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Mayor Michelle Wu joined WBUR's Morning Edition to talk about what the city is doing to improve bike safety, after city transportation planner Louisa Gag was hit and killed by a truck while riding her bike last month. Moving forward: Gag's death left the cycling community shaken. But as WBUR’s Andrea Perdomo-Hernandez reports in this story, it has also galvanized advocates to push the city for more progress on street safety projects they say have stalled. Wu says she feels their pain. "I am furious still that we are grieving the loss of someone who, over the next several decades, was going to transform the city," Wu told WBUR's Tiziana Dearing. In the interview, Wu addressed the criticism of her administration's slowdown on bike lane projects and shared how they plan to move forward. - Why did projects slow down? Wu said her administration built more miles of protected bike lanes in her first four-year term than every other previous Boston mayor combined. But she said the approach didn't take enough time to account for certain "negative impacts" for businesses and neighbors. According to Wu, part of the reason the city was able to move quickly was through the rapid deployment of flexposts. The downside, she said, was that they were easily damaged by trucks and plows and expensive to maintain (at $300 per post). "Delivery trucks, trash pickup, small businesses, cyclists, pedestrians [and] drivers all are part of how we use our streets," she said. "And we had heard very, very loud from many places across the city that even when we had built infrastructure to make roads safer, that it was causing these additional impacts that had not been discussed fully in the process of moving to build." She said the city is working on a more sustainable process for "the long haul."
- What has she learned? For years, Wu has pointed at studies showing bike lanes can be good for local businesses (despite fears about the impacts of losing parking). But she said those outcomes hinge on execution. "There are cases where, if certain details are not talked about specifically, down to the location of the loading zone on this side of the street or that side of the street, on that block or this block, that that directly affects whether those assumptions end up being true or not," she said.
- Now what? Wu's office released a six-page letter last month outlining its next steps, such as transitioning away from flexposts to concrete bike lane barriers and incorporating more cross-department collaboration and community engagement in the planning process. Wu said that doesn't mean the city will always achieve "perfection and unanimity," but will at least include more input from individual stakeholders compared to "when we just charged ahead." "We do have to do it in a way that the problems we can resolve we do end up resolving," she said.
- ICYMI: Last week, Wu installed a new interim chief of streets, Chris Osgood. who's well-respected in the cycling community. WBUR's Eve Zuckoff has more on the appointment here.
In other news: Reverse course: Cambridge city councilors voted last night to at least temporarily restore the acoustic gun detection system ShotSpotter. The 6-3 vote comes a month after it took roughly an hour for emergency responders to find a city employee who was fatally shot on July 4. Cambridge's acting police commissioner, Pauline Wells, told Cambridge Day that ShotSpotter "isn’t perfect technology," but that she was glad to have it back. - What's next: ShotSpotter will be reactivated for a 90-day period, during which the city will get more community input on its use "with particular attention given to the views of residents from neighborhoods most affected by gun violence," according to the measure passed yesterday.
Dealing: The red-hot Red Sox made big moves ahead of yesterday's MLB trade deadline. The team acquired three-time All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman from the Baltimore Orioles, in exchange for fellow catcher Carlos Narváez and a collection of top minor league prospects. The 28-year-old Rutschman is in the midst of an injury-plagued season, but could be a big boost behind the plate and in the batting order. - Meanwhile, in a separate deal, the Sox traded former top prospect and shortstop Marcelo Mayer to the San Francisco Giants for relief pitcher Erik Miller. The Associated Press has more details on the trades here.
P.S.— Next month will mark 25 years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. As we look back on this important moment in history, we want to hear about how it affected the community here in Boston. Fill out this form to tell us your stories, memories and what changed for you after the attacks. |
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| | | Nik DeCosta-Klipa Senior Editor, Newsletters | | |
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A Woburn company is at the forefront of efforts to reduce U.S. reliance on China for critical minerals used in weapons systems and high-tech products. Read more.
excerpt: A giant American flag hanging on the wall of a warehouse in New Hampshire hints at the national importance of the elements bound inside the mining waste stored in 1-ton bags. The company uses electrolysis to separate the key critical elements President Trump's administration desperately wants to produce domestically from the powder left behind at traditional mines. The small Phoenix Tailings refinery tucked inside an office park in Exeter, New Hampshire, could play a key role in helping America break the chokehold China has on the processing of critical minerals, but it will take 14 to 18 months to build a new factory with a $500 million loan from the Pentagon to drastically expand the company's separation and metallization capacity, a particularly weak stage in the U.S. mines-to-magnets supply chain. The task that workers carry out in heat-resistant suits and sealed face masks has become more urgent with the war in the Middle East rapidly drawing down munitions because critical minerals are a key ingredient in widely used U.S. weapons systems such as Tomahawk cruise missiles, THAAD interceptors and F-35 fighter jets. While the White House is demanding military contractors speed up weapons production, it’s also imposing even stricter rules banning them from sourcing critical-mineral components from China.
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Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia and Washington hold primaries Tuesday, with races that could ultimately decide control of Congress next year. Redistricting efforts will also influence the races. Read more. |
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Massachusetts is on the way to giving doctors the final say on whether an abortion should be allowed late in pregnancy, a move expected to affect few cases but that supporters say is needed because hospitals are now turning away women they should be serving. Read more. |
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They are the first reported deaths linked to a massive outbreak of the intestinal illness that began in May. Read more. |
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Todd Blanche's nomination to serve as attorney general has been held up in a Senate committee over the $1.8 billion fund. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis said they now look forward to voting for Blanche. Read more. |
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- How a Top Law Firm Went From Standing Up to Trump to Bending the Knee (The New York Times)
- MLS investigates reports of antisemitic chants toward New England’s Dor Turgeman in Montreal (The Guardian)
- A broken housing market, soaring costs, and Trump 2.0 are killing the Mass. economy. It’s time to do something about it. (The Boston Globe)
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At Zac Brown's August 2 show he gave everyone in the audience, more than 35,000 people, a cruise for two aboard Margaritaville at Sea. Read more. |
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