PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Six weeks after a man was killed in a hit-and-run while riding his bike in Port Richmond, community members are pushing for more safety measures for cyclists.
Glenn Colville, a 43-year-old father of three, was killed in a hit-and-run on April 12 while riding his bike. His sister, Shannon Colville, said he was often wary of the dangers near Aramingo and Lehigh avenues.
“He would feel unsafe. He would say the cars can’t even see you sometimes,” she recalled. “We just need to do better. I mean, he was doing the right thing — riding in the bike lane — and was hit from behind.”
She believes insufficient infrastructure is largely to blame.
“How many more people have to die before real protection is put in place?” she asked. “Paint is not protection. Those plastic [barriers] they have there are not protection — they bend down and pop back up.”
Colville and other bike advocates spoke with transportation officials at an Olde Richmond Civic Association meeting Tuesday night, where they voiced the need for more protections.
Jacob Russell with Philly Bike Action agreed with Colville that the plastic barriers are downright insufficient.
“There’s very little you can do when you’re walking or biking to stop a reckless driver from hurting you,” he said. “You have to rely on the safety that is built into the street by our public engineers and our public officials, and they’re falling down on the job.”
The Philadelphia Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Safety said it’s working on a multi-year project that would reshape the area around Lehigh and Aramingo avenues, but that’s still in the engineering phase.
Sharang Malaviya with PennDOT said there’s a shorter-term solution on Aramingo Avenue, between Lehigh Avenue and Somerset Street, in the works, though there’s no firm timetable.
“We are looking at installing the Toronto-style barrier in the buffer area between the travel lane and the bike lane. This is a concrete barrier. We are currently in the design process of that,” he said.
Russell said all of these renovations are overdue.
“The crash that killed Glenn, the driver went through the plastic posts and hit Glenn while he was in the bike lane. If there had been a substantial barrier in the way, that might have saved Glenn’s life.”
