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CCRTA

    TRANSPORTATION

    CCRTA Opts Out of State Grant for Free Rides

    The Cape’s transit agency is one of just two that did not apply for funds

    By

    Public transportation will be free in the new year for hundreds of thousands of riders statewide who rely on their regional transit authorities to get around. But not on Cape Cod.

    A CCRTA Flex bus photographed in Truro last year. (Photo by Nancy Bloom)

    Fifteen regional agencies oversee transportation beyond the MBTA’s greater Boston service area. Among them, the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority (CCRTA) is one of just two that have opted out of the $30-million state grant paying for fare-free rides in 2025. The other is in the neighboring greater Attleboro-Taunton region.

    The 13 participating RTAs crafted a single joint application to share the $30 million earmarked in the fiscal 2025 budget to “implement year-round systemwide fare-free service.” The grants will reimburse the agencies for the revenue lost by not collecting fares.

    “It’s always interesting to me that popular announcements such as ‘free fares for everyone’ obviously resonate with many citizens,” CCRTA administrator Thomas Cahir said in an email to the Independent.

    Cahir wrote that his agency did not apply for the Fare Free grant “because it was abundantly clear that implementation as mandated per the budget language would be highly disruptive to the CCRTA’s transit operations.”

    One possible disruption, Cahir said, had to do with his agency being in the middle of replacing one fare collection system with another. Going fare-free would ignore “sunk costs” in that change, he wrote.

    Another worry was that the funding would cease after 2025. “We didn’t want to stop collecting fares and then tell riders that they have to start paying again a year from now,” Cahir told the transit news nonprofit StreetsblogMASS in October.

    But a possible shift in riders’ expectations was Cahir’s top concern. He told the Independent in an email that the Cape’s high proportion of on-demand trips was a main reason his office opted not to apply for the grant. Free fares, Cahir predicted, would result in a substantial shift of ridership from fixed routes to more individualized on-demand ones.

    Roughly a quarter of CCRTA rides are on-demand. According to data released by MassDOT, CCRTA’s total ridership in fiscal 2023 was 723,890. Of those trips, 556,199 were on fixed routes, such as the FLEX bus from Harwich to Provincetown, while the remaining 167,691 were on-demand rides using Dial-a-Ride (DART) service.

    The recent SmartDART “microtransit” program, which offers short rides at a flat rate of $3 through an app, was not represented in these numbers.

    In their joint application, the 13 participating RTAs proposed an allocation of the $30 million that considered annual ridership percentages in each service area. An analysis by the Independent suggests that if CCRTA had joined the grant application, it would have likely received just over $1 million from the pot.

    Costing Everyone Less

    Using a mix of federal relief funds and state money, other Mass. RTAs have already implemented full fare-free service since the start of the pandemic.

    “Since going fare free, our fixed route bus ridership has quadrupled and now exceeds pre-pandemic levels by over 60 percent while passenger complaints are down a third,” Merrimack Valley RTA administrator Noah Berger said in a press release from the governor’s office.

    Policy experts who support fare-free transit systems have extolled the economic benefits of increased ridership, citing reductions in traffic, automobile fatalities, and environmental impacts, and a safer work environment for bus drivers who do not have to deal with altercations over fare evasion.

    “If you have 20 people on a bus, it pollutes a lot less and creates a lot less traffic congestion than 20 cars,” said Phineas Baxandall, a director of the Mass. Budget and Policy Center. “Moving people from driving to public transit reduces a lot of the public costs from our transportation system, whether it’s climate or collisions or pollution or congestion.”

    Free transit service is also a question of revenue equity, Baxandall said. “Progressive versus regressive from an economist point of view just means: does this fee structure make inequalities wider or mitigate those inequalities?” he said. “From that point of view, transit fares are probably the most regressive form of revenue in the state, both because transit riders tend to be poorer than average and because fares represent a much more significant portion of somebody’s income if they’re poor.”

    Outer Cape Barriers

    The fare for a single fixed-route trip on a CCRTA bus is $2; a one-day unlimited pass costs $6; and a 31-day unlimited is $60. A one-way ride on the DART service costs $3. All fixed-route trips are fare-free for riders with disabilities or who are 60 and over or five or younger with an adult. Rides on Fridays are free for everyone.

    Gwynne Guzzeau, executive director of Helping Our Women, said that going fare-free “is not the issue” for local transit service in the four towns. “Removing a barrier to accessing services of any kind is really important,” she said. “But I’m not sure that free fare here on the Outer Cape would make a tremendous difference.”

