A week after a Boston transportation planner who dedicated her career to making the city’s streets safer for cyclists was fatally struck by a truck while riding her bike, the city’s mayor, Michelle Wu, promised that stalled street safety projects would move forward in the coming days.
Louisa Gag was killed in the city’s Mission Hill neighborhood on July 9 at an intersection that city cycling advocates say would have been made safer by projects the mayor put in jeopardy. Critics say Wu slowed or reversed projects and road improvements, including near the crash site, for more than a year. They claim the former street safety champion changed her positions when she ran for re-election against Josh Kraft, the son of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who criticized Wu’s bike lane projects during the campaign.
“I really struggled with whether or not I should come here tonight, whether I would help the much-needed healing for a community in so much grief and pain, and whether I would be able to say any words,” Wu said through tears during a vigil for Gag on July 16.
Wu said Gag’s mother encouraged her to attend the vigil to lay out her vision for safer streets and that her administration has been working with advocacy organizations and community members on these issues. In addition to a police investigation into the crash, he said the city will conduct a full analysis of street design “and incorporate this as a standard practice, which we hope can be a model everywhere.”
The city will install or replace protected barriers for cyclists, according to Wu, who has assigned two senior members of his administration to the so-called streets cabinet “to accelerate the policy, planning and capital delivery work that will make our streets safer.”
The crash involved an 18-wheeler recycling truck that swerved around another vehicle making a left turn before hitting Gag on a downhill stretch where the solid line of the bike lane becomes a dashed line. The driver has not been charged with a crime, according to the Boston Globe, which also reported that the truck had just left the demolition site of the One Joslin Place project in the city’s Longwood Medical Area. Suffolk is building a $1.7 billion, 14-story hospital for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a 450,000-square-foot facility that will include 300 inpatient beds and open in 2031.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu spoke at a vigil outside City Hall for Louisa Gag, a city transportation planner killed after being hit while riding a bicycle. Photo by Justin Rice for ENRBefore Wu spoke, Brennan Kearney, executive director of WalkMassachusetts and part of the Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition, told the crowd of hundreds that Gag is one of 156 people who have died in traffic accidents in Massachusetts this year. He added that 354 people died on the state’s roads last year, with more than 2,000 traffic fatalities expected by 2021. “Hundreds more are seriously injured every year,” he said. “This is a street safety crisis in our commonwealth. What are our decision makers waiting for?”
Kearney said the city should restart its speed enforcement program and the Legislature should pass laws allowing municipalities to use security cameras to catch speeders. “I’m sad and frustrated,” he said. “But we are not helpless.”
The crash happened near the offices of the Boston Cyclist Union, which advocates for bicycle safety infrastructure. “The security infrastructure we enjoy today, largely, Louisa had something to do,” said Tiffany Cogell, its interim executive director, adding that improvements in street design and safety infrastructure save lives. “We know these deaths are preventable. This knowledge makes the loss even more painful and more urgent.”
He added: “By refusing to accept avoidable traffic deaths as the cost of getting around our cities and demanding that streets protect all people, whether they’re walking, cycling, riding, in transit or driving… let’s commit to building the safer, fairer city that Louisa worked so hard to create.”
Wu said Gag “dedicated her life and career to building a Boston, where every resident and every visitor can move around our city safely … and she was killed on our streets. We owe her action. We have to do better.”
