Is The Rotary Actually Worse Now? - Editorial
It may be a moot point following the population explosion that comes with July 4th, but we need to talk about traffic—specifically, traffic at and around the Bourne Rotary.
Everyone who has ever even visited Cape Cod has some tale of the trials and tribulations of traveling by car to and over the Cape Cod Canal. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel with this editorial; what we are attempting to do, though, is figure out what the heck is going on with the traffic over there lately?
The rotary was relined, restriped and redesigned in the spring with the hopes of helping drivers navigate the rotary more easily. But to us, the jury is still out on whether the work (which thankfully has taken a hiatus for the busy season) has actually helped or hurt.
Some routes traversing the rotary seem far easier to navigate than others—our favorite is taking MacArthur Boulevard northbound to Sandwich Road, which is made exponentially easier, thanks to the sectioned-off exit lane on the right-hand side. Other paths through the area, though, admittedly do still confuse us, perhaps even more so now with the labyrinth of white lines on the pavement.
It was barely June when the first person came to us and got straight to the point: “Can we complain to you about the rotary traffic?”
That conversation was the first of many; we have since heard from colleagues, readers, community sources and town officials about the early-summer traffic this year. That was the point of many of the gripes we heard—the traffic itself was not the problem, but rather the timing of it.
Morning traffic, we’ve heard from commuters coming from off-Cape, is peaking earlier than they’re used to, throwing off the timing of their usual routes. The golden hours of 7 to 7:30 AM for those coming on Cape over the Bourne Bridge are no longer; instead, commuters are met with a long backup of cars that halts them before the bridge and has a seemingly indeterminate start and end. The drive home is much the same.
The month of June was the worst, we’re told, but luckily the traffic thinned out a bit after schools let out for the summer. Maybe it was the overlap of early summer breakers and students finishing the school year that caused the backups, or maybe it was simply drivers navigating a newly designed rotary for the very first time. Will it be like this from now on? We can’t say for sure, at least not right now. With the 4th behind us, we’re in the thick of it now. And who’s to say what will happen once work resumes and is completed this fall. The best we can hope for is that the redesign pays off in the long run and does improve traffic flow. And if it doesn’t…well, at least we have the bridge replacement to look forward to.