Hundreds of Mourners Fill City Hall Plaza to Honor Louisa Gag and Demand Safer Streets

Hundreds of mourners filled City Hall Plaza in downtown Boston on Thursday evening to remember Louisa Gag, the City of Boston planner who was killed by a driver near Roxbury Crossing last week, and to demand safer streets and more effective laws from their elected officials.

Most of the speakers at Thursday’s event were Boston City Hall employees who worked with Gag – including the mayor herself, who appeared as a surprise guest near the end of the event.

“She was a fierce advocate for street safety, but she was also a harmonizer of conflicting perspectives and personalities,” remembered Heyne Kim, a Boston Transportation Department planner.

Kim Foltz, Gag’s supervisor at the Boston Bikes office, spoke about how Louisa helped maintain morale in the Boston Transportation Department even as the city’s leadership undermined their efforts to make the city’s streets safer.

“Even before last Thursday, the streets cabinet had been a pretty challenging place,” said Foltz. “We’ve been in transition for the last 18 months. The only thing that has felt certain was that we were in a perpetual state of uncertainty. We have all had to navigate through frustration, anger, ambiguity. When I found myself struggling, the person I would turn to was Louisa.”

Near the end of the vigil, Stacy Thompson, who had worked with Louisa Gag as the former executive director of the LivableStreets Alliance and was MCing the event, prepared the crowd to receive the evening’s final speaker by acknowledging their frustration with the city’s leadership, and asking them for their grace.

“I want to remind everyone that we are here in community tonight… We’ve asked this person to come and mourn with us. So knowing that we are frustrated, and knowing that we are here in community, I’m going to ask you to show up like Louisa would have.”

Thompson then introduced Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu, who fought back tears as she spoke.

“She was killed on our streets. I can’t stop thinking about Louisa. We owe Louisa more than our grief. We owe her our action. We have to do better,” said the mayor.

“The city is taking action,” she continued. “I can share today, that to complement the law enforcement investigation, the facts of the crash, we will do a full analysis of street design too, and build this in as a standard practice.

“We’ve already stepped up enforcement of blocked bike lanes, crosswalks, and other double-parking violations, set up a plan to install or replace protected bike lane infrastructure, and have assigned two senior members of my team to the Streets Cabinet, full-time, to accelerate the policies, planning, and capital delivery work that will make our streets safer.”

After the event, city employees with knowledge of the mayor’s plans indicated that one of those two people will be Chris Osgood, who had been Chief of Streets during Mayor Walsh’s administration and had more recently been serving as Mayor Wu’s Senior Advisor for Infrastructure.

The other will be Tali Robbins, the mayor’s Deputy Chief of Policy.

After Mayor Wu’s remarks, Stacy Thompson returned to the podium to give a “to-do” list for everyone in attendance to honor Gag’s legacy. She asked the elected and appointed officials in the crowd – of whom there were nearly a dozen, including MassDOT Secretary Phil Eng – to recommit to their “Vision Zero” pledges and support government planners who try to implement street safety projects.

Thompson also asked people to contact their lawmakers to support automated speed and red-light enforcement cameras.

“Talk to your colleagues in the legislature and tell them, we’ve got to get it done this session.”