https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/24/metro/michelle-wu-street-safety-letter-louisa-gag/
Days after emotionally pledging to take steps to make the city’s streets safer, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said Friday that the city will install more concrete barriers on bike lanes and fix sidewalks and curb ramps among other changes in the wake of a crash earlier this month that killed city planner Louisa Gag.
Wu laid out the plans in an open letter to city residents that her office released Friday, following renewed pressure from bike and transit advocates after Gag was hit and killed while cycling on Tremont Street two weeks ago.
An 18-wheel recycling truck struck Gag on July 9 when it maneuvered around a turning vehicle, the Globe has reported. No one has been charged in the crash.
In an interview, Wu said her administration will prioritize the most dangerous gaps in the existing network of bike lanes with either temporary or permanent protections, starting with the streets around Boston Common and the Public Garden.
“I feel even more renewed urgency now with the incredibly painful reminder that every street matters in Boston,” Wu said, emphasizing the effort will take time and resources.
“It is a million details about every single street and the trade-offs and decisions that are possible,” she said. But “I am going to continue to fight for every additional resource and partnership that we can find to move even faster.”
In her letter , Wu said she is dedicating two senior staff members — Chris Osgood, the city’s former chief of streets and now a senior adviser for infrastructure, and Tali Robbins, Wu’s deputy chief of policy — to the city’s so-called Streets Cabinet.
Both will meet monthly with advocacy groups to gather feedback on the city’s safety efforts, and Wu said she is also convening a group of advisers to look at the department’s organizational structure and resources to determine how the city can “improve and accelerate” its street safety work.
She laid out a series of other steps, too, including upgrading timing on traffic signals and more regularly updating the city’s data dashboard on traffic fatalities.
Wu also pledged Boston will install more permanent bike lane barriers “wherever feasible,” and temporary protections such as flex posts where they are not, and will also advocate for stronger truck safety regulations at the state level. The city will work to fix thousands of sidewalks and curb ramps, and deploy a bike patrol of parking enforcement officers along with an updated mobile app residents can use to report violations.
As the city repaves roads, Wu said, officials will assess whether that work should include new safety infrastructure — such as crosswalks, curb protections, or speed humps — so construction can be done “all at once and most efficiently.”
The steps Wu outlined left some bike and transit activists cautiously optimistic that tangible safety upgrades are on the way, even if they wanted more details on where the city plans to put more bike lane protections, and when.
Many had said they had gone nearly a year and a half without communication from the administration on various streets projects.
“This is a statement from the mayor saying that she is listening and she is responding,” said Galen Mook, executive director of the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition. “Whether or not that response is everything we want, we can still work with her.”
Wu drew criticism after her office early last year conducted a 30-day review of all streets projects and then slowed a number of them, infuriating advocates and residents who said they would deliver badly needed safety upgrades to dangerous roads.
In her letter Friday, Wu defended the review as a “point in time” snapshot that aimed to collect feedback from residents and businesses who thought the city moved too quickly on adding new bike and bus lanes.
Meg Mainzer-Cohen, who as president of the Back Bay Association pushed for the city to remove a dedicated bus lane on Boylston Street, said she supported the mayor’s decision to “pause” streets projects last year to make sure the changes work for “all users.”
“It’s important for them to take more time in the public process and really understand both what they’re implementing, the priorities, the usage numbers, [and] make sure that the intersections are properly engineered,” Cohen said. “By bringing all the different voices together, you end up with a better outcome.”
Mainzer-Cohen called Gag’s death a “tragic accident,” but said Boston “has done more to move forward on safety issues than I ever imagined we’d be able to [and] we need to keep moving forward.”
Osgood, who served as chief of streets under former mayor Martin J. Walsh, is “going to really be able to take the work that’s been done and take it to the next level,” Mainzer-Cohen said.
After Gag’s death, thousands of people — including 2,300 Boston residents — signed an open letter to Wu with demands that included the city “unpause” all delayed streets projects and implement a “build fast and fix later” approach to street improvements. The petition also called on her to appoint a new chief of streets, and publish a timeline for fixes for every high-crash roadway.
Wu on Friday listed several street improvement projects her administration is aiming to complete this year and next. But advocates say they want more specifics — including clear timelines and funding commitments — for all projects in the works.
“It’s one thing to take immediate action — reactive action — in response to something very tragic,” said Caitlin Allen-Connelly, executive director of TransitMatters. “It’s another to really continue to make sustained progress and to continue to communicate what an implementation plan will look like, and then to implement it.”
Wu in her letter emphasized Boston has more projects in the pipeline “than the City budget currently has the capacity to deliver or maintain.”
Maha Aslam — transit and streets program manager at the LivableStreets Alliance, a street safety nonprofit where Gag previously worked — said that Wu’s various promises were encouraging, but that her letter provided no concrete examples of “how community engagement will change.” Aslam and other advocates said they want an explicit commitment from Wu that she will not bow to public pressure to change the design of a project that would make a road safer for bikers and pedestrians.
“There are parts of the city where cars have to slow down, and that is a reality that people need to come to terms with, and not because we want to add more frustration to their life, but because it has a safety cost,” Aslam said.
Wu acknowledged it is “impossible” to satisfy all residents, business owners, and other stakeholders when implementing street changes, but “all of the different uses and experiences [need to be] represented in the design process.”
“It’s still unthinkable that we have lost someone who loved our city and was working with every bit of energy and force to improve our streets,” Wu said in an interview. “I will always carry the pain of losing Louisa with me forever.”