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Signed by 2,300 Boston residents, the letter emphasizes residents and advocates have asked the mayor for street safety improvement for years.
The Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition holds a vigil honoring Louisa Gag at City Hall Plaza on Thursday. Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe
Four thousand people signed an open letter to Mayor Michelle Wu on Thursday, urging her administration to take action on street-safety improvements, following the death of Boston transportation planner Louisa Gag, who was struck and killed by a truck driver while biking on Tremont Street.
The letter, which includes about 2,300 Boston residents among its signatories, was delivered to Wu’s office ahead of a Thursday evening vigil honoring Gag at City Hall Plaza.
“For years, we have told you, in public and to your face, that continued delay on street safety would cost lives,” the letter reads. “Last week it cost the life of Louisa Gag — a transportation planner in your own administration, a person who devoted her career to making our streets safe.”
The letter calls on the city to continue street-safety projects that advocates say have stalled, publish construction timelines for those projects, appoint a permanent chief of streets, restore transportation funding that was reportedly cut from the city budget, and assign officials to oversee improvements on high-crash corridors, including Tremont Street and Hyde Park Avenue.
“For at least eighteen months, your administration has stalled and re-studied safety projects that were designed and funded,” the letter continues. “You have told us these projects need more process, more consensus, more perfection. But consensus never arrives for the dead, and a study protects no one.”
Speaking at Thursday’s vigil, Wu said Gag’s death has already prompted changes inside City Hall.
“We owe Louisa more than our grief. We owe her action. We have to do better,” Wu said. “And while I know the purpose of tonight is to focus on celebrating her life, I want you also to know that the city is taking action.”
Mayor Michelle Wu listens to friends of Louisa Gag share memories of her during a vigil at City Hall Plaza Thursday. – Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
Wu said the city is working with advocacy organizations and community members while conducting a street design analysis alongside the law enforcement investigation into the crash.
She also announced increased enforcement against vehicles blocking bike lanes, crosswalks, and other areas through parking violations, and said she assigned two senior staff members to work with the Streets Cabinet to accelerate planning and delivery of safety projects.
“We will not resign ourselves to dangerous streets as a fact of life in Boston,” Wu said through tears. “So, Laura, my vision for Boston is that everyone should get to grow old in our city. Everyone in Boston should live long.”
The letter comes months after a March report in The Boston Globe found that progress on certain street safety improvements, including bike lanes, slowed or stalled under the Wu administration, with the mayor requiring her personal approval on most transit and road safety projects.
“We have been losing neighbors to these streets for years, and we have been warning you, specifically and repeatedly, that more deaths were coming,” the letter reads.
Gag was struck at the intersection of Tremont and Parker streets near the Roxbury Crossing MBTA station, according to police. For years, residents and public officials expressed concern for cyclist safety in that section of Tremont Street, per the Globe.
The city launched a transportation planning project for the Mission Hill neighborhood in 2023 that includes pedestrian and bicycle safety near the crash site.
According to the city’s website, however, the project remains in the planning phase, with its last public meeting held in June 2023. Wu’s office said the exact location where Gag was struck is not included within the project’s boundaries.
Louisa Gag was cycling early Thursday when she was fatally struck by a vehicle on Tremont Street.
Gag began her career in public service working for Wu when she served on the Boston City Council and has been recognized as a leading advocate for safer streets and bicycling in Boston.
At Thursday’s vigil, Wu remembered Gag as someone who made colleagues feel “less isolated” during the pandemic.
“She was kind. She was funny, creative, generous, and determined,” Wu said. “She brought joy to the most heated conversations and had a way of making even the hardest moments feel hopeful.”
Wu said Gag recently secured 1,500 new e-bikes for the city’s Bluebikes system, expanding access to residents across Boston.
“She devoted her life and career to building a Boston where every resident and every visitor could move through our city safely, with comfort and dignity and confidence,” Wu said. “And she was killed on our streets. I can’t stop thinking about Louisa.”
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