Showing posts with label traffic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label traffic. Show all posts

Monday, July 25, 2016

Tracking Bridge Traffic Over A Summer Weekend


Just for laughs, we summoned up Google Traffic every hour or so during peak commuting periods.

We struck during mid-summer, which is a peak period around here. We did it before the end of the month, so we spared ourselves the cottage monthly-rental crowd.

We chose a weekend without some major event like a Scallop Festival or the Pan Mass Challenge. We did, however, choose a scorcher of a weekend.

Overall, I'd say we got as easy of a weekend as we could ask for in the summer. We may do another version of this when the PMC is in town (early August), just to see how it compares.

Here's the volume:

Bourne Bridge
Year round daily average (2011) = 42,505 vehicles
Summer daily average = 58,467

Sagamore Bridge
Year round daily average = 51,489
Summer daily average = 70,674

Here's what we found this week. We had no way of counting cars, even though we did do a few drive-bys just to make sure that Google Maps wasn't fibbing.



Friday, 5 PM.... 1 mile backup heading on-Cape at the Bourne Bridge, 1.5 mile backup at the Sagamore.

Friday, 6 PM.... traffic flowing freely over Bourne, minor delays approaching and crossing Sagamore.

Friday, 7 PM-Midnight.....hardly any traffic at all


Saturday, 8 AM.... 1 mile backup at Bourne Bridge, 2 mile backup at the Sagamore Bridge. Accident reported on Route 3 South just before the Sagamore Bridge

Saturday, 9 AM,... Accident at Sagamore still there, traffic back 4 miles, well past Exit 2. Bourne Bridge has 2 mile backup.

Saturday, 9:30 AM... Sagamore delays still back 4 miles, Route 6 East jammed to Chase Road.

Saturday, 10 AM.... Sagamore accident cleared, traffic still back 4 miles, pushing 5. Route 6 East jammed almost to Meetinghouse Road. 2 mile backup at Bourne Bridge, Scenic Highway jammed. Cranberry Highway filling up in Buzzards Bay.

Saturday, 11 AM... Route 3 South jam approaching Exit 3, Route 6 still jammed to Meetinghouse Road, entire Scenic Highway is bumper-to-bumper heading towards Buzzards Bay. Bourne Bridge jam 3-4 miles back onto the mainland. Bounedale Road, which may have 10 houses on it, has several ominous red sections on Google Traffic.

Saturday, 1 PM.... 3 mile backup heading on Cape towards the Bourne Bridge, accident just reported, this delay may grow substantially. One of our scouts tells us that Rte 25 heading to the Bourne Bridge sems to be moving 25 feet a minute. Both the Scenic Highway and the Cranberry Highway have multiple accidents, and are bumper to bumper. Traffic already on the Cape has eased up, just a brief jam after the Quaker Meetinghouse Road area. Traffic easin g up slightly approaching the Sagamore from Plymouth, maybe 3.5 mile backup now instead of 4.

Saturday, 2-4 PM.... 3 mile backups at both bridges, multiple accidents. Both rotaries are jammed. t 4 PM, there had been at least a 3 mile backup at Sagamore for over 8 hours.

Saturday, 6 PM on.... accidents are cleared, traffic flowing smoothly over both bridges.


Sunday, 9 AM... minor delays crossing Sagamore, a mile of bumper-to-bumper on traffic on Route 6 leaving the Cape. The Belmont Circle rotary in Buzzards Bay s getting full, might be church-related.

Sunday, 10 AM.... All clear, other than Route 6 leaving the Cape. The traffic jam is back two miles now.

Sunday, 11 AM... Mile long backup at the Boune Bridge, heading on-Cape. Six mile backup leaving Cape Cod on Route 6. Scenic Highway jammed.

Sunday, noon... Scenic Highway cleared, but Sandwich Road bumper-to-bumper. Mile long backup at the Bourne Bridge, Route 6 leaving the Cape is backed up to Chase Road.

Sunday, 1 PM... Route 6 jammed to Quaker Meetinghouse Road, accident in effect, 6A now jammed back to the Stop & Shop, perhaps people trying to get around the accident. Mile length backup at Bourne. Sandwich Road heading towards Bourne Bridge jammed a mile back.

Sunday, 6 PM.... very little traffic, minor delays leaving the Cape at both bridges. Ungodly good beach day, could be heavy volume later.

Sunday, 7:30 PM... The Exodus.... Rte 6 jammed back to Exit 6. One mile backup at Bourne Bridge. Sandwich Road and 6A have pockets of heavier traffic. Bumper to bumper on 495 around the Middleboro rotary.

Sunday, 9 PM.... One mile backup approaching Bourne Bridge rotary, pockets of traffic on 28 in Falmouth, Yarmouth, Harwich and Chatham. Route 6 approaching Sagamore back to Route 149.

Sunday, 11 PM..... except for a small stretch of 28 in Harwich, all traffic on the Cape is moving unimpeded.


Monday AM.... no Monday traffic, a sure sign of a slow summer weekend


Monday, May 30, 2016

Rainy Memorial Day Traffic Notes And Gas Prices For Cape Cod


It is said that, much like how the Eskimo has 200 words for snow, residents of Bourne have hundreds of different classifications for traffic. They distinguish between weekend and weekday traffic, summer and winter traffic, rain/snow/sun traffic and holiday traffic.

