Group examines multiple ideas to ease congestion on Cape

Wednesday

Sep 28, 2016 at 9:31 PMSep 29, 2016 at 9:42 AM

Madeleine List

BUZZARDS BAY — A state transportation working group and members of the public met Wednesday night at Massachusetts Maritime Academy to discuss ideas for long- and short-term solutions that could help traffic flow near the Bourne and Sagamore bridges.

One plan already underway is for the creation of a road connecting the Scenic Highway, just before Belmont Circle, to Route 25.

Having a ramp go directly to Route 25 could divert about 780 cars during a typical summer noontime rush, said Bill Reed, a member of the Cape Cod Canal Transportation Study working group and manager of the transportation division at Fay Spofford & Thorndike, a planning and environmental consulting firm.

“If we could get them on 25 westbound, that could relieve an awful lot of this traffic,” he said.

That project, which is still in the very early planning stages, is estimated to cost about $6.5 million, said Glenn Cannon, director of technical services for the Cape Cod Commission. Design and construction of the project will be paid for by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, which allots the Cape $10 million per year for projects.

The earliest the Belmont Circle project could start is 2020, he said. Because so many projects are in the queue throughout Cape Cod, any project after the Belmont Circle project couldn’t be planned for until 2022, he said.

“We have more projects than we have money,” Cannon said.

The ideas presented at the working group meeting Wednesday are only in their conceptual phases, said Ethan Britland, project manager at MassDOT.

“These are just potential improvements, they’re not projects yet,” he said.

Ideas for improving traffic flow near the bridges were presented in groups: short-term projects that could be completed in one to three years; projects that could be completed in three to eight years; and long-term projects that would take over eight years and significant funding to complete.

The ideas ranged from placing traffic lights at busy intersections to building a flyover over the Bourne Rotary. All the ideas take into consideration the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to replace the Cape’s bridges with modern ones that would be built right next to the existing structures, Britland said. The new bridges would be wider, likely with six lanes and sidewalks, he said.

A solution as small as a traffic light could be handled quickly by MassDOT without having to go through a lengthy permitting process, Cannon said. But a single traffic light costs about $2.5 million, he said.

Members of the working group also discussed initial findings on project proposals such as building a third vehicle bridge between the Sagamore and Bourne bridges. The project could have significant environmental impacts, affecting at least 37 acres of open space and 63 acres of rare species habitat, which could create a significant barrier to getting the proper permitting, said Michael Paiewonsky, a member of the working group.

Another idea the group touched on was to bring freight by ferry directly from New Bedford to Martha’s Vineyard in order to reduce truck traffic in Woods Hole. The proposal faces many challenges, including the high cost of starting the project, buying or chartering a ferry to haul the trucks, and persuading trucking companies to support the proposal when the price of the ferry trip from New Bedford would be about $300 more than the trip from Woods Hole, Paiewonsky said.

The group will hold a public meeting in late October or early November to go over some of the project ideas and hear input from the audience, Britland said.