EASTHAM — Two years after the select board voted to send a letter to the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority to request the construction of bus shelters at the stops at the Eastham Superette and Town Center Plaza in July 2023, the project appears to be moving forward.
Both stops are open to the elements. The one at Town Center Plaza consists of a sign and a bench on the side of the road; the stop outside the Superette has a sign but no bench.
Acting CCRTA administrator Kathy Jensen blamed the town for the delay. She said CCRTA staff made a site visit to Eastham’s bare roadside stops in 2023. After that, she said, because the town did not respond to her organization’s attempts to follow up on plans, the bus stops “fell by the wayside.”
There were crossed signals even before that. Tom Cahir, who was then the CCRTA’s administrator, told the Independent in late July 2023 that he had never received the select board’s letter requesting the bus stops. He had learned of the town’s request, he said, only when a reporter showed it to him.
Aimee Eckman, who signed the select board’s letter along with members Jamie Demetri, Jerry Cerasale, Suzanne Bryan, and then-chair Art Autorino, said there wasn’t much else for the board to do after sending the letter. The next steps, she said, would have been under the purview of the building dept. and DPW.
No building dept. representative was present at the 2023 site visit, Jensen and CCRTA facilities manager Scott Swiniarski told the Independent in a phone interview on July 28.
But this time, said Jensen, “everybody is on top of everything.” If everything goes according to plan, the shelters should be up sometime this fall, she said.
Before the shelters can be built, however, there’s a fair amount of information CCRTA still requires from the town.
Swiniarski said he needs to know about any planned road or sidewalk improvement projects that could conflict with plans for the shelters. And because the Eastham Superette is privately owned, he’ll need written confirmation from the owner that it’s OK to build a shelter there. Then the CCRTA will need to get a permit from the town’s building dept.
Town Manager Jacqui Beebe’s new executive assistant, Erica Huynh, is the one gathering the information CCRTA needs before it can proceed. Huynh started the job in June, after previous executive assistant Kayla Urquhart was appointed as the town’s communications coordinator in May.
In addition to fulfilling the CCRTA’s requests, Huynh said she also plans to verify that the shelters comply with ADA regulations and won’t interfere with safe pedestrian and bus traffic.
Huynh said she reached out to the CCRTA on July 16 after a reporter informed her that the CCRTA was apparently waiting for communication from the town. Jensen’s email response came three minutes later.
“We’re ready whenever you are to move forward with the shelter installations,” Jensen wrote in her reply. “We’re glad to get things back on track now.”
Swiniarski hedged a bit. Because Town Center Plaza is at the nexus of Eastham’s Village Center Master Plan, Swiniarski said it “maybe makes sense” to install the new shelter during a future road improvement project.
Town Planner Paul Lagg said there are no concrete plans for upcoming road improvement projects — he’s ready to have the shelters installed first.
Swiniarski said he supplied Huynh with preliminary site maps, as well as plans for existing shelters, including the wooden one for southbound buses at Seamen’s Bank in Eastham. But Jensen said the CCRTA stopped building shelters out of wood and switched to plexiglass ones about six years ago. The agency buys the shelters from an outside vendor and uses contractors to install them.
Swiniarski confirmed that the CCRTA will pay for the shelters. In 2023, Cahir told the Independent the cost of each shelter was around $10,000.