Today is one of those subsets... Rainy Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is when summer starts on Cape Cod. Summer people opening their cottages, winter cottage rentals departing, hotels getting summer volume, places with SEE YOU NEXT SUMMER signs un-shuttering, old people smart enough to come off-season arriving... all of the little omens that the locals know of are in effect.

Traffic heading on-Cape was heavy on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Many of those people have to be on the mainland by Tuesday, and most of them will be making the Drang nach Westen at some point today.

Again, traffic is always going to be bad on Memorial Day Monday. I know it sucks right now, and I haven't opened Google Traffic since I got home from lunch. However, as the list of services offered by the Mustang Ranch in North Las Vegas tells you, there are different kinds of sucking. Allow me to explain.

A nice, sunny Memorial Day means that everyone bails out in the evening, after a day at the beach, a nice dinner and some time spent packing. This has a tendency to put them on the road at the same time. This is where you get those 15 mile traffic jams that Cape Cod is famous for.

A rainy Memorial Day breaks the people up a bit, leading to a heavy-but-lesser flow of the day-long variety. I was writing this article at 8 AM, and there was substantial traffic heading off-Cape even then. Those were the people who saw a rainy Memorial Day coming and opted to bail ahead of the traffic, the Cape Cod version of a guy sneaking out of a Pats game when we're up 42-10 after 50 minutes. Beat the traffic, before it beats you.

Other people, especially those who rented the place they were staying at all weekend, are determined to make a day of it. Cape Cod has shops, museums, galleries, restaurants and all sorts of stuff with a roof over it to pass the time. This tendency to stick it out is not restricted to those who have or don't have children.

Cape Cod will get day-trippers, even with this rotten weather. Some and perhaps many grandfathers who were alive when Hurricane Donna came ashore don't consider this to be real rain, and will insist on hosting a barbecue in it. This effect is limited. We've been keeping an eye on traffic heading both on and off-Cape for most of the day, and there has been no problem at all getting on to Cape Cod.

Even with the people bailing out early, there should be some heavy traffic tonight. The smart people leave early Tuesday morning, but you'll see plenty of the Other Type as you crawl up Route 6 tonight.

We've already had some traffic difficulty, as heavy rains flooded the Cranberry Highway up by the old 99. The road, which was having traffic diverted through the Stop & Shop plaza, is now open.

Note that there comes a time, usually in the Church hours of the morning, where you are under a lesser risk of encountering an impaired driver. Not too long after that, the risk goes up, and it gets to roll-them-dice levels on days where disappointed tourists have been drinking all day.

If you must go, don't forget to fuel up! You don't want to run out of gas in a ten mile bumper-y-bumper traffic jam while a tropical storm is pouring water up from Carolina at you. Here are the best (reported) prices for each Cape Cod town.

Eastham: $2.39 a gallon, Tedeschi's, Vandale Circle

Orleans, $2.34/gallon, Cumberland Farms, Route 6A

Chatham, $2.31, Cumberland Farms, Main Street and Roundabout Gas, Main Street

Brewster, $2.36, Cumberland Farms, Main Street

Harwich, $2.32, Harwich Gas And Propane

Dennis, $2.23, Mobil, East-West Dennis Road

Yarmouth, $2.29, Speedway, Main Street and Cape Cod Farms, Main Street

Barnstable, $2.29, Sunoco, Falmouth Road and Gulf, Falmouth Road

Hyannis, $2.26, Airport Gas, Mary Dunn Road

Mashpee, $2.26, Stop & Shop, Falmouth Road

Sandwich, $2.34, Shell, Route 6A

Bourne (Capeside), $2.35, Mobil, Clay Pond Road

Bourne (Mainland), $2.26, Bay Village Full Serve, Main Street

Wareham, $2.23, Speedway, Main Street and Joe's Gas, Main Street

Plymouth, $1.89, Mobil, South Street


3 PM UPDATE: Traffic on Route 6 heading off-Cape is stretched back to Exit 6, while traffic on 28 is jammed back to the Otis Rotary.


Sunday, December 20, 2015

Top Collision Locations On Cape Cod


Cape Cod is very traffic-driven, as most tourist places tend to be. I lived in Duxbury and Monponsett, and neither one counted traffic as a major town issue. Bourne, where I live now, is dominated by our traffic. Our traffic dictates how residents live their lives on several days of the week, especially in summer.

Our traffic is unique compared to other towns, in that we get people from other states in large volume. Pull out onto Rte. 28, and you'll be surrounded by Massholes,  smattering of New Yorkers, some Connecticuts, a few northern Yankees, and a mixed nuts ensemble of people from various other states and countries.

These people are dumped onto a variety of Suicide Alleys, make-your-own-law rotaries, narrow bridges, visibility-cluttering business districts and windy cow paths.

Of course they are going to crash into each other now and then.

The Cape Cod Commission was nice enough to post some stats on accidents that occur on Cape Cod roads. They gathered stats by Number Of Accidents, Property Damage, Crash Rate and Property Damage rate. Long story short, they tell you where you are most likely to have an accident on Cape Cod.

