On September 29th, the Bike Union and allied organizations in the Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition hosted a rally at Boston City Hall to demand action from our elected officials. Over 250 people attended the Streets are for People Rally including many city officials and policy makers.

Unfortunately, less than one week after the rally, Bernard “Joe” Lavins was killed in a truck collision in Porter Square while biking to work, stressing the need for Boston and Cambridge to accelerate their Vision Zero efforts.

Cambridge residents responded with their own rally and call to action on October 17th, before a meeting of the Cambridge City Council. Over 75 people showed up to rally for safer streets. Speakers, including the Bike Union’s Executive Director Becca Wolfson, demanded swifter action, less talk, and to stop passing on opportunities to make streets safer for people biking and walking. All eight policy orders up for review were unanimously adopted during the subsequent City Council meeting.

Together we are successfully demonstrating that we are a united and growing group of people who will not stop working until we eliminate fatal and serious crashes on our streets.

Thank you for supporting this important work and helping keep the pressure on our elected officials to take bold actions. Please continue to help by signing the petitions below!

• If you live, work, or commute in Boston, please sign and share our petition! We collected more than 220 signatures at the rally, but we’d like to grow that to 1,000 signatures before the end of this month.

• If you live, work, or commute in Cambridge, please sign and share this petition, which already has over 1,000 signatures.

• Everyone is invited to join us on November 20th for a World Day of Remembrance Vigil at the MA State House in remembrance of road traffic victims worldwide.

Thank you for your participation and support. We know that passage of policy orders does not mean our work is over. There will undoubtedly continue to be meetings where your presence and testimony, and engagement with city officials will be critical to seeing progress. We know you will rise to the occasion, and we hope you’ll join us at the next call to action on November 20th for World Day of Remembrance!