Gloucester's most dangerous roads: 266 crashes on Washington Street, no fix funded, and a $30 million paving backlog

Gloucester accounts for most of Cape Ann's crashes, and most of Gloucester's crashes happen on a handful of roads. Police reported 1,859 crashes in the city with a map location from January 2023 through late September 2026, according to state records. About one in six injured someone.

Where they happen

Washington Street had the most crashes, 266, and 55 of them hurt someone. Route 128 came next with 196, not counting its ramps and Grant Circle, followed by Eastern Avenue with 122 and Main Street with 115.

Grant Circle, the rotary where Route 128 meets Washington Street, had 22 crashes, the most of any intersection on Cape Ann. The Route 128 ramps at Crafts Road and Concord Street followed. The state's own crash analysis has flagged this area before: from 2013 through 2015, Grant Circle at Washington Street was the top crash cluster on Cape Ann, with 49 crashes. A state cluster at Rogers and Main streets counted 14 pedestrian crashes from 2014 through 2023.

Measured against traffic, Prospect Street stands out. It carries about 2,400 vehicles a day, by the state's count, yet had 66 crashes, a higher rate for its traffic than any other Gloucester road with at least 10 crashes.

Crashes, pavement and the fix, road by road

The table below puts the three things this story is about side by side for each of Gloucester's busiest crash roads: how many crashes it had, how the state rates its pavement, and whether anything is funded to fix it. The last column also counts the road complaints residents filed about each street on the city's SeeClickFix site. Tap a road to see what is planned.

How the roads rate

MassDOT rates the pavement on state numbered routes every year by driving them with sensors. Its 2025 ratings cover about 30 miles of numbered routes in Gloucester. About one mile in five rated poor.

Washington Street, which is Route 127, rated fair over its 5.6 miles, and 1.7 miles of it rated poor. The city owns almost all of Washington Street; the state owns only a short piece. Rogers Street rated poor. So did Bass Avenue, before it was repaved this year. Grant Circle rated fair. Eastern Avenue and Essex Avenue, Route 133, rated fair. Route 128 through the city rated good, with more than 5 miles rated excellent after the state's $15.6 million repaving of the highway from Wenham to Gloucester, finished in 2024.

Because the city owns Washington Street, it is eligible for the same state Municipal Pavement Program that paid for Bass Avenue. That program pays the full cost of repaving state numbered routes that cities and towns own. City records show no application for Washington Street.

The state counts 167 miles of road in Gloucester: 88 miles accepted by the city, 15 miles owned by MassDOT and 64 miles unaccepted, mostly private roads.

What residents report

Gloucester is the only Cape Ann town that lets residents report problems through SeeClickFix, and the reports line up with the crash map. Of the 2,500 most recent reports, 767 were about roads: potholes most of all, then other road damage, sidewalks, street lights, manhole covers and signs. Washington Street drew more road complaints than any other street, 28, including 10 potholes. Bass Avenue came next with 18, most of them loose manhole covers, before the state repaved it this year. Eastern Avenue and Atlantic Road had 16 each. The city closed a typical pothole report in about two weeks. Reports peaked in March, when winter damage shows up.

Why the condition of a road matters for crashes

Four of the five Gloucester roads with the most crashes, Washington Street, Eastern Avenue, Main Street and Essex Avenue, rate only fair on the state's 2025 pavement survey. Rogers Street rates poor. Only Route 128, which the state repaved in 2024, rates good to excellent.

Worn, rough pavement is not just a comfort problem. Studies that match crash records to pavement ratings find more crashes on roads in worse shape. A 2025 University of Houston and University of Texas study of 21,536 crashes on Iowa highways found the crash rate on roads with a poor roughness rating was more than three times the rate on good roads, 466 crashes per 100 million vehicle miles against 134. On roads with poor skid resistance it was almost five times higher. A 2023 Federal Highway Administration study by Virginia Tech found that each 10 point gain in pavement friction cut crashes about 25 percent on urban arterials and 30 percent at urban intersections, with bigger gains in the rain. Tennessee researchers found in 2009 that the same pavement rating MassDOT uses, the PSI, predicted crash counts better than roughness or ruts alone. An Ohio study in 2016 found crash rates climbed sharply once roughness passed a threshold.

Speed matters as much. When Boston lowered its default limit to 25 mph, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found the odds of a car going over 35 mph fell 29 percent. Gloucester and Manchester have adopted that limit; Rockport and Essex have not.

The Boston Region MPO's Vision Zero Action Plan, finished in March 2026 with money from the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant program, found that 7 percent of the region's road miles carry about 65 percent of its deadly and serious injury crashes, and that intersections are the site of 44 percent. Its first recommendations are slowing traffic and improving crossings, the kind of fix Rockport approved at Main and High streets. All four Cape Ann towns are in the plan, which is where MassDOT and the MPO will look when they rank the next projects.

None of these studies looked at Cape Ann roads. They explain why the state rates pavement every year and why a road that rates poor and has a long crash list, like Washington Street in Gloucester, is the kind of road these programs are built to fix.

