"Michelle Wu is probably definitively the most progressive transportation mayor in the country," said Stacy Thompson, executive director of the LivableStreets Alliance.

Mayor Michelle Wu announced on Tuesday morning that Jascha Franklin-Hodge, a board member for the LivableStreets Alliance and former Chief Information Officer for the City of Boston, will be her administration’s new Chief of Streets to oversee the Boston Transportation Department and Public Works Department.

“Two years ago, we put out a paper saying it’s cheap and makes good economic sense to make buses free, and everybody thought we were crazy,” said Stacy Thompson, head of the safe-transit group Livable Streets Alliance. “Now we’re seeing it happen.”

“Unfortunately, these numbers aren’t surprising, and they’re tragic,” said Stacy Thompson, executive director of LivableStreets, a nonprofit based in Metro Boston. “Pedestrian fatalities and serious crashes that have an enormous mental, physical and economic toll are truly a public health crisis.”

This is why we need dedicated bus lanes, separate from normal vehicle lanes: They speed up the bus and reduce variability for a very large number of people at once, even if the number of vehicles is small. In the end, people are important, not vehicles.

This pilot is the result of a strong partnership with the Department of Conservation and Recreation, the City of Cambridge, the City of Boston, and various advocacy groups, including Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), LivableStreets Alliance, TransitMatters, MassBike, Cambridge Bike Safety, and WalkBoston, according to MassDOT.

Riders of the 23, 28, and 29 buses are primarily people of color who have low incomes, according to a 2019 report from LivableStreets, a public transportation advocacy group.

Jim Aloisi and Stacy Thompson talked about Baker’s decision to pull Massachusetts out of a multi-state compact aimed at reducing carbon emissions in the transportation sector.

Stacy Thompson, Executive Director of community group the Livable Streets Alliance, said: “We are thrilled to hear about the expansion and extension of the free buses pilot in Boston – and we are proud that Boston has become a national leader in the free transit movement.