Massachusetts Public Transportation Ranks Among Safest in the US – New Hampshire Tops List
If you looked at social media and at the plethora of headlines about MBTA horror stories and fires over the last handful of years you’d think that Massachusetts’ public transportation system is in the toilet. However, a new report paints a much rosier picture.
High Rise Legal Funding commissioned the study which put Massachusetts in the Top 10 as far as public transportation safety in the US. The Bay State proudly sits at #8 safest in the country. The report analyzed data on bus fatalities between 2010-2022 from the Bureau of Transport Statistics, as well as rail accident data for 2022 from the Federal Railroad Administration. The number of bus fatalities and rail accidents were then compared to the population of each state to find the number of public transportation accidents per 100,000 residents.
The news gets even better for our New England neighbor New Hampshire who tops the whole dang list, making New Hampshire the state with the safest public transportation in the entire United States. Congrats, Granite State! New Hampshire scored a perfect score of 100 in public transportation safety. The state recorded zero bus fatalities between 2010 and 2020 and zero rail accidents throughout 2022. If I could find the clappy hand emojis I’d insert a few here.
Montana finished last with a public transport safety score of only 12.81. Montana had 1.76 rail accidents per 100,000 residents. To put that into perspective, 1.76 per 100,000 is 183% above the national average.
Massachusetts did pretty well coming at #8 safest with an overall safety score of 56.52. Rhode Island and Maine took 3rd and 4th respectively.
We got even more safety news recently as the Bay State is well represented in NeighborhoodScout’s 2023 Top 100 Safest Cities in the U.S. list – Massachusetts has 4 of the Top 10 spots! Neighborhood Scout determined their top 100 by using each town/city’s population and total crime rate per one thousand residents to determine the chance of being a victim of crime there. The lower the chances of being a victim of crime, the safer (obviously).
