COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — A group of Columbus residents who want city roads to be safer for bicyclists made their voices heard Monday before City Council.

Last Tuesday, a bicyclist was killed after being struck by a car on the northeast side of the city. The bicyclist — who was attempting to cross Morse Road — was hit by a Ford F-150 and pronounced dead at the scene.

At the beginning of the meeting, Councilmember Lourdes Barroso de Padilla, chair of the Public Service and Transportation Committee, addressed the advocates and spoke about the work the city needs to put in to help protect bicyclists.

“Traffic violence has become acceptable where we see crashes as accidents and not the tragedies and acts of violence that they are,” Barroso de Padilla said.

Barroso de Pedilla said that there are two significant pieces to ensuring the safety of bicyclists on Columbus roadways. She said that these changes can help the city become less car-centric and more people-centric.

“We need both infrastructure and culture change,” Barroso de Pedilla said. “We need to redesign, rethink and rebuild our roads to make them safer for all users.”

During the portion of the meeting dedicated to allowing nonagenda speakers to address the council, three advocates stepped up. One of the speakers, Ben Keith, outlined three actions he believes the city could quickly take to help curb risks to bicyclists.

“First, lower the speed limits on service streets to 25 miles per hour,” Keith said.

He said that the second change he would like to see is for the council to direct the Department of Public Service to change the way it designs crosswalks.

“Change the default crosswalk marking from two skimpy stripes of paint that can’t be seen in the rain to the high visibility, ladder-style or continental-style markings, which state and federal governments say are safer for everyone,” Keith said.

Finally, he said that the council should direct the Department of Public Service to paint unmarked crosswalks on 35 mph roads.

Other speakers pointed to times they had been struck by cars while riding bikes and other situations where they had been endangered on Columbus roads. One speaker argued that the city does not have time to wait on this issue, as lives are at risk.

After the three bicycle safety advocates had delivered their remarks, Councilmember Nicholas Bankston said that, while the council is working on finding solutions, there is a people component to the issue as well.

“I don’t think that we should just leave this simply to government infrastructure,” Bankston said.

Bankston said that drivers also have a role to play. He said that as they look into solutions, the community needs to be safer, smarter and pay more attention. When delivering these remarks, someone in the crowd interrupted Bankston by yelling “not enough.”

The council has made efforts to stop traffic crashes in recent years, most notably through its “Vision Zero” plan, which launched in 2021. The city has said the plan could eliminate fatal crashes.

“The goal of Vision Zero is to get to zero serious and fatal crashes by 2035 in Columbus,” Director of Public Service Jennifer Gallagher said in 2021.

Between 2017 and 2021, Vision Zero found that there were at least 38 crashes involving pedestrians on East Broad Street alone. Two other projects are also being used in an attempt to address “problem streets.”

The city also introduced a small stretch of a new protected bike lane in June 2023.