no matter what date for the Mass. leg, the traffic will be difficult in the Sagamore area
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September 8, 2005
Sagamore Bridge drivers find two lanes a big pain
By CONOR BERRY
STAFF WRITER
SAGAMORE - For months, Massachusetts Highway Department officials warned of looming post-Labor Day lane restrictions on the Sagamore Bridge to accommodate work on the $58 million flyover project.
But the lane closures, which took effect yesterday and are scheduled to last through October, still caught motorists off guard, many of whom flooded state police with calls about the lengthy delays that tied up traffic on both sides of the bridge yesterday.
Jay Conti was one of the many Cape Codders who fell into the fuming-mad category. The Hyannis man said it took him more than two hours to get from his home at noon to the base of the bridge.
By the time Conti finally reached the bridge at 2:20 p.m., he said he realized he would never make it to an off-Cape appointment and decided to abandon the trip.
''I got off Exit 1 and took Route 6A back home to Hyannis,'' said Conti, who contacted state police in Bourne to report frustrated drivers pulling U-turns in the middle of Route 6, putting him and others at risk.
''I've seen a lot of things,'' Conti said. ''But eight cars making a U-turn on Route 6 was a first. I told (state police) to send backups, because there's going to be accidents.''
The first day of Sagamore Bridge lane closures did not go smoothly, according to many people, including an Orleans resident who claimed it took nearly three hours to drive from Exit 12 to the bridge.
MassHighway officials say they are committed to the flyover's aggressive project timetable, which will require lane closures through October and possibly again in the spring.
As recently as Saturday, MassHighway officials warned that the closures would likely take effect this week, telling motorists to expect restrictions implemented after Sept. 5.
The Cape Cod Times reported on the scheduled closures in January and in several subsequent reports, including a front-page story in Saturday's edition.
''We've received a ton of calls,'' Trooper Ed Roach, stationed at the Bourne State Police barracks, said yesterday.
The backups were not the result of accidents, said Roach, but rather flyover-related construction, just north of the bridge.
MassHighway crews will be working from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday near the northern base of the bridge from now through October, requiring four lanes
to be reduced to two in each direction for the duration, said Paul Washburn, MassHighway's resident engineer for the flyover.
Washburn said all four lanes will temporarily reopen for Columbus Day weekend, but then it's back to two lanes for the remainder of October.
Kevin J. Cassidy, a MassHighway district construction engineer, said last night there is a chance the lane
closures could spill into November, but it depends on the weather.
None of this matters much to John Meyer, a civil engineer from the suburbs of New York City who owns a summer home in Orleans.
About 6:30 p.m., after spending 2 hours and 45 minutes in traffic headed off Cape yesterday afternoon, Meyer, whose specialty is traffic engineering, said the lane closures are an ''untenable'' and ''unacceptable'' situation, citing their potential to hurt the local economy and slow everyday commerce to and from the Cape.
For his part, Conti questioned why the roadwork couldn't be done at night, which is routine in states like Connecticut and New York.
''It should be done at night when there's much, much less traffic, sometime between midnight and 5 a.m.,'' he said.
Conor Berry can be reached at
cberry@capecodonline.com.
(Published: September 8, 2005)