Wu Administration Shelved Safety Plans For Mission Hill Streets Where Driver Killed Louisa Gag

Mayor Wu’s administration had already identified the Mission Hill intersection where Louisa Gag was killed last week as a threat to public safety, and had spent over a hundred thousand dollars to host public hearings and develop plans to make the area safer.

But as with numerous other street safety projects across the city, new leadership in the mayor’s second-term cabinet decided not to follow through on those plans.

In 2023, during Mayor Wu’s first term, the Boston Transportation Department launched the “Mission Hill Transportation Planning Project,” partly in response to, and with funding from, a number of new residential development proposals that had been proposed along Terrace Street.

The project first appeared in the city’s FY2023 capital budget, with $300,000 in funding.

The initiative held a series of public open houses in June 2023. At those meetings, city officials identified the intersections of Parker and Tremont Street – where Gag was killed – and Terrace and Tremont Street as the most hazardous intersections in the project’s study area (see crash map below).

Planners identified a number of safety problems at those intersections, like illegally-parked cars near crosswalks that blocked sightlines, missing crosswalks, and broken sidewalks.

City officials also presented a number of safety interventions they were considering, focused on improving bike and pedestrian visibility and reducing motor vehicle speeds.

At those meetings, city officials reported that they would develop conceptual plans by the end of 2023, then proceed with design, construction, and evaluation in 2024.

A city spokesperson told StreetsblogMASS that Boston Transportation Department planners went on to develop a conceptual safety improvement plan for the Parker/Tremont intersection that would have built new curb extensions on the south side of Tremont Street to prevent illegal parking, reduce pedestrian crossing distances, and improve visibility through the intersection.

The concept would have also added a new crosswalk across Tremont Street just east of Parker Street, where no crosswalk currently exists.

Failure to follow through

According to the City of Boston’s FY2026 capital plan, released in early 2025, the Mission Hill planning project had used $114,115 as of July 2024 – less than half of its total budget.

At that point, city officials still planned to close out the project with $175,000 worth of work in fiscal year 2025 (from July 2024 to the end of June 2025) and about $11,000 in spending in fiscal year 2026 (the current fiscal year).

But at the same time, Josh Kraft, an inexperienced suburban politician with billionaire backers, was challenging Mayor Wu’s reelection with a campaign that focused on his personal grievances against bike lanes and other street safety initiatives.

In February 2025, just days after Kraft launched his campaign, Mayor Wu initiated a secretive “30-day review” of the city’s recent transit and safety improvement projects.

In the aftermath of that review, Wu’s administration ripped out protective bollards along bike lanes and halted work on dozens of safety and transit improvement projects across the city – including the Mission Hill safety project.

A city spokesperson told StreetsblogMASS on Monday that the city ultimately spent less than two-thirds of the Mission Hill project’s budget. Mayor Wu’s most recent fiscal year 2027 budget eliminated the project from the city’s capital plan entirely, along with several other safety improvement initiatives.

Tiffany Cogell is the executive director of the Boston Cyclists Union, whose headquarters offices are located on the corner of Tremont and Terrace Streets.

Her organization had already been protesting the city’s inaction on dozens of safety projects across the city.

But as she spoke about the stalled Mission Hill project, her voice shook with anger, sadness, and frustration.

“We knew there were dangers. We had a plan to make it safer. It is blatantly irresponsible for the city to make a deliberate decision to not follow through,” Cogell told StreetsblogMASS on Tuesday.

“What does this say about how this city considers our safety? That’s the job of our elected officials – to follow through. What are we doing?”