The info is old (2010, updated  in 2012), so take anything we say here more as a guideline than as current, absolute truth. The numbers themselves are small enough that a good multiple car crash or two could suddenly jack a middling contender up the rankings into a Trump-like leadership slot.

Rather than slogging through 100 entries with me trying to riff on particular roads, we'll just cherry-pick good stuff for you.

- Remember, the Cape and Islands lay claim to one of America's most notorious car crashes... the Chappaquidick bridge departure that essentially put a ceiling of "Senator" on post-JFK Camelot.

- I don't know which car crash would be the most notorious in American history.

James Dean's death was huge. Jayne Mansfield's scalping is why those little bars on the lower rear end of big trucks are called "Mansfield bars." Lady Diana ate some car parts as a last meal, but that was in Old England (editor's note: France), not New England.

I'm sure that some drunk smashed into a church group bus somewhere sometime, that would get up in the rankings. Tim "Crash" Murray got his nickname wrecking a car. I know what "affluenza" is because of a car crash.

Sam Kinison died in a car wreck, as did Paul Walker. Dale Earnhardt Sr. (even I, a non-NASCAR fan, refer to this man conversationally as "Dale Senior") and Kenny Irwin Jr also died in the saddle.

Any Southern snowfall threatens to add to the list.

- I also found this map with little dots representing car crashes. Just looking at that, you get the sense that the worst spot is the run of Route 28 from Falmouth through Yarmouth. Hyannis, which actually owns cluster-dots, rules the roost.

- Suicide Alley is not impressive at all on this map.

- I consider shattered brake light glass to be a viable addition to a sea-glass collection, as long as the glass somehow made it to the ocean and then the beach somehow.

- These maps need to be viewed in the Gestalt to get the true vibe. There are differences between a love tap and a crash that, say, drowns your secretary. There are also highly-used roads that have lots of accidents, but you then see side streets representing hard if they feature a tricky intersection.

- No one, to my knowledge, has managed to drive off of the Sagamore or Bourne Bridges. Some old-schooler may be able to contest this claim, however.

- Our leader for Number Of Crashes is Route 6, the Mid-Cape Highway. Various sections of this road hold #1,4,5,6 and 7 spots in the Total Crashes rankings.

- Exit 6 on Route 6 (sorry, I don't know which direction) had 128 crashes in this period of measurement. The next highest, Exit 9, only had 99. You're dropping into the 50s and 40s before you leave the top fifteen.

- Bourne, which is the feeder tube for Cape Cod, represents hard. This is even more of a truth when you start getting into Rates rather than Totals. Bourne has the #3, 8, 9 and 13 spots in Number Of Crashes rankings. Her spot with the most crashes is the Otis Rotary.

- I could be wrong, but the rotary Most Crash rankings go the Otis Rotary, the Bourne Bridge Rotary, the Belmont Circle Rotary (Bourne owns the top 3 most dangerous rotaries on Cabo Coddo), the Airport Rotary and the Eastham Rotary.

- Sandwich Road is a dangerous place, even after I realize that there's one in Falmouth, too.

- Yarmouth moves up in the rankings once you factor in property damage costs. Hyannis and Bourne wreck ore cars, but the outer Cape wrecks nicer cars.

- Property damage costs also may be where Suicide Alley asserts herself. They only had 36 deaths there in 10 years or so, but they were head-on, total-the-car sort of deaths. I don't have a Fatality list for all of Cape Cod, which is where Sue might also assert herself.

-  Crash Rate is where the rankings get shook up. It is my opinion- and remember, I just started studying this stuff aa few hours ago- that Crash Rate is the best indicator of a dangerous road. Busier roads have more accidents, but they might not be as dangerous. Many more people watched this video than this video, and the size of the pool for Video One may mean that more people were offended by Miley's work than were offended by the Paris video... even though the Paris video is far more offensive. The same goes with roads and inherent danger.

- The Otis Rotary seizes the top spot for Crash Rate, knocking Exit/Route 6 down to 3rd place. Little-used (17 accidents) Route 39 is second. Route 124 is 5th.

- The exit in Sandwich at Chase Road, #9 in property damage totals, is just #47 in crash rate.

- The worst crash I ever saw ws that fuel truck that flipped over into the Bourne Rotary last winter. It had the huge-truck-crashing props, as well as the spilled-fuel aspect. I only moved down here in 2005, though.

- Feel free to tell us about the worst accident you have ever seen on Cape Cod in the comments below.


Wednesday, October 14, 2015

For Whom The Bridge Tolls: Thoughts On A New Cape Cod Canal Bridge


Let's start with some numbers:

Bourne Bridge
Year round daily average (2011) = 42,505 vehicles
Summer daily average = 58,467

Sagamore Bridge
Year round daily average = 51,489
Summer daily average = 70,674

Those numbers lead to impassable traffic jams, jams where ten mile drives take 3 hours.

You've all heard the war stories. "25 mile backups during Hurricane Bob," or "90 minutes from the the 6A/130 intersection to the Sagamore Bridge during the Mother's Day Massacre of 2012."

Bourne residents literally can't go anywhere and hope to come back on Friday afternoons, Saturday/Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, during the Monday commute, and/or during any holiday/event.