Speed limits, and the two rotaries

Gloucester's busiest crash roads carry a mix of limits. Washington Street is posted 25 mph on about 4 of its 7 miles, 30 mph on 2 miles toward Annisquam and Riverdale, and 20 mph for a mile near downtown. Eastern Avenue is 30 to 35 mph with a 20 mph stretch near the center. Essex Avenue, Route 133, is 35 to 40 mph. Rogers Street is 25 and Main Street downtown is 20. Route 128 is 55 mph for almost 9 of its 11 miles in the city, then 45 mph for about 2 miles that include the stretch between the two circles, with 25 mph in the circles themselves.

Grant Circle and Blackburn Circle are both two lane rotaries, and both are posted 25 mph, according to MassDOT's road inventory. Two lanes means two streams of cars circling at once and changing lanes to exit, which is where sideswipes and rear end crashes happen; those were the two most common crash types in the city. The state owns both circles and the highway between them.

The rules are state law. On a rotary, the car entering must yield to any car already in the circle. Where no limit is posted, the state default is 30 mph in a thickly settled or business district, 40 mph outside one, 50 mph on a divided highway and 20 mph in a school zone. Since May 2025 Gloucester has used a state option that drops the unposted limit in thickly settled areas to 25 mph. Prospect Street has no posted limit in the state's inventory, so that 25 mph rule applies there.

What a road is supposed to meet

There is a yardstick for most of this. MassDOT sets targets for its own roads: at least 60 to 62 percent of non interstate miles rated good or excellent, and no more than 12 to 20 percent rated poor. Its 2021 asset report said the state numbered routes that cities and towns own, like Washington Street or Granite Street, have three times the poor mileage of the state owned ones, which is why the state created the Municipal Pavement Program. Gloucester, Rockport and Essex are each at about 20 percent poor on those routes; Manchester is at 3 percent.

A new asphalt surface lasts about 20 years, by the city of Gloucester's own account, and state Chapter 90 money reaches a public road about once every 40 years at current funding. Asphalt is laid in the warm months; Gloucester's permit rules close the road opening season on Nov. 15. Crosswalks, lane lines and signs follow the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which every state adopts, and the flashing beacon Rockport approved for Main and High streets is one of the Federal Highway Administration's proven safety countermeasures. New or rebuilt sidewalks must meet federal accessibility rules, with a clear path at least 4 feet wide and ramps at every crossing. At corners, engineers protect a sight triangle so drivers can see cross traffic; the towns' zoning and fence rules set how tall a fence or hedge may be near an intersection, and we are reviewing each town's bylaw for the next story in this series.

Chapter 90 is the state money behind most town paving. For fiscal 2027 it is $300 million statewide, two thirds split by road miles, population and jobs and one third by road miles alone. On top of it, the Fair Share surtax sent Gloucester $146,912, Rockport $40,777, Essex $29,250 and Manchester $32,547 in fiscal 2025 for the same uses.

When and why

Crashes rise in summer. July averages about 53 crashes in Gloucester, against about 35 in April. The busiest hour is 2 to 3 p.m.

When officers recorded a cause, the most common by far was inattention or distraction, in 252 crashes. Rear end crashes and same direction sideswipes were the most common kinds of collision. In 173 crashes a driver left the scene, most often on Washington, Prospect and Main streets.

Is it getting worse?

Not by the numbers so far. The city averaged about 585 crashes a year from 2014 through 2023. It had 609 in 2023 and 564 in 2024. The state shows 453 for 2025, but reports for 2024 and later are still arriving, so that lower figure likely reflects late paperwork rather than safer roads.

What the city spent, 2024 to 2026

Each year the city moves 10 percent of its free cash into a paving fund: $356,792 in 2024, $285,834 in 2025 and $401,286 in 2026. The regular paving line in the operating budget, which the city calls R&M Paving (repairs and maintenance, the city's own money as opposed to state aid), was $60,000 a year through fiscal 2022 and has been $350,000 a year since fiscal 2023. The city spent well beyond that line in some years once transfers came in: $673,340 in fiscal 2022 and $531,206 in fiscal 2023, according to the city's budget reports. By Feb. 25, 2026 the account had $150,000 left for the rest of the fiscal year. In 2024 the council also put $114,800 that National Grid paid the city after its gas work toward paving, and in 2025 it approved $132,000 to repave Main Street outside the police station. The largest single job in those three years was Bass Avenue in 2026, paid for by the state.

Road projects, past and planned, on the map

Every road project we found in the city's records since 2023 is on this map, from paving that is done to projects still waiting for money, drawn over the crashes from the same years. Filter by status, tap a project for the details, or turn the crash layer off to see the projects alone.

What the city has done since 2025

The city's one large paving job this year was Bass Avenue, part of Route 127A. MassDOT paid the full $1,017,200 through its Municipal Pavement Program, which repaves state numbered routes that cities own. The council accepted the grant on June 23, 2026 after the Budget and Finance Committee recommended it 3 to 0. The work was already done, so the money pays the city back, part in fiscal 2026 and part in fiscal 2027.

