I’m tired of feeling unsafe as a pedestrian, and waiting for the city to act

The mayor’s response — or lack thereof — came almost 24 hours after the wholly preventable killing of Barbara Friedes by a reckless, speeding driver while biking in the bike lane on Spruce Street.

While Mayor Cherelle L. Parker called this a tragic “accident,” she made no mention of her defunding of Vision Zero, an initiative explicitly meant to curb these sorts of car-driven fatalities. In the first budget passed by her administration, Vision Zero received $1 million in funding for its projects, a 60% cut from the $2.5 million received under former Mayor Jim Kenney. Instead of acknowledging this misstep and promising action, her statement deflected and touted unrelated traffic improvements.

Mayor Parker couching Friedes’ death in terms of an “accident” implies a lack of fault, and an inability to predict and prevent such a tragedy. But governments know how to reduce and eliminate these deaths.

Obviously, the driver needs to be held accountable. But Friedes’ death is emblematic of a systematic problem that requires city government’s ownership and initiative.

We know how to make a safe and enjoyable city environment. It boils down to prioritizing people walking and biking over the convenience of driving and parking. It requires bike lanes that treat paint as a starting point, not a finished product — lanes with physical barriers beyond flexible plastic posts, obstacles that make drivers think twice about breaking the law and render it physically impossible to run down a bicyclist or pedestrian.

I don’t even like using the words bicyclist or pedestrian in this context; they are too distant. Let’s get personal.

Friedes was a 30-year-old pediatric oncologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She is one of two people killed in a 24-hour period, a third injured, by reckless drivers in Philadelphia. (A 38-year-old man, Christopher Cabrera, was struck and killed while waiting to cross the street at the corner of East Frankford and Allegheny Avenues. Over the weekend, two other pedestrians — a man, Cristian Miranda, and a toddler — were killed by drivers just hours apart from each other.)

Friedes chose to treat a most vile disease in the most innocent of people. She gave back to this city, our neighbors, in an immeasurable and heroic way. And for her service and preventable death, Parker commits to no action to prevent future tragedies.

Is this the bold vision needed to achieve “a safer, cleaner, greener” Philadelphia that Parker campaigned on?

Each of us might not save lives like Friedes, but our safety is just as important. You may or may not bike for leisure or to commute. But you are most definitely a “pedestrian,” and so are your elderly parents, children, partners, neighbors, pastors, and so on. Every day we all walk the streets of Philadelphia. Even if we spend some of our time behind the wheel, eventually we have to open the car door and pray we don’t get sideswiped crossing the street.

Aren’t you tired of that?

Don’t you want a mayor who will validate your anxiety about existing in this city, and put forth a concrete plan to make you feel safe walking or biking in it again?

Every day we all walk the streets of Philadelphia.

For all of Parker’s focus on public safety through the lens of gun violence and crime, and her willingness to increase the police budget yet again, I am personally more afraid of a plateless Nissan Altima driver speeding through the city than any robber or person struggling with addiction.

It’s time for Parker to step up. She must reinstate and increase Vision Zero funding, and institute traffic calming. She should look to cities such as New York and Hoboken, N.J., which are denser than Philadelphia but cut pedestrian injuries and deaths by magnitudes by following data-backed approaches like intersection daylighting, which prevents cars from illegally parking near crosswalks and intersections, improving visibility for drivers and pedestrians.

Parker should ask herself: Do you want to appear tough on crime, a mayor of law and order? Fine. Get drivers with ghost plates, tinted plates, and no plates off the road. Impound these vehicles, and suspend the privilege that is a driver’s license. Flex your soft power behind closed doors while instituting explicit oversight to reverse the 91% drop in traffic citations since 1998. Make tinted and obscured plates on city employees’ private vehicles a fireable offense. No more Fraternal Order of Police symbols covering license plate numbers.

The mayor sets culture at the top; championing these changes would validate her as the leader she’s happy to market herself as, a leader we’re sorely missing.

I love Philadelphia. I refuse to accept this status quo. It is our mayor’s job and responsibility to rise above placations and move our city forward, safely. There can be no excuses and no more preventable deaths.

Jordan Baum lives in the Olde Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia. He works for the marketing agency Publicis, based in its Philadelphia Bourse office.