D.C. Cyclist Jim Pagels Killed by Driver Hours After Tweeting About Unsafe Roads

Another well-known D.C. cycling advocate has been killed by a driver — and once again, friends are hoping this death will be a catalyst for long overdue safe street reforms in the nation’s capital.

On Friday, 29-year-old urban economist and writer Jim Pagels was killed by the driver of a Honda Civic at the intersection of Second Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW while riding a Capital Bikeshare cycle. The crash occurred just hours after Pagels had posted on Twitter about the horribly unsafe multi-lane roadway he was forced to use to reach his COVID-19 vaccination appointment — the eerie joke being about needing to brave a dangerous roundabout in order to access a life-saving vaccine.

Friends described Pagels not simply as an advocate for better road design, but an advocate for more holistic economic reforms to address car dependency and other inequities in our society at large. After beginning his career as a freelance writer for publications such as Forbes, Slate and FiveThirtyEight, he pivoted to a career in urban economics, earning a masters at Georgetown and a fellowship at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors before entering the highly ranked PhD program at the University of Michigan’s School of Economics, where he was completing coursework at the time of his death.

Just weeks ago, Pagels authored a fiery article on Medium about the negative societal impacts of subsidizing electric vehicle adoption, which would soon thereafter become the controversial cornerstone of President Biden’s new infrastructure package. He detailed the trillions of dollars in state and federal subsidies that owners of both green and gas-powered vehicles currently enjoy — from robust highway investments to free parking and beyond — despite the countless negative externalities they impose on society, and particularly upon vulnerable road users.

“Subsidizing EVs isn’t even a next-best solution, or much of a solution of any kind,” Pagels wrote. “It’s akin to saying, ‘Sure, we can’t prevent shooting ourselves in the foot, but let’s at least also shoot ourselves in the toes.'”

Politics aside, Pagels also just loved cycling, and wanted active transportation, and the freedom that goes with it, to be afforded to more of his neighbors.

“He was a very rational person, and the importance of protected bike infrastructure just wasn’t up for debate with him. But at the same time, he also just thought that biking was the best way to see a city,” said Finn Vigeland, a D.C.-based transportation planner and friend of Pagels for more than a decade. “He hated getting in a car. He knew that seeing a city on two wheels was the best way to appreciate it. I think one of the reasons it’s so hard for me to accept that he’s gone is that Jim was so enthusiastic about everything — and cities and street safety were something he really put his heart and soul into.”

Vigeland is helping to plan a memorial ride to honor Pagels’s memory this Friday, but says the best way to keep his legacy alive would be to make sure no one else is lost to traffic violence.

“One important thing you could do to honor his life and the way that it ended is to ask yourself if you need to take that trip in a car,” Vigeland added. “A car trip felt so restrictive to him; you had to pay a lot for it, you had to deal with where that car was gonna go at the end of the trip, and you had to contend with the fact that even if you’re the safest driver in the world, you take the lives of yourself and everyone you pass on the street into your hands when you drive.”

At the very least, friends hope that Pagels’s death will prompt the District of Columbia to commit more seriously to saving vulnerable road user’s lives.

“There’s the bigger picture of car dependency in America, but then there’s also just D.C.,” said Gray. “Short of rethinking everything about how we subsidize the car in U.S., we also just need to rethink dangerous corridors like Massachusetts Avenue. That’s something that we can do in a few weeks or months.”