    Instead, Guzzeau highlighted the gaps in Dial-A-Ride coverage that make it difficult for residents of Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, and even Eastham to get anywhere up Cape, including for medical appointments.  HOW provides transportation to women with chronic health conditions to ameliorate this problem.

    “The fact is that on the Outer Cape, you can get a DART ride, but you can only get a DART ride as far as Orleans,” she said. “The challenge is that while there are some fixed route services, the most important alternative doesn’t work for the Outer Cape in the same way it works for the rest of Barnstable County.”

    The CCRTA, Guzzeau said, is “an agency that’s asked to do a lot in a geographic area that’s challenging.”

    Guzzeau said that “one of the big concerns for rural communities is letting people know about what is available to them.” For example, she said, the CCRTA offers a door-to-door ADA paratransit service and a Boston hospital transport that is reliable but underused.

    Ultimately, access to transportation is “a social determinant of health,” Guzzeau said, as it underlies access to housing, food, and employment. And in light of the U.S. surgeon general’s recent report on the national loneliness epidemic, Guzzeau said, “the response is building infrastructure that supports social connection. And that would include transportation.”

    Cahir told the Independent that his agency and the Cape’s councils on aging have applied for a state grant to fund a designated phone operator tasked with helping older adults who are struggling to use the SmartDART app technology required to book those rides.

    INFRASTRUCTURE

    13 Electric Buses Will Join CCRTA’s Fleet

    At $1 million per bus, the goal of an all-electric fleet is still a decade away

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority received a $14.6-million federal grant in July that will pay for 13 new hybrid-electric buses at around $1 million each, along with a program to teach workers to maintain the vehicles.

    Christopher Comrie, who commutes to work in Wellfleet, said that while summertime traffic on Route 6 was inevitable, the number of stops seems to make matters worse.

    Tom Cahir, administrator of the CCRTA, said the money would also help the agency install charging stations for the buses.

    Last November, CCRTA revised its timeline for deploying an all-electric fleet from 2030 to 2035 and estimated its new 12-year goal would cost $79 million. The agency currently has 20 hybrid-electric vehicles in its 140-vehicle fleet, but they are smaller Ford E-Transits with a recommended range of only 130 miles and are used only for the agency’s “SmartDART” on-demand trips of under 10 miles, Cahir said.

    The new Gillig hybrid buses will replace full-size diesel buses like the ones that run the Flex route from Harwich to Provincetown and back — the main bus route used by workers on Outer Cape Cod, as it offers many stops in Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, and Brewster.

    The Gillig batteries have a range of about 400 miles or four round-trips from Hyannis to Provincetown — which is about equal to the typical daily travel for current diesel buses, Cahir said.

    “Ultimately, we’d like to have an entire electric fleet,” Cahir said. “We’ve got 20 now and 13 more coming.”

    The CCRTA “moves 800,000 people a year on 140 buses,” Cahir said, adding that the agency’s original 2030 goal for an all-electric fleet had been “an ambitious goal that was not realistic.”

    The $14.6-million grant is one of three that went to transit authorities in the state this summer. The MBTA will buy 40 full-size all-electric buses with its $40-million grant from the Federal Transit Administration, and the Vineyard Transit Authority will buy four hybrid buses with its $3.8-million grant, according to the state Dept. of Transportation.

    The money comes from a $5.6-billion allocation under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 specifically for low- and no-emissions buses.

    John Kennedy, general manager of the CCRTA, has test-driven the 35-foot Gillig hybrid and said the main difference passengers will notice is the lack of engine noise and the speedy acceleration.

    “Electric vehicles accelerate very quickly but are as quiet as can be,” Kennedy said. “That’s an improvement for the passenger. You also don’t have to deal with the emissions of a diesel engine.”

    Service Issues

    Riders at the CCRTA’s bus stop at MacMillan Pier in Provincetown were interested in the prospect of electric buses — but had more to say about other improvements they thought the agency should consider.

    Samina Shrestha said she has waited two hours for a CCRTA bus even though they are supposed to arrive once per hour. (Photos by David Marsland)

    “I have waited a couple of hours for a bus — which was horrible,” said Samina Shrestha, 23, who was heading home to North Truro from a shift at Cabot’s Candy in Provincetown. Shrestha said her morning commute can be stressful because if she misses the 9 a.m. bus, another one will not arrive for an hour. “I think it would really help if we had a frequency of every 15 minutes,” she said.

    Christopher Comrie, 27, was commuting to the Lobster Pot’s Lobster and Chowder House in Wellfleet from his home in Provincetown. He said that delays could result from the large number of stops on the Flex bus route.