Emergency evacuation is impossible, property values suffer, the quality of life is lowered, and the last sentence of the previous paragraph is literally saying "as a Bourne resident, you sacrifice a sizable % of your waking life to traffic."

This would be tolerable in Boston, where there are a million people zipping about. It shouldn't be the case in Buzzards Bay, where 3000 souls can be found on any given day. It makes me want to scream at someone more than I care to admit.



Here's how I see it....

* We need a third bridge.

* We need a third road leading up to and away from that bridge.

* If we want it, we'll have to pay for it.

* We'll pay for it with a toll bridge.

* The tolls will be there forever, even after the bridge is paid off.

* Prices will increase as businesses pass the toll costs onto the consumers.

* We shall eventually pay billions for a $300 million bridge.

* Splitting traffic up at the Christmas Tree Shop and then merging it back together 400 yards across the Canal will not resolve our traffic problems. It may in fact make it worse.

* The bridge will not meet the stated goal of easing traffic volume at all, and it serves no other purpose.

* We'll pay for this useless bridge for the rest of our lives and the lives of our descendants.

* If we don't do something, this nightmare is imminent.

* It seems to have fallen to me to brainstorm something.



I'm not picking on MA State Rep. Randy Hunt or Cape Cod Commission CEO Wendy Northcross there. Randy is obviously putting thought and effort into the problem, and Wendy answered almost everything I asked her about the topic. They just don't seem to see the basic problems inherent in this situation, or they feel that the problems are tenable and/or unavoidable.

Pols are sort of bound by what they think they can sell in Washington or the State House. They know they will have to claw through miles of red tape to even get the idea mentioned. They know that there will be many hands reaching into our pockets once the project gets green-lighted, especially with a Massachusetts highway project.

All of that real world stuff gets them used to operating in a way that somehow prohibits Thinking Big.

The intricate solution is beyond my capabilities. If I showed any Urban Planning skill in high school, a series of guidance counselors failed to mention it to me. However, the basic philosophy on what we need to do is well within my skill set. You'll see it, too.

The toll will generate billions in revenue, without reducing traffic at all. It is almost punitive. Only someone with a financial stake in a road-construction industry or highway management can like the idea. Any politician who supports it should be chased through the streets by a mob of angry constituents, and perhaps be kicked in the ribs a bunch of times.

If we and our tourists are going to spend billions over the life of a toll bridge, we should at least get what we pay for.



50,000 cars a day times $5 a pop = $250,000 a day in toll revenue.

Let's lower the toll rate so that I can just say "a million a week" and "maybe $5 a car is a doomsday estimate" without stretching the truth too far.

300 weeks pays off the project. 300 weeks is like, uhm, 6 years or something.

But the toll will last forever.

Heck, we'll even throw in a decade or two to cover any/all maintenance costs, and a third decade to cover the eventual replace-the-old-Sagamore-Bridge costs. Over an assumed 100 year lifespan of the bridge, this still has the Man needlessly in your pocket for 65 years.

The only way for us to get any value out of this is if our project is so massive, it takes a century of tolls to pay for it.


Off the top of my head, I'd drop a third bridge right in the middle of the other two. I would gut Bournedale with roads connecting to Route 25 and Route 3, seizing Bournedale Road and Herring Pond Road by Eminent Domain if need be. I'd make the road into a big Y, with the bottom part of the Y being the third bridge.

I'd do an upside down version on the other side of the bridge, after taking some land from the gub'mint. The forks of the letter can sort of ^ towards Route 28 and Route 6 through the military base.

Shoot, why not build it in such a way that we can line it with Burger Kings, Cumberland Farms and Exxons? I have never met a local economy that couldn't use a rush of jobs. Perhaps even a Bournedale Mall would not be out of the question.

It would actually solve the problem that Main Street in Buzzards Bay has had since the freeway went in. Route 25 cut off our Tourist Flow, so we get back at Route 25 by cutting into it to run those same tourists by our businesses again. Main Street could slowly re-design itself to suit more immediate local needs, which it is sort of doing now anyhow.

There would be some ugliness to They Tore Down The Carter Beal Nature Preserve And Put Up A Gas Station With A Dunkin' Donuts In It, no doubt. We could mute the environmental damage by building an elaborate Arc de Triomphe bridge over the herring run in Bournedale.

I'd also go with a wrap-around fishing pier along the bottom of the bridges, and light all of the bridges up like they do with the Zakim Bridge. I'd celebrate the opening with a party so huge and chaotic, it would make V-J Day look like someone just won a Scrabble game.

It's being paid for... why not?


Hold on, someone did the map better than I did.



In my world of the future, we now have a third bridge. It is fed by roads which break off from highways which are already in place. The roads break off at the exact points (the Ingersoll Bend and Herring Pond Road) where we currently begin our present bumper-to-bumper congestion. We strike at the areas with the lowest population densities, mostly swamp and wasteland. Anyone we displace is compensated handsomely.

Locals can still use Main Street, Sandwich Road, the Cranberry Highway, the Scenic Highway and 6A for local-type stuff, which leads us to the best part. Before I get to that best part, I'd like to add that this plan would probably allow us to get rid of the two Bourne Bridge rotaries, and just have intersections like normal towns do.

