EASTHAM — Imagine making a left turn on Route 6 without taking your life in your hands and being able to ride a bike or walk along the highway on a path free from vehicular traffic.
That is the vision that Jim Fitzgerald, director of transportation for the Quincy engineering firm Environmental Partners, presented to the select board on Jan. 23.
The town hired the company for $86,300 to study ways to improve safety, slow travel speeds, and make Eastham friendlier to cyclists and pedestrians. The six miles of Route 6 in Eastham are hair-raising because of multiple curb cuts along four lanes of traffic. In just a 2.5-mile stretch, the Cape Cod Commission counted 100 curb cuts. That means drivers are constantly stopping the flow of traffic to make left turns. It also means motorists can pull onto the highway at dozens of places, though the wait can be frustratingly long.
Impatient motorists sometimes attempt to take advantage of a narrow gap in traffic, and “that can be unsafe,” Fitzgerald said.
In North Eastham alone, 111 car accidents were reported on Route 6 between 2015 and 2019, said Fitzgerald. There have been three fatalities since 2015. A pedestrian was struck and killed one night in August 2015 near the Brackett Road intersection. That same year, a car struck a cyclist. The third death occurred in 2021 when a car pulled onto Route 6 and hit a southbound vehicle near the Brickhouse Restaurant, according to the Cape Cod Commission.
That was one of 40 “angle crashes” that usually occur when a vehicle pulls in front of another, causing the two cars to hit each other at an angle. Angle collisions are “some of the most severe crashes that happen on our roadways,” according to the commission.
Though the speed limit on Route 6 in Eastham is 40 miles per hour, the four-lane highway design encourages drivers to go much faster.
“Traffic-calming treatments” involve narrowing the roadway, Fitzgerald said. “Four lanes of asphalt feels pretty wide open, so they do tend to fly.”
After several months of work by Environmental Partners and years of previous studies and reports, Fitzgerald presented his new Route 6 design to the select board last week.
The most radical change in the plan is reducing the number of lanes from four to two from the Wellfleet town line to Brackett Road. Reducing the number of lanes is known as a “road diet,” Fitzgerald said. The plan calls for putting a landscaped median between two lanes, one in each direction, with left-turn pockets so that people cannot make left turns from the highway wherever they want.
Drivers pulling onto the highway would be forced to go one way and then use a turn lane should they wish to cross the highway or reverse direction. Though this is slightly inconvenient, Fitzgerald said, it will accomplish three major objectives. Left turners will no longer stop the flow of traffic; there will be plenty of room for a dedicated shared-use bike and pedestrian lane, with a grass median separating them from the cars. It will also slow traffic.
The lane reduction won’t work all the way to the Orleans Rotary, however, because the traffic volume is too high to make a road diet feasible, Fitzgerald said. He explained that there are 33,800 vehicles per day on average in South Eastham and 24,300 once you get to the Wellfleet town line.
So, the design south of Brackett Road calls for four lanes, with a narrow grass median and pockets for turning left. The plan calls for the same shared bike and pedestrian pathway on the side of the highway opposite the Cape Cod Rail Trail. (It would switch sides where the bike path tunnel funnels cyclists under the highway.)
Design elements that ended up in the scrap heap included rotaries. One was considered at the entrance to what may one day be a bustling T-Time plaza.
“Roundabouts create a disruption where none exists,” Fitzgerald said. “It could slow down traffic even more.”
Though this Route 6 plan is years from implementation — it must be fine-tuned and approved by the state Dept. of Transportation (DOT), which would pay for construction — the select board liked it.
“This is very exciting,” said board member Aimee Eckman. “I have been banging this drum for a lot of years. I really like the median idea.”
Board member Art Autorino asked if the DOT’s plan scheduled for 2024 to taper the four lanes to two lanes on Route 6 shortly before the Wellfleet town line had been considered in the road diet. Fitzgerald said those designs could work together.
Autorino asked if the DOT will actually go for the Environmental Partners plan.
“They will really want to be sure that what is designed and constructed is the optimum solution,” Fitzgerald replied. While separated bike and pedestrian lanes are not cheap, “we want the DOT to understand the gravity of the situation,” Fitzgerald added.
“I think the median is more rural,” Autorino said. “It encourages people to slow down and aesthetically it is significantly better.”
“The median is great as long as they don’t become Jersey barriers,” said board member Gerald Cerasale.
Town Administrator Jacqui Beebe said the next step is to get this plan approved by the DOT and put into the funding pipeline. Fitzgerald suggested that the town proceed in phases, with Phase 1 being the road diet in North Eastham.