    “There are days that are busy if there’s traffic out there, and you might run a little late, but it’s not the driver’s fault,” Comrie said. “They have to stop at every stop, and sometimes it catches up to them.”

    Caleb Cain, 19, used to ride the bus twice a day, four days a week to get from their home in Truro to work in Provincetown. Cain was glad to hear about the new low-emissions buses, but said the frequency and timing of rides were an issue.

    “The Flex bus was pretty convenient, clean and nice,” Cain said. “But in the mornings it would usually be early, which was a little bit annoying” as it could cause them to be stranded at the bus stop if they were not early as well. “I can understand why people would want them to come more often,” Cain said.

    Bus stops on the Outer Cape do not have some of the features found in larger cities, such as electric displays that say when the next bus will arrive. While the MacMillan Pier stop has solar-powered lights and a shelter, most bus stops here are little more than a bench and a sign.

    TAKE TWO

    Eastham Gets to Yes on Two New Bus Stop Shelters

    ‘Not a problem,’ says CCRTA, to a rarely heard request

    By

    EASTHAM — The select board voted on July 10 to send a letter to the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority (CCRTA) asking that shelters be added to two bus stops: one across from town hall for riders traveling south toward Orleans and another near the Cumberland Farms at Route 6 and Brackett Road for riders heading north.

    The bus stop at the Eastham Superette, across from Eastham Town Hall, is one of two that the select board wants to improve with a shelter. (Photos by Paul Benson)

    The Independent reported in June that riders had identified the stop across from town hall, near the Eastham Superette, as one of the worst on the Outer Cape — there is no shelter or bench.

    “We understand that the DOT repaving plans for the Wellfleet portion of Route 6 include new bus shelters,” the Eastham Select Board wrote. “It would be fantastic if you could do two for us.”

    On July 24, CCRTA Administrator Tom Cahir told the Independent that he had received that letter only when this reporter sent it to him. He said he had reached out to town staff in Eastham and to the Cape Cod Commission right away.

    “We can provide bus shelters in those two locations — that’s not a problem,” said Cahir. “We have a capital budget, and we have more shelters ordered. There’s a lot of permitting involved with a state highway, but as soon as the state implications are addressed, we’re happy to honor their request.”

    Cahir also said that requests for new bus shelters have been exceedingly rare during the years he has run the CCRTA. “In 14 years, this is one of probably two or three,” he said.

    Requests for other improvements, such as lighting inside a shelter, just don’t happen, he said: “I’ve never had a request like that.”

    Sylvain Lacroix, a tourist from France, waiting at a bus stop outside Adventure Bound Campground on Highland Road in Truro.

    A solar panel powers a few lights on the bus stop at MacMillan Pier in Provincetown. Most other bus stops on the Outer Cape are dark at night.

    “Shelters are not something we talk about a lot — it’s not a big deal,” Cahir added. “If we have a request from any town for a shelter — which we never have — I would immediately send our operations team and facilities manager out to look at the site, see if it’s an appropriate location, talk to the town, and put one there.”

    The shelters themselves are not particularly expensive. The wraparound shelter at the Orleans Stop & Shop is made from plexiglass, has lighting inside, and costs just under $10,000, according to Cahir.

    The CCRTA has an advisory board that includes one member from each town, plus a “disabled commuter representative” and a “rider community representative” — a slot that is currently vacant.

    On the Outer Cape, the four advisory board members are Provincetown’s Assistant Town Manager Dan Riviello, Truro Town Manager Darrin Tangeman, Wellfleet Council on Aging Director Suzanne Grout Thomas, and Eastham resident Roslyn Diamond.

    “You have an advisory board member in each town,” Cahir said. “The select board appoints them, and if there’s any RTA-related question that people are concerned about, they should call their advisory board member and they’ll call me.

    “Nothing we do is mysterious — we’re the most transparent agency around,” Cahir added.

    CCRTA bus stop number 184, at Sea Gull Motel in North Truro, is not marked with signs on either side of Shore Road.

    If cost is not a constraint, however, and the process to seek improvements is straightforward, then why are so many bus stops on the Outer Cape so threadbare?

    The bus stop at Provincetown’s Stop & Shop, the Outer Cape’s only grocery store, has no protection from wind or rain and no light. The bus stop at the Eastham Superette is dangerously exposed to traffic. Several Outer Cape bus stops do not have a bench, and in North Truro stop number 184 at the Sea Gull Motel and stop number 201 at Truro Vineyards don’t even have signs indicating they are bus stops.

