Rockport's record crash year: 81 crashes in 2025 on Main Street, Broadway and Granite Street, and the fixes now funded

Rockport recorded 81 crashes in 2025, more than in any year in state records that go back to 2002. The town averaged about 51 a year from 2014 through 2023.

The increase came mostly in summer, and most of the crashes were minor. Eleven crashes in 2025 injured someone, about the same as in a typical year. Records for 2025 are still preliminary, and the count could rise as late reports arrive.

A summer town's crash pattern

Rockport's crashes follow the tourists more than any other Cape Ann town's. Since 2023, 43 percent of its crashes happened in June, July and August, compared with 31 percent in Gloucester. July averages almost nine crashes; April averages about two.

Main Street had the most crashes, 51, and the most injury crashes, 14. Broadway followed with 31 and Granite Street with 24. Single vehicle crashes were the most common kind. Three of the town's eight pedestrian crashes since 2023 were on Bearskin Neck.

Crashes, pavement and the fix, road by road

Each of Rockport's busiest crash roads, side by side: crashes since 2023, the state's 2025 pavement rating, and whether a fix is funded. Tap a road to see what is planned.

How the roads rate

MassDOT's 2025 pavement ratings cover 8.5 miles of state numbered routes in Rockport. About one mile in five rated poor, and a third rated fair.

Granite Street, Route 127, rated fair overall, with 1.1 of its 2.7 miles rated poor. Railroad Avenue rated fair with a poor stretch. Those ratings were taken before the state repaved both roads in April 2026. Main Street rated good. Thatcher Road rated good overall but has 0.4 mile rated poor. South Street and Mount Pleasant Street, both Route 127A, rated fair. The town owns all of these roads except the 1.6 miles of Main Street that MassDOT owns.

The state counts 41 miles of road in Rockport: 33 miles accepted by the town, 1.6 miles owned by MassDOT and 6.7 miles unaccepted.

What residents report

Rockport uses SeeClickFix too. Of the 423 most recent reports the service shows for the town's public works department, 257 were about roads. Beach Street drew 38 of them, more than any other street, including 19 filed under "traffic concerns," the only street with more than two. Granite Street, Marmion Way and Main Street followed. Potholes were the most common report, and the town closed a typical pothole report in about eight days.

Why the condition of a road matters for crashes

Granite Street and Railroad Avenue, two of Rockport's three busiest crash roads, rated fair with long poor stretches in the state's 2025 survey. The state repaved both in April 2026. Main Street, the top crash road, rates good.

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 on the busiest roads

Main Street is posted 20 mph downtown, then 35 mph and 45 mph on the Route 127 stretch toward Gloucester. Granite Street is mostly 25 mph, with a 20 mph stretch near Pigeon Cove and 30 mph near the Gloucester line. Broadway is 20 mph. Rockport has not adopted the state option that sets unposted streets at 25 mph in thickly settled areas, so the state default of 30 mph applies on its unposted streets. On a rotary or at an unmarked intersection, state law says the car entering yields to the car already there, and the car on the left yields to the car on the right.

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, or MUTCD, 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.

What the studies found

Regional planners have looked hard at Rockport's roads, especially Five Corners, where Main Street, Broadway, Railroad Avenue and Parker Street meet.

A 2011 study for the town counted 15 crashes at Five Corners from 2006 through 2008. It found the Railroad Avenue and Broadway approaches backed up badly at peak times, and that a single lane roundabout would move traffic far better than a signal. It estimated short term fixes such as curb extensions, raised crosswalks and signs at $50,000 to $75,000.

A 2014 study of the Route 127 and 127A loop through Gloucester and Rockport found Five Corners averaged about 4.4 crashes a year, the most of any intersection on the loop. It found summer traffic rises 40 to 50 percent on downtown Rockport streets, and that nearly 1,000 people an hour crossed Mount Pleasant Street at Broadway and T Wharf at the summer peak. Long stretches of Thatcher Road and Granite Street have no sidewalk on either side, it noted.

The town's 2018 Complete Streets plan proposed realigning the Parker Street and Main Street approaches at Five Corners and rebuilding the Mount Pleasant Street sidewalks from Broadway to Dock Square.