The best part? The third bridge would be almost 100% Tourist. The current bridges feed the Bourne villages, while this hypothetical third bridge would empty into a discontinued military base and some Bournedale swampland. It would be of little use to locals, and it would only be used by tourists.

And it is this bridge that would bear the dreaded Toll. Holler if you hear me.



Now we have the burden where it should be. Tourists can pay for their own bridge. Smarter hotels and tourist destinations can comp guests for the toll. Bourne residents have suffered for years to fill Harwich restaurants with tourists, so cry me a river, Mooncussers.

Bourne and perhaps Sandwich residents will be exempt from any tolls, of course. We've been tolled in Traffic Patience for the last 100 years. F*** you.

The toll bridge can also be used by the rich man to skip heavier traffic at the free bridges via a small shedding of excess wealth, as the new bridge would sport a very low traffic volume for most of the week.  A five dollar toll for an empty bridge may also be an acceptable and necessary luxury to a working stiff who is running late for work on an important day.

We may have to somehow divert traffic to the toll bridge on certain Touristy days while preserving the free bridges for local traffic, and perhaps even invest in some of that Urban Warfare stuff that the cops get in larger cities where the people riot a lot. Maybe we can borrow some tanks from the military base.

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, if you'll pardon the pun.


Sunday, September 27, 2015

Scallop Festival Blues

Fiendishly Foisted Food Fest!  



Last weekend brought us the annual Scallop Festival, with all of the prestige and revenue that accompanies it. It really is nice to see our old friend return to... What do you mean, not Bourne???

The people who run the Scallop Festival- the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce- decided that the event needed a larger venue, and shifted it to the Barnstable County Fairgrounds. The move gives the festival more parking, better facilities, and dare I say a more prestigious locale. The event has swollen in popularity, to the point where it draws in 50,000 people every time they throw it. A larger facility means the chance of more money. It makes perfect sense to move the event off the mainland.

Bourne's claim to the Festival had a fingertip grip at best, buffeted by hopes of a new hotel complex, the arrival of the Commuter Rail, and the revival of the Main Street business district. There was also a nostalgia/historic basis, but that isn't worth a few thousand parking spots these days.

The move also gave a stomach punch to a struggling village, a village that has stood by the Festival for her whole existence. The Scallop Festival has been going on for 45 years. Sometimes it was in the Armory, sometimes in the big tent by the old Playland location, sometimes on the military base, and- until now- in Buzzards Bay Park.

It is was a Bourne tradition. Now, the town is losing their Main Event, the annual gift horse that would fill the hotels, buy out the goods from our stores, and put our gas stations on a paying basis.

Who knows? Some of the people who visited Buzzards Bay during the Festival may have liked it enough to maybe return again and spend more money. We'll never know now, will we?

All summer long, people heading to spend money in other Cape Cod towns clutter up Bourne during any time period you can hang "commute" off of. We're asked to deal with it, so that Eastham and Martha's Vineyard can prosper. We get very little in return for it, other than some people who tire of the traffic enough to pull off of the highway in search of food or gasoline.

The Festival has always been a sort of the last hurrah for Cape Cod's summer, especially when the event coincided with the October scallop harvest. It was fitting that Bourne got the final bow with her Scallop Festival. We took the brunt of the hassle all summer long, so it was only right that we got the last bite out of the tourists before the desolation of winter set in.

The festival was kind of like a Thank You from all the people who had been leaning on Bourne during the peak traffic season, and the town was dependent upon it. Now, they take even THAT away from us. Oh, well, there will be another Canaliversary in 98.75 years, I guess we'll be OK.

Others are not so forgiving. Homeland Security has been tracking a group called Al-Mollusk, who were planning to disrupt the Faux Falmouth Festival. They had an elaborate plan to buy junker cars and use them to block the Bourne Bridge during the festival, depriving Falmouth of anyone Inland while seeing how many Cape Codders will travel through a mob to get scallops and fries.

The town considered her own measures. The big idea was to host an Oyster Festival on the same night. Advertising was to focus heavily on the aphrodisiacal properties of the Oyster, while disparaging the scallop scarfer. "You can go to the Scallop Festival, but if you still love your spouse, you'll be in Bourne instead."

Yeah, we were gonna go right for the friggin' jugular, you really have to these days.

Bourne took it on the chin with this Scalloping of our tradition, and we should already be planning our revenge. If this were the old days, we'd be sending guys across the bridge to burn down their salt mill and deflower their virgins. Those people are lucky that I don't run Bourne, I'd drop those two bridges into the water faster than you can say "Jackie Robinson." I'd try to steal their stupid Road Race.

I can tell you this.... you won't be seeing many people from Bourne down at the Fairgrounds this weekend. It's never nice to see your ex with someone else, especially if they are being fed shellfish.


Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Between Two Bridges: Wendy Northcross

Talking Bridges With The CCC CEO
Wendy Northcross is the CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber Of Commerce. She's been down with COC since 1997, and has been running the ship for some time now. She is on the board of so many things that I don't even feel like listing them all, but some of the better ones include the JFK Museum and the Cooperative Bank Of Cape Cod.
She is one of the state and maybe the country's better tourism experts, and she wields a lot of power. If you're a little girl and still think women can only be nurses and Mashpee Ballet dancers, check out the swagger that Ms. Northcross carries around Cape Cod. When she speaks, heads turn.
Speaking of which....
She is also one of the weightier voices calling for a third bridge. That bridge may be a toll bridge. The good news is that it may ease traffic a bit. The bad news is that you'll be paying for it every time you drive across the bridge for the rest of eternity.
I sent Wendy a list of questions in the email, and she was cool enough to get them back to me in the same day. If you are upset about me not challenging her on certain points, hate the game and not the player.
Her answers are exactly as she mailed them to me, and were not altered. I switched the question order around on publishing to line up certain pictures I have.
Here we go:
Jessica Allen: Tell us about the plans being discussed about building a third bridge over the Cape Cod Canal.....
Wendy Northcross: Because of the condition of the 80 year old canal bridges, and the now chronic maintenance cycle we find ourselves facing almost annually, community and state officials began to ask about the true safety of the bridges and what was the future plan?
The responses to our questions were “there is no long range plan” – and “there are no government resources to do anything like a new bridge for at least 20 to 30 years or more.”
So the discussion turned to the questions “how long can we continue to depend upon the bridges to carry freight, and for us to safely traverse the canal - how long can Cape Codders continue to suffer significant travel delays during shoulder-season maintenance on the bridges?”
To that end, community leaders and state officials have had meaningful conversations with a broad base of businesses and residents about their tolerance level for the current state of the bridges vs. a plan for the future. Fortunately, we now have a plan that everyone can look at and decide if it holds merit. 

If we built a third bridge that was independent of the current bridges, what would it be named? 
I don’t know…. maybe “new bridge?”

Is there no other way to get this bridge built without a permatax on commuters? 
Government officials have indicated that there are no federal or state resources available to build any new crossing infrastructure for at least 20 to 30 years. The question is, how long do Cape Codders want to wait and what does waiting cost? 

- Why should Cape Codders who don't have yachts or LNG interests pay tolls for a bridge over a Canal that they don't want, need, or benefit from?
The current concept is that only users of the new bridge would pay – the Bourne Bridge would be available at no charge. I believe that most Cape Codders well understand the need for stable infrastructure over which their goods and services and customers can pass.

Should someone making $9 an hour who has to cross the bridge twice to get to and from his six hour shift be forced to give almost 20% of his day's pay to tolls? Will there be hardship exemptions to tolling?
The beauty of transponder technology is that high frequency users can be identified and calculated to pay at a different rate (or potentially no rate if they are an immediate neighbor). Remember, in this current concept, the Bourne Bridge – 2 miles up the road, remains free. 

- If we feel that many New Yorkers will balk at the prospect of paying a toll request from their Barnstable vacation the previous summer, and since we all know the tolls will never go away, at what point in history would the bridge be paid for solely by taxing tourists?
If a guest does not have the money to pay a toll, they are very unlikely to be visiting in the first place.

- In the event that the state says there are going to be temporary tolls and they instead make them permanent, can you get Randy Hunt or Bill Keating to insert some date or language into the bill now that allows us to sue the state to stop the tolls once the bridge is paid for?

The financial analysis will reveal the return on investment levels recommended to put this project out to a public/private partnership model of ownership.

Would a new bridge substantially decrease the time we'd need to evacuate Cape Cod in an emergency?
It should give us more options. 

Former clerk at the Market Basket playing urban planner here.... why not break off an off-ramp off of Route 25 at the Ingersoll Bend, while also breaking off an offramp from Route 3 through Bournedale.... both off-ramps form a "Y" and meet a new road, which feeds the third bridge, around Barlow's Clam Shack...... the third bridge enters the military reservation, where another Y breaks traffic onto Route 6 and Route 28 somewhere? Short of widening Routes 3, 6, 25, and 28, it seems like the only way to actually reduce traffic.

MA DOT traffic engineers, using the traffic counts on the key roads, and looking at land ownership vs. the cost of land takings, and using existing roadways versus building extensive new roadways laid out a variety of scenarios – and then estimated costs on all of them. And yes, some were very expensive without yielding larger increases in efficiency and safety. 

- If the short answer to the above question is "one billion dollars," the rebuttal is "We're going to have a permanent toll in place long after the bridge is paid for, why not build a hyper-expensive bridge that actually does lessen gridlock?" If it's going to cost me $10 a day in tolls to commute 2 miles to work for the rest of my life, I want to only know about gridlock in an abstract sense.
One of the questions you should have asked first is “what is the capacity of the roadway vs. the bridges?” The answer is that the bridges have much less capacity of cars per hour than the current road system, and if we give ourselves some shoulder room and separate the travel lanes – we’ll have a safer and more streamlined flow – reducing gridlock.
Fortunately for us, our state traffic engineers have found a scenario that bears further vetting based on creating safer and more efficient travel at a cost that bears consideration.

- I almost feel badly asking you this, but has anyone actually ever really seriously honestly looked into maybe building a tunnel? If so, roughly where were they thinking of putting it? Will permit decals be sold?
Yes – and we have been told and it is far more expensive. Although I do think most Cape Codders already have the decal!