    Sylvain Lacroix, a tourist from France, rode the bus on July 24 from MacMillan Pier out to Truro to visit Highland Light. He was shocked to learn that some bus stops here don’t have signage.

    “How is a person supposed to know it is a bus stop without even a sign?” asked Lacroix. “Maybe the people living right there will know, but for anyone else, how could they?”

    Lacroix is an industrial engineer who studies large companies, and he tried to think about the buses from that point of view.

    “If you manage the bus line, you have visibility into the buses, you can go onto them and check them, and that becomes the first priority,” Lacroix said.

    Perhaps the way people actually catch the bus could become secondary in the minds of leaders at a transit organization simply because it’s harder to observe and measure, Lacroix surmised.

    He also said the bus had been late compared to the published timetable.

    “You don’t know when the bus will pass, or where it will stop,” Lacroix said, “but it was a very nice bus!”

    THE COMMUTE

    Town Meeting Article Seeks Late Bus for Seasonal Workers

    Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority has a roundabout response

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority (CCRTA) leaders assured the select board on Feb. 13 that they could run a pilot late-night and early-morning bus service this summer for people who need affordable rides to and from jobs working in bars and serving breakfast.

    But 48 hours later, Assistant Town Manager Dan Riviello, select board member Leslie Sandberg, and Stephen Katsurinis, a member of the business community — who were all on the same call — heard a completely different story from the CCRTA. An agency staff member told them “unequivocally” that labor agreements and driver shortages would make such bus service impossible, Sandberg told the Independent.

    “Why on earth did they not tell us that on Monday night?” Sandberg said. “We wish they had leveled with us when the cameras were rolling.”

    There is now a $100,000 article on the April 3 town meeting warrant to hire drivers to use a Provincetown Schools bus to make runs May through October from Provincetown to Eastham for early-morning and late-night commuters. It combines a town subsidy with contributions from business owners, though the details are not yet worked out, according to Riviello.

    Two weeks after the warrant was printed, on March 20, CCRTA Administrator Tom Cahir made another U-turn.

    After not responding to multiple calls from the Independent, Cahir told the newspaper on March 17, “Maybe I dropped the ball. This is the first I have heard of a late-night route.”

    On March 20, Cahir called town hall staff to say he had “misunderstood” what the board wanted. He agreed to offer two new bus runs, one going to Provincetown at 4:45 a.m. and another that would leave Provincetown at 2 a.m. The added runs would begin June 23 and end Sept. 4, Sandberg said.

    The select board originally put the article on the warrant because of the CCRTA’s flip-flop in February. Sandberg said they are going to keep it there for the same reason.

    “If the CCRTA can indeed do June through September, great,” she said. “We will use the town meeting funds to offer the service from May and through October because that is really our season.”

    A review of the select board’s Feb. 13 meeting with CCRTA’s Cahir, assistant general manager Fred Valdivia, and general manager John Kennedy shows Valdivia explaining the current bus runs and describing low ridership on the late-night runs.

    Nonetheless, Valdivia added, “We’re able to look into a pilot program.”

    “I’m pretty confident we can probably do something,” Cahir added.

    “We just need to know by Feb. 27,” Sandberg responded. “Our warrant closes on March 3.”

    Sandberg then asked if CCRTA would like a subsidy from the town. Cahir declined, saying, “I am confident that we can come up with some sort of pilot. And the local assessment has gone up two and a half percent for the last 14 years. That’s fine.”

    “Two days later, it was a 180-degree difference,” Sandberg said.

    The Independent reported on Feb. 24 another case where the CCRTA said one thing and did another. The nonprofit’s website advertises dial-a-ride transport (DART) as a “door-to-door service” that is available in all 15 Cape towns. But in reality, from Provincetown through Eastham, the DART program will take passengers only from their homes to a bus in Orleans. Human services organizations are now discussing pooling money to create a localized service with or without help from the CCRTA.

    MIND THE GAP

    Summit Challenges Regional Transit to Meet Its Mission

    Creative solutions called for after Dial-a-Ride program fails Outer Cape

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority (CCRTA) staff spent half an hour on Feb. 13 telling the Provincetown Select Board about the bounty of buses the government-funded organization offers the visitors, residents, and workers of Provincetown.

    Peter Pan driver Med Tounsi in Provincetown, ready to take passengers to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, a service Peter Pan provides through a partnership with the CCRTA. (Photos by Nancy Bloom)

    Aside from pointing out a few gaps, such as early-morning and late-night scheduling that would get restaurant workers in for breakfast and home after the bars close, the select board expressed overall satisfaction with the service.

