Having grown up near Buzzards Bay village, a few thoughts. I'll reference a couple of insightful posts. First:
"Steven Tupper, Deputy Director of the Cape Cod Commission, notes that the project is specifically being undertaken to "improve the reliability of the bridges," which are coming up on 100 years old. Alleviating traffic has not been identified as a project priority by the Army Corps and MassDOT."
And this is why you're not seeing any mention of improving public transportation to or from the Cape, whether its bus or rail. While the claim is this project is meant to merely "improve the reliability of the bridges," the new bridges will have wider travel lanes, as well as new accelration and deceleration lanes for adjacent on and off ramp improvements. As a result, the new bridges will be able to handle a higher volume of traffic.
I suggest paying attention to Cape traffic reports the next couple of weekends leading up to Labor Day. Earlier this month, Saturday reports noted traffic backups heading east on U.S. Route 6 off the Sagamore bridge as far as Chase Road in East Sandwich. U.S. Route 6 eastbound is essentially a parkway (not an interstate). Any suggestions that the canal highway bridges are a "complete bottleneck" are not reality.
Why exactly does it take an hour for the Cape Flyer to go from Bourne to Hyannis? Bad track? All the grade crossings? Speeding that up would be good for the Flyer, but also make it feasible for year round rail service getting people on and off the cape.
The track is curvy, and not at tippy-top maintenance condition (though worlds better than it was a decade ago). It's also unsignaled, which caps the max authorized speed at 59 MPH. NYNH&H in 1955 used to do Buzzards Bay-Hyannis in 51 minutes, making stops at BB, Sandwich, West Barnstable, Yarmouth, and Hyannis. In 1930 they did it in 50 minutes with one more extra stop at Sagamore. Obviously given the faster time and denser stop selection, there's quite a lot of improvement still to be had by doing track replacement to get it up to the top speed within the curves.
Based on observations of
Stefan's commuter rail tracker, the
CapeFlyer typically operates at 50 to 55 m.p.h. along most of the route between the Middleborough/Lakeville station and Cohasset Narrows outside Buzzards Bay station. On the Cape, though it's a slow slog to Hyannis, at 30 m.p.h. During the early days of the
CapeFlyer 10 years ago, it was either a State transportation or Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority official who stated the 30 m.p.h. speed is a deliberate choice. As F-Line noted, in the New Haven days of the 1950s, passengers trains operated at 59 m.p.h. on Cape to Hyannis. I want to say the Cape Cod & Hyannis and Amtrak's
Cape Codder services ran at a speed closer to 40 in the 1980s, but I could be wrong. There's no political will for that to happen now, like the lack of political will to press the Army Corps of Engineers to allow more frequent weekend
CapeFlyer service across the canal.