If the villages of Bournedale, Sagamore Beach, and Buzzards Bay were to secede from both Bourne and Barnstable County, could we sue for a share of the loot from the toll bridge? We are the ones who do nearly 100% of the suffering with traffic, and we benefit the least from bridges.
I liken the bridge flow to a clot in a blood vessel. One small clot affects the entire human body. Our narrow bridges affect the entire Cape’s flow and thus its well being. 

- All of those bridges should be lit at night, like the Zakim Bridge. I'd do each one in a different color. What other vacation destination has THAT?
Nice idea.

How long can we expect the current bridges to hold up? Won't the twin bridge idea be a bit heavy for all that Great Depression concrete?
A new bridge would be (as currently proposed) about 15’ from the existing bridge on all new footings and made of materials that do not require painting. A new bridge could handle diverted traffic when we needed to fix the Sagamore – allowing the old bridge to be taken off-line for faster and deeper repairs.


Are there any plans to erase that ridiculous on-ramp merge at the Christmas Tree Shop?
With the proposed plan – this lane would get its own travel lane outbound over the old bridge. Between now and new bridge completion – there are some things we could try – but Bourne residents would need to be up for the experiment of restricting use of the onramp during a peak travel day. 

- Imagine that you can wipe away Main Street in Buzzards Bay... what would you lay down in place of it?
Main Street in Buzzards Bay has a great deal of character and potential opportunity as well as a bright future. I see a mix of uses with residential places within walking distance of shopping, work, recreation and access to rail.
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Friday, July 31, 2015

Why Not Have An October Date For The Pan Mass Challenge?

Bourne, any given summer day....
I'm about to write an article that I'm sure will be unpopular. It will strike a chord with just a few locals, and many other locals will be against it. Even I feel badly for writing it, but we have to call 'em like we see 'em here in Cranberry County.

The Pan Mass Challenge has to be moved, either physically or chronologically.

The Pan Mass Challenge is bicycle ride that goes across a lot of Massachusetts. Much like the walkathons you did as a kid, bikers (I know "bikers" makes them sound like Hell's Angels, sorry) get sponsors for their trek. The money that they donate goes to The Jimmy Fund, which in turn kicks it towards the Dana-Farber Institute for cancer research. They have made over $400 milly since they started it 35 years or so ago.

The PMC allows people to strike back at a disease that has touched the lives of everyone. In doing so, it encourages a great, energy-saving form of exercise.

What's not to like?

Oh, yeah...


There are several drawbacks to the PMC, some of which involve cars (some with sirens) and others which involve that great hydrogen bomb in the sky, our sun.

We would have to start with the elephant in the room, the traffic. Bourne is where the bridges are, as well as the rotaries, and it is where the worst traffic on Cape Cod is found. Bourne, which is a Division 4 school-sized town, has traffic comparable to central Boston on any weekend day.

It's bad enough that people in Bourne post a traffic waning every weekend morning on Facebook to the effect of "Don't leave your village." If you do, you enter a strange time warp where "a quarter mile drive to the gas station" may become a two hour-long trip where even teetotalers find it necessary to just pull over into the nearest tavern for 8 or 9 drinks.

If you went resident-to-resident and asked them what is the last thing that Bourne needs on an August weekend, the dominant answer would be "more traffic."

The PMC is a huge event, perhaps the largest of her kind in America. It all falls on Bourne, during what should be a peak of the tourist season. It takes roads that were already overtaxed and makes them essentially impassable. And it brings a different, less-spendy type of visitor than we are used to.

Instead of tourists with SUVs full of families who will need to be fed, entertained, gassed, housed and other things that leave money in the town, we get people on bikes who might carbo-load twice a day. They will then- exhausted- check into hotels that would have been booked full anyhow, and sleep away the hours we need them to be power-drinking in our taverns.

Other than families and supporters of the bikers, there is a negligible audience factor. No one is going to cheer on a wheeled walkathon, even one with Tom Brady in it. That's not to say that the PMC people shouldn't be cheered for- even the author of this slam piece feels that they are admirable. It's just that they won't draw a crowd, a crowd that would patronize our businesses. The PMC actually will drive those kind of visitors away.

That's why they used to have the Scallop Festival in September or October, kids... otherwise, it snarls traffic in the town to a crawl.



On top of all the lost commerce the bikers inflict upon us, they also overtax our emergency apparatus. We'll have to put extra cops on to deal with the bikers. Those cops will be waving traffic along, and citizens may have a bit of a wait if we need one for regular cop-like reasons... and that ETA is before we factor them having to weave their way through our gridlock traffic.

Our EMT service will be busier than a paramedic in a town full of weekend warriors heat-stroking themselves on an 85 degree scorcher of a summer day... oh wait, I'm being redundant.

That's why they have the Boston Marathon in April, kids... endurance events start to kill people in the summer months. The only time reasonable people host these events are spring and autumn.

Again, citizens who pay taxes all year for things like "availability of EMT service" may be in for a bit of a surprise to learn that their needs may not be met because all of our EMTs are giving IVs to people who really should have waited for October to take on an endurance event.

Again, like with the cops, any estimates we give on how long it will take an ambulance or- God forbid- a fire truck to get to a Bourne citizen's emergency here are given BEFORE we factor in them crawling through the bumpa-to-bumpa to get to you.



