Philadelphia Cyclists Demand Safer Bike Lanes — Now About 75 demonstrators took to the streets yesterday after a garbage truck driver struck and killed 24-year-old Emily Fredricks.

The death of 24-year-old Emily Fredricks has touched off a flood of anger in Philadelphia.

On Tuesday morning, Fredricks was biking to work down Spruce Street, on a buffered but unprotected bike lane, when a garbage truck driver turned right and fatally struck her. Spruce Street is scheduled to receive vertical posts to add protection for cyclists. But local politicians have been dragging their feet.

Locals have had enough. About 75 demonstrators took to the streets yesterday demanding protected bike lanes on Spruce immediately. They formed a chain and used their bodies to shield cyclists traveling down the corridor.

Bike advocate Dena Driscoll wrote a fantastic op-ed in the Inquirer spelling out the problem:

The buffered bike lanes on Spruce and Pine Streets stretch from river to river and are two of the busiest bike lanes in Philadelphia. The lanes were a campaign promise made by former Mayor Michael Nutter in 2007, installed as a temporary pilot in 2009, and made permanent the following year. At the time, these lanes were seen as groundbreaking in the United States. Since then, cities around the U.S. have not only installed buffered lanes but also protected bike lanes, which are the pinnacle of safety because they create a plastic physical barrier between cyclists and cars. When Mayor Kenney ran for office, he promised voters that he would install 30 miles of protected bike lanes in Philadelphia. (For reference, 30 miles is about 1 percent of all Philadelphia streets.) Currently he has completed two small segments.

Part of Philadelphia’s problem is that it allows City Council members to exercise de facto veto power over bike improvements, she writes:

Meanwhile, Patrick Miner at Rebuilding the Rust Belt participated in yesterday’s people-protected bike lane and explains how it all came together. The demonstration, he says, “not only highlighted the outrage of a senseless and preventable death, it showed that people care deeply, and it educated the wider public on a practical solution, and thus hacked the political problem of making Philadelphia more humane.”