Road projects, past and planned, on the map

Every road project we found in the town'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 is planned

Two of Rockport's three busiest crash roads were repaved this spring. In April 2026 MassDOT's contractor milled and paved Granite Street from the Gloucester line and Railroad Avenue up to Five Corners, working nights, under the state's Municipal Pavement Program. The state paid for it even though the roads belong to the town. The town's own paving that spring covered Highview and Briny roads, South Street Extension, Long Beach, Mill Lane, Hale Street and part of Penzance Road. In 2025 the town fully resurfaced Broadway Avenue and partly resurfaced Granite Street and Mt. Pleasant Street.

On Main Street, the town's top crash road, the Select Board voted 5 to 0 on Nov. 4, 2025 to put a flashing beacon and push button crossing signals at the High Street crosswalk. The public works director said it was the best of three options the town's pavement consultant reviewed, and that it had been studied for a couple of years after a visually impaired resident raised it.

At Five Corners, the only step on record is small. The town's Traffic Safety and Parking Committee agreed in March 2025 to add a second STOP sign on the left side of the Main Street approach, after a site visit. It discussed and set aside a ban on left turns from Main Street onto Broadway. The realignment and roundabout ideas in the older studies have not come back.

A state project to rebuild Route 127A, Thatcher Road, is estimated at about $11.5 million. It is in preliminary design and has not been scheduled for funding, according to MassDOT's project database; the town is responsible for its design and land. The town is paying for that design with help from a $500,000 state Community One Stop for Growth grant it accepted in November 2025, after a federal FEMA grant fell through. In July 2026 the Select Board voted to hand back a second, paused federal grant for the same corridor because the state money now covers the work. The town's goal is 25 percent design by mid 2027, the point at which the state can add the project to its transportation improvement program.

Voters at the April 2025 annual town meeting approved $2 million in borrowing for roadway improvements by unanimous voice vote, along with $300,000 for a master roadway account covering roads, lots and sidewalks. The town gets about $282,000 a year in state Chapter 90 road money on top of that.

Flooding is part of the picture, too. The town's 2020 hazard plan says Penzance Road near Pebble Beach is often washed out or covered with sand and boulders, and that flooding near Lowest Lane and Summit Avenue reaches Granite Street.

None of the three bridges and culverts in Rockport on the state's bridge inventory is rated poor. The Keystone Bridge, which carries Granite Street over the old granite company railroad, rates good.

What the town spent, 2025 and 2026

Rockport's road money comes from three places: borrowing voters approve at town meeting, a yearly deposit into a master roadway account, and state Chapter 90 aid of about $282,000 a year. In 2025 voters approved $2 million in borrowing and $300,000 for the roadway account. The state added a $500,000 grant for Thatcher Road design, and in 2026 paid for the Granite Street and Railroad Avenue paving itself.

Before 2024

The Current's meeting archive begins in 2024, so the town's paving lists for 2020 through 2023 are not in it; we have asked the town for them. The state's own records show no MassDOT project finished in Rockport since 2020; the Route 127A rebuild has been in design since before then. In 2021 the state's Shared Winter Streets program paid $86,990 for work around Dock Square.

Grants and safety programs

We found no Rockport police award on the state's Municipal Road Safety grant lists for 2024, 2025 or 2026. Towns Rockport's size can receive up to $25,000 a year for traffic enforcement, speed signs and safety education.

The town has drawn other state money for safer streets. MassDOT awarded Rockport $320,338 in Complete Streets money in 2019 to realign the Smith Street approach and rebuild Beach Street's sidewalks, crosswalks and curb ramps near Back Beach, with a bike lane and curb extensions at Main and Beach streets. In 2021, the state's Shared Winter Streets and Spaces program gave the town $86,990 for accessible outdoor dining, signs and traffic calming around Dock Square. MassDOT lists Rockport as eligible for up to $500,000 more in Complete Streets construction money.

Rockport has not adopted the state's 25 mph default speed limit for town streets, according to MassDOT. Rockport Elementary and Rockport Middle School are Safe Routes to School partners. The town's Traffic Safety and Parking Committee, which includes the police chief and the public works director, advises the Select Board.

Look up your street below, or explore every crash on our Road Safety page. The 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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