Hundreds of transit advocates gathered at Boston City Hall Plaza Thursday evening to honor Louisa Gag, a transportation planner who was killed while riding her bike last week, and demand action from city officials on street safety projects.
Vigil attendees arrived wearing yellow clothing or held yellow flowers. Organizers encouraged people to wear the color as a way to honor people who have died from traffic violence.
Gag died after she was hit by a truck at the intersection of Parker and Tremont streets in Mission Hill on Thursday, July 9. Boston police and the Suffolk County district attorney’s office are investigating the crash. The driver has not been charged.
The 36-year-old was remembered as a cherished advocate, colleague and friend.
Hannah Fong said she “ instantly became really close friends” with Gag when they started working together at the Boston Transportation Department.
“ Louisa taught me patience, grace and how to find joy during the most difficult times,” Fong said.
An attendee holds up a sign that read “Safe Streets Safer People” in the crowd of hundreds which turned out for the vigil for Louisa Gag. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
Gag’s colleagues expressed their love and grief through laughter and tears. Former transportation department employee Sarah Davis said Gag “was exactly the person you want to be a public servant. She was thoughtful, hardworking, patient, knowledgeable, and she cared deeply.”
Mayor Michelle Wu was the last speaker at the vigil. Gag worked as a policy fellow when Wu was a city councilor. Gag also worked for LivableStreets before joining the city’s transportation department.
Wu said she “really struggled with whether I should come here tonight or not, whether it would help the healing that is so needed for a community in such grief and pain, and whether I would be able to get any words out at all.”
Mayor Michelle Wu makes her way to the podium to speak at the vigil for Louisa Gag at City Hall Plaza. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
Through tears, Wu said she decided on participating after Gag’s family expressed they wanted to hear the mayor’s vision for street safety at the vigil.
Wu said Gag “devoted her life and career to building a Boston where every resident and every visitor could move through our city safely with comfort and dignity and confidence. And she was killed on our streets. I can’t stop thinking about Louisa.”
Wu vowed to take action to improve safety of Boston streets.
“We’ve already stepped up enforcement of blocked bike lane, crosswalk and other double parking violations, mapped out a plan to install or replace protected bike lane infrastructure, and I’ve 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,” Wu told the crowd.
Hundreds attended the vigil for Louisa Gag on City Hall Plaza. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
The gathering was organized by the Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition, a collective with a goal to eliminate traffic deaths in the state and promote road safety. The cities of Boston, Cambridge and Somerville have committed to the initiative over the last decade.
The group, in a press release, called on city and state leaders to “move street-safety projects forward and strengthen accountability for preventable traffic deaths.”
Separately, nearly 4,000 people signed an open letter to Wu demanding street safety projects be resumed in the wake of Gag’s death.
In the scathing letter, the bike safety advocates and city residents noted how Gag spent her career working to make streets safer.
“She was killed on the streets she spent her career trying to fix,” the letter read. “Years ago, one of her professional responsibilities was keeping the list of people killed by cars in Boston. Now her name has been added to it.”
Vigil attendees pay their respects and leave flowers at a memorial set up for Louisa Gag at City Hall Plaza. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)A pair embraces as friends and co-workers remember Louisa Gag. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
The letter goes on to demand that Wu’s administration takes action on street projects quickly, and appoints a permanent chief of streets.
As bus and bike lanes became a flashpoint in the 2025 municipal election, Wu ordered a 30-day review of street infrastructure projects during her first term. Since then, advocates have pressed for updates on road safety and street infrastructure projects.
The block near where Gag died in Mission Hill was flagged in 2023 for safety improvements. The city’s website about the project provides no timeline for completion.
An attendee holds up a sign reading “Road fatality is political, do your jobs” at the vigil for cyclist Louisa Gag. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
Gag died a few blocks away from where the nonprofit Boston Cyclists Union is based.
After the vigil, the group’s interim executive director Tiffany Cogell said she is angered and devastated by Gag’s death.
“ The irony isn’t lost on me that for all of the years that Louisa has been a safe streets advocate, a proponent of bike joy, that it took losing her to get the people who have the power to make changes and decisions to commit to a fundamental change in how we look to make our streets safe and to acknowledge the hurt and pain that happens when someone is taken away from us, from anyone due to vehicular crashes,” said Cogell.
Transit advocates argue that the entire state is in need of adopting additional measures to reduce the impacts of traffic violence on people.
Alexa Gomberg writes the words “Crash not Accident” in chalk on the bricks of City Hall Plaza during a vigil for Louisa Gag. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
An annual report by WalkMassachusetts, a nonprofit that promotes road safety, found 354 people were killed in traffic crashes last year — 76 of them were pedestrians.
WalkMassachusetts executive director Brendan Kearney estimates “at least” 156 people have died in road crashes this year.
“Each one was a person whose life mattered and whose loss continues to affect an entire community. State agencies, legislators and leaders in every city and town have a responsibility to slow dangerous speeds, build safer streets and act before another life is lost,” Kearney said.
