‘No more deaths’: Philly cyclists hold memorial ride in FDR Park, protest Center City bike lane parking while calling for safety improvements

Sunday marked a year to the day since Mario D’Adamo III, a lawyer and avid cyclist, was killed when a driver careened into him while he was biking after work in South Philadelphia’s FDR Park.

But for D’Adamo’s mother, the heartbreak remains as raw as the night she got the call that her 37-year-old son had been hit by an alleged drunk driver.

“It was the shock of my life,” Paula D’Adamo recounted, wearing a T-shirt displaying a picture of her son with the words, “Forever in our Hearts.”

“Every single day I miss my Mario, and it never should have happened,” D’Adamo said, proudly describing her son as a compassionate and goal-oriented St. Joe’s grad who worked his way up from serving as a juvenile probation officer to an associate city solicitor to an attorney with his own practice, passing his bar exam on the first try.

FDR Park was a place where Mario D’Adamo spent time playing baseball as a child, and as an adult, ran and biked frequently — including on Aug. 4, 2023, when police say a driver, Thomas Ford, fatally struck D’Adamo in the park’s bike lane and wounded another pedestrian.

Ford, 68, then attempted to flee, but crashed into a tree, police said. He faces charges including homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence and involuntary manslaughter, according to court records. Ford’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

“I told the doctors, ‘Please don’t stop trying,’ because he is so strong — lifting weights, gym, running, boxing,” said D’Adamo’s father, Mario D’Adamo II. “But the crash was just so terrible on his brain.”

The pain of their son’s death, the couple said, is only intensified by a recent spate of traffic-related bicyclist and pedestrian fatalities — including the deaths of a CHOP medical resident killed near Rittenhouse Square while biking home, and a man fatally struck by a driver while standing on a Kensington sidewalk.

On Sunday, under a sky cloaked in overcast drizzle, the D’Adamo family joined around 50 cyclists, safe streets advocates, and city officials in FDR Park for a memorial ride, calling for better traffic calming measures and heightened protections for pedestrians and cyclists.

“We need to do something, whatever it takes to do, we can’t have no more deaths,” Paula D’Adamo said.

Addressing the group, Michael Carroll, the deputy managing director for the city’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure, said the deaths of D’Adamo and others are “at the heart of Vision Zero,” a set of city policies designed to reduce and ultimately end traffic deaths.

“Whether someone is walking, driving, riding the bus, or bicycling, they deserve to get home safely,” Carroll said, pledging to continue “technical and policy work” to create separated bike lanes around the city.

But for Chris Gale, executive director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, “it’s clear that more still needs to be done,” questioning the commitment to the cause after the city in June passed a budget cutting its Vision Zero program spending by more than $1 million. City officials have rejected that characterization, pointing to $1.25 million in spending elsewhere in the budget they say contributes to the Vision Zero efforts.

» READ MORE: Vision Zero spending was cut in the city budget. But officials point to related traffic-safety spending elsewhere.

“It was still a cut,” Gale insisted. “We are going to keep pushing for better infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians, better transit options, and we are here to work with the city.”

Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson also attended Sunday’s memorial, saying he will “work in partnership with the administration to advocate for additional support on the upcoming budget for Vision Zero.”

Across town Sunday morning, around two dozen advocates lined the bike lanes on Spruce and Pine Streets near Tenth Presbyterian Church in Rittenhouse Square, brandishing signs reading: “No more bicycle deaths” and “How many preventable deaths is your parking spot worth?”

The protest, a regular occurrence organized by Philly Bike Action, called on the church to withdraw its permits allowing congregants to park their cars in surrounding bike lanes during Sunday services. The bicycle advocacy group has said the car-blocked lanes — particularly on Spruce and Pine — create an unsafe situation for cyclists using the busy crosstown thoroughfares, and has called on the city to reinvest in Vision Zero, recommending the bike lanes be delineated by a concrete barrier rather than flexible plastic pylons.

“People feel the only way to be protected is by doing this themselves, because the city won’t protect them,” said PBA organizer Caleb Holtmeyer.

The Rev. Timothy Geiger said that Tenth Presbyterian is discussing alternative Sunday parking options, but that safety is also a concern for his congregation — half of which he said is elderly or has young children, “so they need parking that’s close, so they are not in danger as they go back and forth from their cars.”

Sunday’s actions came amid a groundswell of traffic safety concerns in Philadelphia following a string of fatal vehicle crashes involving cyclists and pedestrians in the city.

Last month, Barbara Friedes, a 30-year-old CHOP pediatric oncology resident, was killed when police say a drunk driver crashed into her while she cycled home in a Spruce Street bike lane near Rittenhouse Square. Minutes later, another driver — whom law enforcement said was believed to be operating under the influence of drugs — veered onto a sidewalk in Kensington, killing 38-year-old Christopher Cabrera as he stood waiting to cross the street. On the same day, a 26-year-old woman was critically injured when a driver struck her as she walked across a street in East Germantown.

And the next week, a woman, her 13-year-old daughter, and a 22-month-old girl were struck and injured by another driver while crossing the street in the city’s Feltonville section. The infant later died from her injuries. In a separate instance, a man was found lying dead in the street in Frankford, where police suspected he was killed in a hit-and-run.

Last year, 123 people were killed in vehicle crashes in Philadelphia, as traffic deaths in the city and elsewhere have risen since 2020.

» READ MORE: Hundreds of cyclists filled the streets of Center City to call for concrete-protected bike lanes and other traffic safety improvements

As cyclists in FDR Park Sunday rang their handlebar bells in tribute to Mario D’Adamo’s white spray-painted “ghost bike,” chained to a tree near the site of the fatal crash, his parents said something needed to change.

“It’s got to be safe, and it wasn’t safe for my son,” Paula D’Adamo said.

“I hope to God that people who are thinking of drinking and driving realize the damage they are causing the families,” her husband added. “My wife cries in the mornings, she cries at night, and all I can do is try to stay strong.”