Mayor Parker’s commitment to eliminating traffic deaths rings hollow at Ride of Silence

The hood of my jacket was pulled tight around my head while a steady rain fell outside City Hall Wednesday night. Surrounding me were dozens of cyclists, gathered together for warmth, emotional support, or maybe some combination of both as they prepared to embark on Philadelphia’s Ride of Silence.

Now in its 20th year, the event honors cyclists who were killed or injured by motorists on roadways around the region with a ride through Center City for about eight miles before arriving at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The ride is a particularly somber occasion, but I couldn’t help but do a double take when a speaker took to the lectern and said something about Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s commitment to the Vision Zero program, a nationwide campaign to eliminate traffic-related deaths and severe injuries.

“Mayor Parker has committed to Vision Zero and to every street on the High Injury Network …”

Excuse me ...

In her first budget, Parker actually proposes slashing funding for the Vision Zero program to $1 million in 2025, down from the $2.5 million former Mayor Jim Kenney spent last year.

That’s an odd way to show “commitment” in a city where residents routinely risk their lives by the simple act of crossing the street or riding their bicycles.

For the past three years that figures are available, the city averaged one traffic fatality roughly every three days. In 2023, there were 126 traffic fatalities, up slightly from 124 in 2022 and 123 in 2021. Those numbers, while stark, are still nowhere close to the 152 traffic deaths Philadelphia recorded in 2020. That was the deadliest year for our city’s roadways since 1990, when there were 169 fatalities.

When I asked city officials to help me make sense of any of this, they replied with a statement from the managing director’s office that may hold a flicker of hope by reminding us that the budget is still being deliberated by Council and discussed by residents at Parker-organized town hall events throughout the city.

“While there is speculation on the budget, nothing is final,” the statement read.

The statement also pointed to federal and state grants for traffic safety projects, including the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, which have allocated more than $340 million to the Department of Streets and the Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems “for upgrades to transportation infrastructure.”

“There are many safety investments outside of Vision Zero which are not captured in the Vision Zero line,” the statement read.

OK, so maybe there is some grand plan coming from Philly’s version of the Wizard of Oz who’s hiding behind a curtain somewhere on the second floor of the new Jim’s Steaks.

Maybe, despite sounding disjointed and vague, the city intends to make Philly roads safer for cyclists with all kinds of programs spread out over a number of departments and funded by a big ol’ pot of money somewhere. But if that is indeed the case, maybe someone, somewhere, wants to show us some receipts.

Because right now, it looks like the city has all but decided to defund a program that, in March, Mayor Parker touted while signing an executive order doubling down on Philadelphia’s commitment — there’s that word again — to the goal of reaching zero traffic deaths. Commitment without action means nothing.

For traffic safety advocates like Nicole Brunet of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, one of the most jarring aspects of this apparent reversal is that it seemed to come overnight, and not long after Parker promised to take the city down a different path.

“We need answers because the mayor recommitted to Vision Zero,” Brunet said. “This, to me, is not a recommitment.”

In Mayor Parker’s first months, her administration has proven largely unable or unwilling to follow through on its promises.

For example, when the administration says the dismantling of a Kensington encampment will be led by outreach workers, how about making sure the effort isn’t led by cops who arrive an hour earlier than announced so they don’t have to deal with the prying eyes of members of the press?

Or when the mayor says building affordable housing in the city is a top priority, why not guarantee that funding for the redevelopment of a West Philadelphia site meant for 70 new units isn’t missing from her budget?

Or when the mayor says the city is committed to decreasing traffic deaths, let’s not propose slashing the budget for a program dedicated to doing just that.

None of it makes any sense.

I know Parker can’t be in two places at once; she was already committed to one of her citywide budget town hall events at a nearby school around the same time the Ride of Silence started. But I wish she would have stopped by even briefly at the start of the event, which set off just a few dozen steps from her office.

She could have looked into the eyes of grieving friends and family and heard the stories of people who senselessly died on our city streets, and maybe, just maybe, thought about the life-and-death consequences of some of her proposals.

If Mayor Parker had stopped by Wednesday night, she might have met the loved ones of Pablo Avendano, a 34-year-old food delivery courier struggling to make ends meet who died in 2016 after being struck by an SUV near 10th and Spring Garden while delivering an order.

Or the relatives of Mario D’Adamo III, 37, who worked hard to follow in his father’s footsteps to become an attorney and who was struck in 2023 while he was riding his bicycle in the bike lane at FDR Park.

Or the father of Samuel Ozer, an adventuresome 17-year-old looking forward to college who died in 2020 while riding his bike on Henry Avenue near Barnes Street in Roxborough. He was on his way home from his dream summer job at Trek Bicycle when he was struck by a vehicle on Father’s Day.

“Obviously there are a lot of priorities in our city,” said Ozer’s father, Sidney Ozer, who with his wife, Mindy Maslin, has created multiple memorial projects to honor their son. “But we’re talking about people’s lives.”

The lives of people who Mayor Parker was elected to serve.