Beverly bike-and-ped committee flags Rantoul and Cabot as crash hotspots, urges audits and low-cost changes

The Beverly City Council on May 19 heard an update from the city’s bike-and-pedestrian committee that summarized four years of police crash reports, identified concentrated incident clusters on Rantoul and Cabot streets, and laid out next steps including ward-by-ward walk audits and integration of the 2015 bike map with the city’s three-year paving plan.

The committee said the Beverly Police Department crash reports from 2020 through 2024 show pedestrians and motorists were involved in incidents “on average every 3.5 weeks,” while cyclist-and-motor-vehicle incidents occurred about every 6.5 weeks. Jared Porter, speaking for the committee, said the department’s new crash-report form — with diagrams and longer narratives — “provides much more insight into the nature of the actual event,” which helps the…