Philly court declines to let city resume work on Pine and Spruce Bike Lanes
The decision to uphold an August 2025 injunction will again postpone the city's project to increase protections for Pine and Spruce bike lanes.
A Philadelphia judge has blocked the city from resuming work to upgrade protections for the bike lanes along Pine and Spruce Streets in Center City, the latest turn in a high-profile legal battle.
In an order dated July 6, Common Pleas Judge Damaris L. Garcia denied the city’s motion to dissolve an August 2025 injunction that had stopped the Streets Department from making changes.
Friends of Pine and Spruce, a group of residents with homes along the narrow streets, won the 2025 order after suing the city on grounds that there was no legal authority to remove parking spaces to create “neighborhood loading zones."
“This is a very significant ruling in this case,” said George Bochetto, the lawyer for FOP.
The Streets Department intended the zones to give residents, delivery trucks, and contractors places to stop without parking in the bike lanes.
A ban on stopping in bike lanes was enacted in 2024 after a physician, Barbara Friedes, was killed by a drunk driver while cycling on Spruce Street. The crash helped galvanize parking restrictions in the bike lanes and a planned upgrade, including with curblike concrete barriers between traffic and the bike lanes.
“It’s a huge blow,” Jessie Amadio, an organizer with Philly Bike Action, said of the latest ruling. “There has been a tremendous amount of grassroots support, keeping the civic pressure on for two years.”
City Council passed an ordinance last year empowering the Streets Department to make any parking changes it deemed necessary. That cleared up any ambiguity, city lawyers argued in a hearing last month.
FOPS amended its lawsuit to include a new complaint that the ordinance violated Sunshine Law requirements that lawmakers conduct business in the open. In addition, it alleges that Council violated the separation of powers in the city charter by delegating lawmaking to the executive branch.
That challenge is set for trial next year.
Philly Bike Action and other advocates are planning an 8:30 a.m. memorial Sunday at 18th and Spruce Streets, where Friedes was killed two summers ago.
“I’ll also say this: There are a lot more dangerous things happening in those bike lanes, with e-bikes and e-scooters,” Bochetto said. He said a girl on an e-scooter crashed into a light pole near his house, captured by security cameras.
Garcia did not write an opinion explaining the order.