The council also moved $401,286 in free cash into the city's paving account in March 2026, under the city's free cash policy. No street list came with it.

For Washington Street, the city's top crash road, city records since 2025 show no paving project, grant application or council order. A resident who lives on the street told the council on June 9, 2026 that drivers speed there, asked for crosswalk signs like Rockport's near Richdale's and Seeall Street, and offered to pay toward them. The minutes show no follow up. On Sept. 22, 2026, a councilor called the loop from Granite Street onto Washington Street a safety problem even for a passenger car. That night the council voted 7 to 0 to ban overnight truck and trailer parking in Washington Square. We found nothing on Grant Circle, Eastern Avenue or a one way Prospect Street in the same records.

Before 2024

The Current's meeting archive begins in 2024, so the paving lists for 2020 through 2023 are not in it; we have asked the city for them, and the lookup tool in our private roads story lets residents add the year their street was last paved. What the older record does show: in 2018 the public works director told the council that in 20 years the city had borrowed for paving only once, in 2011, to fix Farrington Avenue, East Main Street and Rocky Neck Avenue, which were in deplorable condition and damaging fire trucks. Everything else was Chapter 90 money. The city's budget reports show the small paving account spent $53,850 in fiscal 2020 and $81,323 in fiscal 2021 before the council raised the line to $350,000 in fiscal 2023, and the water and sewer funds each carry $30,000 a year for paving over their trenches. Since 2020 the state has finished one project in the city, the $15.6 million repaving of Route 128, started in 2021 and done in 2024.

What the city's studies say

Gloucester has studied its roads repeatedly, and the documents point to the same pressures: money, flooding and parking.

Money. In a March 2022 presentation to the City Council, the city said a 2013 pavement management project found $17 million in needed repairs to public roads, and the public works director estimated the city falls about $1 million a year short on road repair. The city receives roughly $640,000 to $680,000 a year in state Chapter 90 road money. The mayor's fiscal 2026 budget sets aside $350,000 for small paving work and says a 10 year capital plan is planned. By May 2026 the gap had grown. Asked at a budget hearing whether the small paving budget was enough, the public works director said it was not, and that the city had a backlog of about $30 million in paving work.

Private roads. A 2022 city working group found Gloucester has 64 miles of private roads, the seventh most in Massachusetts, and that 573 of the city's 829 roads are private. State law bars spending public money on permanent repairs to them; owners can pay through betterments spread over five to 10 years.

Flooding. A 2024 assessment for the city ranked Hartz Street, Thatcher Road and Washington Street as the roads most at risk of flooding today, with Commercial Street, Rocky Neck Avenue and Rogers Street joining the list by 2050.

Parking. A 2024 downtown study found summer weekday parking about 85 percent full in 2023, even though traffic at its count sites was roughly 40 percent below 1999 levels. Making Prospect Street one way could add about 100 spaces, it said.

Speed. The City Council voted 6 to 0 on May 27, 2025, to adopt the state law allowing a 25 mph default limit on unposted city streets.

The bridges

MassDOT plans to replace the Blynman Bridge over the Cut, a project with an estimated construction cost of about $125 million. The state's project database lists construction to begin in spring 2030. A separate project to repair joints and steel on the A. Piatt Andrew Bridge, which carries Route 128 over the Annisquam River, is estimated at about $15.1 million.

The state's bridge inventory rates the Blynman Bridge poor and structurally deficient, and federal records show inspectors check it every six months. It is the only bridge in the city rated poor.

Grants and safety programs

Gloucester is the only Cape Ann town we found on the state's Municipal Road Safety grant lists for 2024 through 2026. The police department received $40,000 for 2024, $26,064 for 2025 and $35,975 for 2026, after $35,000 for 2023, according to state award lists and city council and Budget and Finance Committee records. City records say the money mostly pays for officers' overtime on traffic enforcement patrols.

The city won $398,348 in MassDOT Complete Streets money in 2018 for bike lanes along Route 127 and Main Street downtown, and $275,320 in 2021 from the state's Shared Winter Streets and Spaces program for wheelchair ramps, crosswalks and walkways downtown. MassDOT lists Gloucester as eligible for up to $500,000 in Complete Streets construction money, but the city received none from fiscal 2022 through 2024.

Five Gloucester schools are Safe Routes to School partners: Beeman, East Veterans, O'Maley, Plum Cove and West Parish. We found no Safe Routes construction award for the city and no federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant of its own. Gloucester is among the 97 communities in the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization's Vision Zero Action Plan, endorsed in March 2026.

We asked Gloucester's interim police chief, public works director and fire chief on Oct. 7 how the city plans to improve its most dangerous roads. None had responded by Oct. 27. We will add their answers if they reply.

Look up your own street below, or explore every crash on our Road Safety page. The city's studies are in our Roads Library.

Crash figures come from police reports compiled by MassDOT; records for 2024 and later are preliminary. See where crashes happen across Cape Ann.

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