{"id":8355,"date":"2025-10-19T21:34:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T21:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/8355\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T21:34:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T21:34:06","slug":"philly-bike-action-holds-picnic-in-honor-of-rider-killed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/8355\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly Bike Action holds picnic in honor of rider killed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Holtmeyer said riders often use the park as a shortcut to avoid the four-lane freeway next to it, and added he believes the road shouldn\u2019t be for driving, but for people and recreation.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe should never have streets designed, especially in a park, where people can achieve speeds of 50, 60, 70 miles an hour \u2026 and kill people,\u201d Holtmeyer said. \u201cThis is definitely a problem of this road being too wide and too straight. There\u2019s nothing to slow anybody down.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>At least 41 people have been killed in car crashes in or near the popular park, according to data collected by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/d\/viewer?mid=1aJWiICNgha0GE9A0k2_X8PPXhli9cP0&amp;hl=en&amp;ll=39.98663637559187%2C-75.20279700000002&amp;z=14\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Philly Bike Action<\/a>. Suzanne Hagner, a member of Families for Safe Streets, said it\u2019s heartbreaking when families lose a loved one, but Sunday\u2019s event showed there is strength in community when working toward the same goal.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have younger people who ride bikes,\u201d Hagner said. \u201cThey have children, and the children are out at 2 years old on balance bikes. They\u2019re going to be kids who are riding big bikes soon. We have to make our streets safer.\u201d\n  <\/p>\n<p>Calls to improve safety for pedestrians and bikers have been longstanding in Philadelphia. But there has been a renewed effort for safer streets following Fenton\u2019s death and the death of CHOP doctor <a href=\"https:\/\/billypenn.com\/2024\/07\/19\/philadelphia-cyclist-killed-pedestrian-death\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Barbara Friedes, after she was fatally struck<\/a> by a speeding drunk driver in Center City last year.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Holtmeyer said riders often use the park as a shortcut to avoid the four-lane freeway next to it,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7188,7189,5829,69,71,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-8355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-bicycle","9":"tag-bike-safety","10":"tag-bikes","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","13":"tag-philadelphia-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}