Of course, it's all for a good cause. The PMC makes $40 million a year for cancer research, raising awareness and letting people have fun while helping a good cause. Of course, these benefits can only be gained by having this particular race at this particular time in this particular town. Otherwise, they wouldn't make a red nickel. Anyone who says otherwise is pro-cancer and anti-charity.

Really?

I doubt that the people who presently ride scores of miles and donate millions of dollars would be put off from their efforts if the event were switched to October. There may be a guy somewhere who will only donate to cancer research if people ride bikes in Bourne on an August weekend, but he's probably an ass clown.

There may also be a guy somewhere who was totally unaware of cancer before someone diddled by him on a bicycle. No, check that, no such person exists. The awareness-raising is a myth.

We do have open dorms at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, just like they do in far greater numbers at Bridgewater State University and UMass-Dartmouth. I probably don't need to add that any college listed there that isn't a Maritime Academy doesn't lay across one of two ways on and off of Cape Cod during a summer weekend. I'm sure that UMass-Amherst, with all of the disposable-income kids away for the summer, could use the influx of visitors that they- unlike Cape Cod- would be incapable of luring in summer months.

I'm no urban engineer or highway scholar, but I do wonder if- on a person per person basis- less people would be put off by making a detour on the Mass Pike and isolating a 20 mile stretch of Irrelevantville for the bikers to pedal back and forth along in perfect safety than by shutting down the two roads that fill and empty Cape Cod.

Cape Cod is the wrong place for this event, at least in August.



Why not move it to October?

Like we said before, they have the Boston Marathon in April because it is too hot for endurance events in the summer. That also applies to the PMC, even before we remind you that the roads on Cape Cod tend to get jammed in the summer.

Just remember that I spoke of the safety of the bikers when I start making jokes about running over 5 of them as I look down to light a smoke. The safety issues for the bikers concern both heat exhaustion (85 degrees and blistering sun forecast for both days of the race, BTW) and exposure to Cape traffic. The PMC is big news in Massachusetts, but I doubt that it even makes the newspapers in Connecticut and New York, where half of our drivers will be coming from this weekend. They will drive very much like people unaware that some fool decided to have a wheeled walkathon along both of Cape Cod's main roads during one of the 10 top traffic days of the year.

Don't give me that "people take their vacations in the summer, and can only do the PMC then" nonsense. It's a weekend event, even Bob Cratchit would be able to get time off for it, especially if he is advertising for Scrooge's company as he does the event. If Ebeneezer demurs on that, Bob can burn a sick day.

In October, those roads won't have anyone but locals on them. There will be numerous hotel rooms available, so the cops won't have to chase stragglers off the Canal benches all night. Temperatures will be in the 60s, delightful weather to go pedal something around. The 200 or so people who can fit into MMA's dorms would be displaced, but they would have hotels offering cut rates to lure them in to what would then-and-not-in-August be unrented rooms. There's really no good reason to have the PMC in August instead of October.



Don't think that saying "They should have this event in October" makes a person pro-cancer. The guy behind the keyboard lost both of his parents to cancer. He also probably has his own dance with the Die Slow coming with a few thousand more Newports. He knows the stakes, perhaps better than you do.

The author is also not a man who dislikes charity. If you really, really hate this article, hang onto the anger until Christmas season, and you can walk right up to him outside the Christmas Tree Shoppe and pop him in the jaw as he stands outside for 10 hours a day raising money for a church charity. He hates charity so much, he had his lips freeze together once working for one.

The author does not confuse "move the event to October" with "the author hates the event." You shouldn't do so, either. He's also not writing this because he dislikes cycling and thinks that adults on bicycles look silly, even though he does feel that way.

That's not a bad resume for an agnostic pro-cancer guy who hates charity.

So, why am I writing this article? If you already know that, move on to the "So, what should we do about it?" question.

The author, doing some tireless charity work with his three nieces...

Bourne and Gettysburg have one thing in common. Both are little Nowheres that all the roads from Somewhere meet at. That leads some Big Fish into the Little Ponds that are normally towns like Gettysburg and Bourne, and it's never good for the town.

To an extent, the towns are set up to handle the influx. Bourne has hotels, gas stations and other amenities that a small town away from an ocean wouldn't have. Of course, "we bring tenants to hotels that already had tenants" is a poor argument for cementing this mess in August.

However, an October PMC would be a boon to the town. You'd have businesses who are just starting to feel the loss of summer dollars get a weekend rush in October. You could have the town really get behind the effort, angling their businesses to provide things to do for the bikers when they are unhorsed. You'd have cops and EMTs who aren't already overworked policing the town available to provide security for the event. Restaurants of the seasonal bent would be able to empty their inventories, hotels would offer cheaper rates, and every tourist trap would get one more chance to snap shut on those ol' summer dollars before the chill of winter set in.

It would benefit the PMC, as well. They'd be the only game in town, with neither Cape League games nor day-tripper traffic too weave through. People who avoid participating in the event because they don't wish to enter the Trafficpocalypse that is Bourne on a summer weekend may come out for the cause. Their riders wouldn't be struck down by high-80s temperatures or angry and confused New York vacationers. They might make MORE money than they already have.

There is no coherent reason that this event should be held now instead of in October. It presently is a drag on the town, an error that is multiplied by the fact that it would be a boon in October. Don't hate the guy who tells you that the emperor is nude.