More Worcester traffic crashes in first half of 2024 than years before, report says

WORCESTER — With a newly declared "Road Safety and Traffic Violence Crisis” in the city after a series of high-profile serious crashes, Worcester's crash numbers are in focus, and the city saw more crashes for the first half of the year than in years prior.

A new study from the Worcester Regional Research Bureau also looks at the city's relatively high crash numbers for vulnerable road users for most of the past decade and how road design may have contributed to those numbers.

According to the state Department of Transportation's Impact crash data portal, which the city used to calculate its crash numbers so far for the crisis declaration, there have been 2,726 crashes in Worcester for the first six months of 2024.

While 303 additional crashes have been recorded in July, a spokesperson for the city said the state's data has a lag because crash reports need to be finalized and items, meaning many of the crashes over the past three to four weeks may not currently be reported.

Of the 2024 crashes for the first half of the year, 45 have been recorded as featuring a serious injury and four as fatal.

In 2024, there have been 67 recorded crashes involving pedestrians, 22 crashes involving bicyclists and 11 crashes involving pedal cyclists so far this year

Here are the total crash numbers for the first six months of the past five years: 2,414 in 2023, 2,292 in 2022, 2,158 in 2021, 1,597 in the COVID-19-impacted 2020 and 2,601 in 2019.

The following serious and fatal crashes were recorded for the first six months of the last five years: 52 serious injury crashes and four fatal crashes in 2023; 45 serious injury crashes and four fatal crashes in 2022; 56 serious injury crashes and three fatal crashes in 2021, 30 serious injury crashes and one fatal crash in 2020 and 35 serious crashes and one fatal crash in 2019.

At the start of April, City Manager Eric D. Batista and Mayor Joseph M. Petty declared what they call a “Road Safety and Traffic Violence Crisis” in Worcester on the heels of several crashes. Recent crashes include the following:

• June 25, a 1-year-old girl was struck by a vehicle on Lincoln Street . She suffered a head injury.
• June 27, 13-year-old Gianna Rose Simoncini was fatally struck by a motor vehicle while crossing the street in the area of 370 Belmont St. between Plantation Street and Lake Avenue.
• July 19, a vehicle struck a man riding a stand-up electric scooter, which was traveling east on June Street, between Edgewood and Carlisle streets. A 26-year-old man identified as Jacob Tetreault was taken to the hospital with serious injuries. He is expected to survive, according to police.
• July 26, a 13-year-old girl suffered serious injuries after being struck by a car in the area of 164 Shrewsbury St. The victim, Ayuen Leet, is in a coma , according to her family. Van Nguyen, 18, has been cited for operating to endanger, speeding and failure to yield to a pedestrian in the roadway.
• April 11, a 40-year-old woman was hit by a car while walking on Greenwood Street. She is in critical condition, according to police.

The Research Bureau also released a new report titled "Toward Safer Streets: Identifying Risk Factors for Non-motorists in Worcester" Tuesday. Paul Matthews, executive director and CEO of the Research Bureau, said the report was in the work months prior to the series of serious crashes during the summer months.

"We hope that this report and our analysis can help inform the public discussions and the deliberations within the city over how to best respond," Matthews said.

The report looks at risk factors that create dangerous conditions on city streets for vulnerable road users, defined by the report and the state as pedestrians, cyclists, people on wheelchairs, skateboarders and other road users outside of vehicles. Matthews notes the designation is inclusive of some road users who may not have been prominent a decade ago such as electric scooter users.

The report uses Department of Transportation data from 2012 and 2019. In that time span, the report finds that an average of 184 crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists occurred per year and accounted for 47.3% of all fatal collisions.

Two studies cited by the research bureau underscore Worcester's level of danger for vulnerable road users relative to other cities in the state. A 2017 analysis conducted by Boston law firm Sweeney Merrigan and data visualization firm 1Point21 Interactive identified Worcester as having the most hazardous intersections in Massachusetts, with 50 intersections having more than five pedestrian collisions between 2001 and 2014 — thehighest count in the state.

A 2022 Walk Massachusetts report found that while Worcester reported a lower absolute count of pedestrian fatalities compared to Boston in 2022, seven versus 12, the fatality rate per 100,000 residents was nearly double that of Boston’s, 3.40 versus 1.83.

"It is not good to find that our fatality rate is nearly double that of Boston's", Matthews said.

Between 2012 and 2019, pedestrians made up 61.5% of all vulnerable road user crashes and 91.4% offatalities. Cyclists accounted for the second-largest portion of vulnerable road user crashes at 24.2%, the report found.

In that period, clear demographic differences emerged in the likelihood to be severely injured or killed in a crash. Residents over 65 constituted were involved in only 5.8% of vulnerable road user crashes but were involved in 32.4% of fatal crashes.

Residents 19 and under were also disproportionately involved in vulnerable road user accidents, being 16% of the overall population but 27% of the crash victims.

Arterial roads, roads that have more lanes, higher speeds and greater vehicle volumes than local streets but more pedestrian access and traffic than highways accounted for only 20.9% of the total city-operated streets, but 81.8% of all vulnerable road user fatalities or serious injuries occurred on these kinds of roads in Worcester.

Studies cited by the research bureau have found that road segments with three or more total travel lanes across both directions were much likelier than arterial roads with less than two lanes to contain a fatal vulnerable road user crash. Differences in lane and pavement width have also been found a correlation with the number of severe crashes for vulnerable road users, with wider roads potentially posing a greater threat.

"When you have wider roads with multiple lanes, statistically cars are traveling faster and there's a higher pedestrian and vulnerable road user accident rate," Matthews said.

Road medians, especially rigid medians with clear barriers between the road and the median, have also been correlated with a reduction in severe vulnerable road user crashes.

In 2022, the research bureau published the 1936 redlining map of the city. Redlining refers to a discriminatory practice of denying investment to communities ruled "hazardous" based on 1930s designations from Federal Home Owners’ Loan Corp. In the two areas termed "hazardous," 6.4% of road segments had at least one severe crash while 1.5% of road segments had at least one severe crash in the neighborhoods with the highest classification.

City blocks designated for highest environmental justice concern were also over seven times likelier to contain a severe crash than blocks without the designation.

The research bureau also looked at proximity to Worcester Regional Transit Authority bus stops, finding that 71.4% of the city’s fatal or severe pedestrian and cyclist crashes occurred within 300 feet of a bus stop and the report calls for the WRTA to consider that proximity for assigning stops.

While crashes are evidently tragedies for the victims and their loved ones, the report also looks at the financial and social costs of pedestrian and cyclist crashes.

The report cites studies finding that residents would be more likely to engage in the community, be satisfied and engage in sustainable transportation if they felt safer on the streets. Improved road safety in other cities, such as Dubuque, Iowa, saw an increase in new businesses and rising property values.

Based on derivations from MassDOT and the Federal Highway Administration, the research bureau estimates vulnerable road user crashes in 2019 cost $493,644,552 in 2024 dollars due to factors such as high costs from damages, medical procedures and lost wages.

Matthews brought up downtown to discuss the need to stay ahead of road safety policies, which he said the city is putting a serious effort to address through initiatives such as Complete Streets, Vision Zero and its Mobility Action Plan. He hoped the study would help residents understand the conversation around road safety policy.

"We have a lot of foot traffic, we have a lot of people living downtown who weren't 20 years ago," Matthews said. "We need to ensure that the city policies and the investments in roads and sidewalks and the WRTA's approach to bus stops, etc. all keep pace with what's happening as our city grows."

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: More Worcester traffic crashes in first half of 2024 than years before, report says