FOLLOWING A PEDESTRIAN safety assessment that showed almost half of all Massachusetts pedestrian fatalities or serious injuries happened within 300 feet of a bus stop, the Department of Transportation is looking to use federal funds to make safety improvements at bus stops across the state.

Pedestrian fatalities, serious injuries and cyclist serious injuries trended up in Massachusetts between 2020 — when there was a steep decline due to an absence of normal traffic volume — to 2022, according to the MassDOT Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment…

The assessment also showed a correlation between accidents and transit proximity: 41 percent of pedestrian-involved crashes and 34 percent of bicyclist crashes occurred within 300 feet of bus stops statewide.

This statistic is even higher in Boston-area communities, where 45 percent of bicyclist crashes and 50 percent of pedestrian accidents happened within 300 feet of an MBTA bus stop.