Mayor Wu claims she's listening, and she is. But mostly she listens to Jay Cashman, a multimillionaire developer upset that the views from his $20 million Dartmouth Street mansion would be altered by a planned bike lane. Angered by the efforts to build safer streets, Cashman bankrolled "Pedal Safe Boston" in 2025, an "astroturf" front group designed to kill safer transit to protect one man's real estate interests. Cashman reportedly callled the Mayor in January to tell her to "do something about this," and has vowed to spend $1 million to stop safer streets programs. The Mayor listens, too, to business groups like the Back Bay Association, which want to make roads faster for suburban shoppers and has little to say on behalf of Boston residents.

Mayor Wu is retreating from the fight for safer streets to fuel her political ambition. She’s delaying projects that residents have demanded, tearing out bus lanes, and shelving redesigns on dangerous corridors like Hyde Park Avenue. She's doing it to avoid alienating the real estate developers, high-dollar donors, and suburban voters who could shape her political future as senator or governor. Wu's actions suggest a mayor more focused on managing state and national optics than protecting lives. Her calculated retreat sees bold plans gutted, tough choices dodged, and Boston families left to pay the price in their delayed commutes, risky travel with their family, and streets abandoned to reckless drivers.

Mayor Wu swept into office with a clear mandate for progressive, people-first change, including safer streets for all. But now, when it’s time to follow through, she’s choosing caution over conviction. She talks about equity and climate, but stalls the very infrastructure that would deliver them. Instead of using her political strength to confront tough opposition, she’s letting it drain away—dodging conflict, delaying projects, and deferring to endless “community process.” The result: momentum lost, promises abandoned, and streets that remain deadly for the residents who put her in office.

When Michelle Wu took office, she reorganized the city's transportation planners, engineers, data analysts, and city officials into her "Streets Cabinet," including Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin‑Hodge, BTD’s planning director Vineet Gupta, Chief of Data Stef Costa‑Leabo, and design lead Julia Campbell. Their mandate was to lead Boston’s infrastructure transformation with data-backed solutions. But in 2025, scared by feedback from her wealthy donors, the Mayor backtracked. Since a hasty "30-day review" that led to a rollback of street safety project and echoed her donors' talking points, the Streets Cabinet's experts have been neutered, silent on all street safety projects. The Mayor won't answer questions about who that review consulted other than vague references to “neighborhood groups and business stakeholders." (We can't find a single group it met with.)

Mayor Wu came to power with a strong mandate to lead, and many of us supported her bold vision of making Boston a leader in housing, transportation, and many other domains. We appreciate the need for compromise and political savvy, but Mayor Wu is folding without a fight on one of the most vital issues to Bostonians, while offering a lot of double-speak to residents who ask her why.

Why is the mayor abandoning safer streets?