Originally published August, 2021
Public transit can have many benefits. It’s affordable to ride and cuts down on pollution and traffic. But how practical is it in a less populated area, like Cape Cod? In our series In Transit, CAI’s Jennette Barnes takes us on a bus trip, heading east from Hyannis to Orleans. She examines how our transit system is working, who's riding, and what we can do better.
When Taking a Bus Is Your Only Option on the Cape
“Broad Reach at Liberty Commons!”
Driver Andrew Ianniello announces the stop as he applies the brake and opens the door.
A woman making her way off the bus turns to me — the one holding the microphone — and says, “Mention how really great the bus drivers are — what a good job they do every day.”
“You are the best,” the driver tells her. “I’ll give you that five bucks later."
They share a laugh, and he adds, “Have a good shift, hon."
Getting off the bus there is nurses' aide Karen DeSimone. She’s been riding for a decade, after her driver’s license lapsed when she had cancer.
She says the bus works well overall. But congested roads on a summer afternoon can make her commute from Hyannis to Chatham take 90 minutes — way longer than the drive time of someone who just hops in a car.
“It takes at least twice as long,” she says. “Yes, because this route, as you've seen — we come from Hyannis and we stop in at the hospital; we stop in at the Stop & Shop in Yarmouth…”
She goes on.
All those stops mean she can’t always rely on the 1:30 to get to a shift that starts at 3. So in the summer, she boards the bus at 12:30 — a full two-and-a-half hours before work.
But let’s back up, to where this ride started, at the main bus terminal in Hyannis.
Stepping Aboard
The bus arrives late from its last run, and we start boarding the 12:30 at 12:51.
Riders wait on a covered walkway. There’s a man in line raising his voice for reasons that will soon be evident. And there are two younger men, talking quietly and wearing backpacks. They’re students here on J1 visas for the summer.
Florea Stefan of Romania says he’s already late for work, but the bus is usually more on time.
“It's better than in Europe in some ways,” he says. “How can I say it? It's a little faster. I mean, in Romania, you wait mostly 20 minutes more for a bus to come in. It's full, full, full. People stay bashed at the door.”
As we step onto the empty bus, it’s clear no one will be bashed against these doors.
But there will be a moment when it seems like things could come to blows in the back seat.
It happens just as student David Montes is saying he works seven days a week here to pay for a master’s program in mechanical engineering in Colombia.
“I'm starting at Saint Thomas University,” he says. “It's in Bogotá D.C.”
Bogotá carries the same suffix as Washington D.C., only it stands for Distrito Capital.
“It's the capital,” he says as the driver suddenly interrupts, shouting “Hey!” loud enough to be heard in the back.
Ianniello stops the bus, gets up, and takes a step down the aisle.
“What’s going on?” he says.
Two men are sitting in the seats that span the bus’ back wall. One wants the other to move over, and they’re arguing.
“OK. No talking,” Ianniello says. “We’re a half-hour late already. I don’t want to have to stop — like my mother: ‘Don’t make me stop the car.’”
Actually they will make him stop the car. About 15 minutes later, loud-voice guy from the station gets ejected for foul language. He walks off holding what looks like a bottle in a paper bag, which he must have been concealing before.
But the story of buses on Cape Cod isn’t about incidents like that.
It’s about riders like Patricia Nelson Morris, who comes from Jamaica to work on the Cape for the season.
Getting to Work
“I live in Hyannis, but I used to live in Chatham where I used to work,” she says. “But my workplace was sold, so I got to come to Hyannis.”
She does housekeeping in Chatham and has a second job in fast food. She depends on the bus, along with some taxis and her own two feet.
For some people, though, the traditional bus routes just don’t fit.
Laurel Rose of Hyannis takes a taxi to work at a nursing home, even though it costs more.
“I'm on West Main, and I work on Route 28, so I have to use a taxi to go,” she says. “So I only ride the bus when I'm on my day off.”
Local bus service is run by the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority. The Transit Authority has made an effort to solve the problem of limited routes with a dial-a-ride service called DART, which pools riders in small vehicles to reach off-route destinations.
Reservations, though, are required.
Transit Authority Administrator Tom Cahir said service is evolving with the new SmartDART app, which allows rides on-demand in certain areas.
