It wasn’t the Department of Transportation that advocates had been pushing for, but Brunet says it was encouraging nonetheless.
Things went south in the spring. In March, Parker signed an executive order that recommitted Philadelphia to Vision Zero but quietly shifted the goal of achieving zero traffic deaths in the city from 2030 to 2050. The order also failed to include a goal for new high-quality bike lanes, something the Kenney administration had included in its 2016 Vision Zero commitment. “To see her not recommit to a goal like that was very troublesome, especially coming after her comments during the election that she thinks we have enough bike lanes,” says Brunet.
Then Parker released her first proposed budget. While the paving budget included a $1.75 million line for speed cushions — something advocates had been asking for — the Vision Zero budget faced a steep cut from $2.5 million to $1 million. Organizations aligned with the Bicycle Coalition had been hoping to see an increase in that budget line, with a goal of ultimately reaching $5 million. (The Parker administration maintains that Vision Zero funding wasn’t cut, just redirected to the Streets Department.) “It had people feeling pretty negatively about her position,” says Amadio.
Over the summer, long-simmering anger about the budget exploded. On July 17, Barbara Friedes, a doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, was killed by a drunk driver who sped through a Spruce Street bike lane. That same day, Christopher Cabrera was standing on the sidewalk when he was hit by a car and killed. A week after their deaths, hundreds of cyclists gathered at City Hall to call for street safety improvements in what may have been among the largest bicycle-related protests in the city’s history.
“The general public was outraged. They saw a connection to the lack of funds for Vision Zero and Complete Streets projects in the budget,” says Amadio. “The direct result of that is more traffic fatalities.”
In August, advocates collected more than 5,200 signatures on a petition calling for Mayor Parker and City Council to address the traffic safety crisis by reforming parking laws that allow cars to park and stop in bike lanes, installing concrete-protected bike lanes and increasing Vision Zero funding. When they attempted to deliver the petitions to City Hall, however, they were met with a wall of silent staffers and security guards.

For advocates, it was a deeply frustrating encounter. But looking back on it now, they see it as a pivotal turning point for the administration. “I think they realized that street safety is an urgent crisis in Philadelphia and a deeply popular political initiative,” says Amadio.
Two weeks after the flubbed petition delivery, the mayor held a press conference at which she officially responded to the petition. “She basically said, ‘We’re looking into all of this.’ And then she got on a bike and rode around the block, which showcased that she is not a very good bike rider,” says Brunet. “But there was a symbolism to it.”
Some real action did follow the symbolic gesture. In October, City Council passed the “Get Out the Bike Lane” bill, which raises the penalties for parking or temporarily stopping in bike lanes. In December, Parker, flanked by cycling advocates, signed it into law.
Some of the mayor’s other promised initiatives, however, are still in limbo. In October, City officials recommended $4.8 million in safety upgrades to the Pine and Spruce Street bike lanes, including concrete barriers. But the lanes remain unprotected for now, and the City says it will “work toward” separating the lanes this year. As for Vision Zero, advocates will have to wait until Parker releases her fiscal year 2026 budget later this year to see whether the mayor will restore or increase funding.
Meanwhile, advocates say, the city remains a dangerous place for cyclists. Philadelphia saw three cyclists killed in vehicular crashes in 2024. And on January 6, Michael Buie was hit by a driver while cycling on Broad Street. He was the first person in Philadelphia to be killed riding a bicycle in 2025.

Looking back on 2024, advocates say they’ve noticed a considerable shift in how the Parker administration talks about the issue of cyclist and pedestrian safety.
“Activists have continued to put on the pressure, and we have finally gotten results because of it. But it’s just kind of incredible how they’ve had to work for it,” says Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, a steering committee member of 5th Square Political Action Committee and adjunct professor at Temple University.
This doesn’t have to take decades.”
— Jessie Amadio, Philly Bike Action
In 2025, Johnston-Zimmerman says she’d like the Parker administration to advance its own “forward-thinking, world-class city kind of ideas” rather than simply responding to activist pressure. Brunet agrees. “From an advocate’s perspective, it’s frustrating that we need to have someone be killed on our streets for someone to wake up and do something,” says Brunet. “We want to be able to work proactively on safety, but in the last year we have only been able to be reactionary.”
According to Brunet, that could mean something as simple as publicly supporting the bill in the Pennsylvania legislature that would legalize parking-protected bike lanes or setting a goal for new protected bike lanes during her term. Amadio, meanwhile, would like to see the mayor back an initiative like Measure HLA, a ballot measure that voters in Los Angeles passed last year that requires the city to make safety improvements such as bus and bike lanes every time a street is repaved. Or focus on something as simple as daylighting intersections — preventing parked cars from blocking the view of traffic — which has helped the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, avoid traffic fatalities for the last seven years.
“This doesn’t have to take decades. There are cities like Paris that are doing rapid rollout of bike- and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure in a matter of a year or two,” says Amadio. “There’s no reason that Philly can’t do the same if we have the political will to get it done.”