    But human services workers in all four Outer Cape towns say they have heard many complaints about the CCRTA’s service from their clients. A big one: the DART program that the authority claims to offer in all 15 Cape Cod towns does not work for people in Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, or Eastham.

    “The Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority provides a daily general public demand response service called Dial-A-Ride Transportation (DART) that is our door-to-door, ride by appointment transportation service,” the RTA website says. “This service is available to all Cape Cod residents and visitors for any purpose.”

    Critics say you cannot use the service to get a ride from one’s home in Wellfleet to an eye doctor in Sandwich, for example, nor from one’s front door in Provincetown to Gosnold Behavioral Health in Centerville — at least not in one vehicle or within a reasonable time frame.

    If you want to get to the mid Cape, an RTA driver will pick you up at your house but will take you only to a bus in Orleans, which will then take you to Hyannis, where, going to Gosnold, for example, would require a third bus, a CCRTA dispatcher told the Independent. The rides take hours.

    Gwynne Guzzeau, executive director of Helping Our Women, a nonprofit that, among other services, assists people with transportation needs, said her organization has “crunched the numbers.” A CCRTA round trip from Provincetown to Hyannis costing $9 for three bus rides would take at least six hours, said Alex Nelson, who is the coordinator of the Outer Cape Community Solutions Network, which includes HOW and some 40 other agencies.

    “CCRTA says consistently that door-to-door exists in all 15 towns,” Nelson said. “But I have heard numerous partners say they do not serve this area.”

    The network held a first transportation summit on Jan. 26 with staff from Outer Cape Cod’s councils on aging, health agents, nonprofit employees, a police officer, and a Cape Cod Commission planner. The meeting looked at the missing pieces and discussed next steps, including ways to pool resources — with assistance from the RTA, the group hopes.

    A CCRTA Flex Bus on a Provincetown-to-Harwich route that makes eight daily stops in Truro. If you miss the 7:17 a.m. bus, the next one is at 10:27. The last bus of the night comes by at 8:27 p.m.

    “There are other creative solutions that the Outer Cape can look into and potentially mobilize independently,” Nelson said. “But that does not negate the CCRTA’s responsibility to ‘provide safe, reliable, efficient, affordable, and environmentally sustainable transit options to all of the residents and visitors,’ ” she said. “Including to our rural towns — that’s their mission.”

    In an interview following the summit, Tom Cahir, CCRTA’s director, defended the DART program. “Our DART service has been robust for a long time,” he said. “Sometimes it requires switching onto another bus. But the public transportation is as efficient as we can make it.”

    Each town pays an assessment to fund the CCRTA based on a formula that includes the number of riders and bus miles driven, Cahir said. Provincetown’s assessment is $113,199; while Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham pay about $56,000 each, according to the state Dept. of Revenue.

    People over 60 are well cared for with rides provided by towns’ councils on aging. But the need is much broader, Nelson said. For years, the Provincetown Select Board has discussed the problem of unsafe nighttime bike trips and costly cab rides faced by Provincetown workers.

    “There are a tremendous number of people who don’t have access to a car,” Nelson said.

    To fill the gap, nonprofits spend time and money. The volunteer-run nonprofit Nauset Neighbors, the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod, and all of the town senior centers do provide “door-to-door” rides, Guzzeau told the Independent.

    Wellfleet paramedics give seniors a “Wellfleetians In Need” or WIN-funded taxi voucher, said Suzanne Grout Thomas, director of the Wellfleet Council on Aging.

    HOW’s Office Manager Mary Berry said her organization provides 80 rides per month on average. Drivers include volunteers and some paid staff. HOW also hires Mercedes Cab for people to get to medical appointments. HOW pays the cab company’s “priority rate,” which can be as high as $500 from Provincetown to Sandwich, Berry said.

    The RTA does do a lot, Nelson said, including twice-daily $3 rides from Provincetown to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis through a partnership with Peter Pan Bus Company. In summer, RTA operates buses until 12:30 a.m. out of Provincetown, Cahir told the select board.

    But, Nelson said, it’s not enough. One model the network will be discussing is an affordable, publicly subsidized Uber or Lyft service for the four Outer Cape towns.

    Cahir told the Provincetown Select Board the CCRTA is already piloting such a program in Barnstable and Yarmouth. It is called SmartDART.

    That would be welcome news. “Right now, we don’t have any DART, not even dumb DART,” Grout Thomas said.

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