“There are still a few pockets on the Cape that are a little bit more challenging, up on 6A in certain areas,” he said. “But the DART and the SmartDART has really changed that perception that you can't get to where you need to go efficiently. You can.”
Of course, most of the regular buses only run once an hour. So if something unexpected happens — like the bus clips a car going down a narrow street — riders may still get to their destination late.
Trips May Be Long, But Bus Riders Form a Community
“Right here, you're getting off at Stone Horse?” calls driver Andrew Ianniello to one of the foreign students on the bus.
“Thank you,” the student says as he turns toward the door, “and have a good day.”
“You have a good day, sir.”
We’re in Harwich, headed east to Chatham, and then to the end of the line at Stop & Shop in Orleans.
As the crowd thins out, Ianniello gets a chance to reflect on some of what’s cool about the bus.
“We are equipped to handle all kinds of mobility devices,” he says. “And there's a fair number of people that rely on mobility devices, whether it's a traditional wheelchair or it's a rascal or…”
The list goes on. He explains how they get fastened into the bus.
Part of what stands out to him, he says, is how other riders want to help, even if it just means stepping off the bus to make room while he secures the chair.
“For the most part, everyone that rides the bus is a regular, you know?” he says. “They're a part of the family, and there's this sense of community that goes along with it. You know what I'm saying?”
“Skaket Corners!” he calls out as the bus approaches another stop.
We make it to the Orleans Stop & Shop just after 3 o’clock, an hour late.
Ianniello starts his day at 6:30 a.m. He says the first two runs are usually on time, but after that, delays start to pile up.
“There's this domino effect that occurs when the traffic gets crazy like that, and there's nothing you could do about it,” he says. “You just sort of go with the flow.”
That’s not unlike riding in a car on the Cape on a summer afternoon, said Transit Authority Administrator Tom Cahir.
“It's a constant problem and always will be on Cape Cod, where the roads were never built to accommodate the volumes of traffic that we're seeing in the summer months here,” he said.
Another bus hazard? The tight squeeze.
We have a new driver on the ride back to Hyannis from Orleans. Before the bus even makes a stop, it approaches a right turn and has to thread the needle between an oncoming bus and a car parked close to the corner.
The scrape is so slight, no one but the driver knows anything’s amiss until she pulls over in front of an art gallery down the street.
A woman from the car approaches the bus. She asks the driver to call the police.
Driver Suzanne Lincoln stays totally calm and professional.
“He’s just going to fill a report out, and [we] should be all set,” she says.
But as we wait for the police to do their work, a ride that started on time just a few minutes ago is already getting delayed. Add the traffic, and we roll into the Hyannis station at 6:19 p.m. instead of 5.
Advocates say the system would be more usable if buses came more often.
The headway — that’s the time between buses — is typically an hour on the Cape, though it was 30 minutes in some places before the pandemic reduced ridership.
John Stout, of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, said buses spaced that far apart can make for some inconvenient moments.
“[If] you miss a bus that comes every half an hour, that's pretty bad news for you, and you might be late to work or some other important appointment,” he said. “So I think increasing the amount of service we have, and also the frequency of service, is really what's going to encourage more folks to get on public transit.”
And that serves other policy goals, such as reducing carbon emissions.
The big prize there is full conversion to electric buses, which his group is calling for by 2030.
Another thing missing on the Cape is Sunday service in the off-season.
Alexis Walls of the Massachusetts Public Health Association said adding more night and weekend buses is a top priority for transit advocates.
“I mean, folks have lives after 8:00 p.m., right?” she said. “It also affects employment, because we know there are a lot of jobs that require late-night or early-morning shifts.”
Expanding service would require more money — public money. Like similar transit authorities around the state, the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority can’t support itself on fares and advertising alone, and receives millions of federal and state dollars.
But what is coming, maybe by late fall, is a way to see online when buses are actually going to arrive, said Cahir, the administrator.
That means riders like nursing assistant Angela Brown, who spends an hour getting from Dennis Port to Brewster, won’t have to guess whether the bus is late, only to just miss it.
“I was out here earlier to catch the 1 o'clock one, but when I was going, they passed, so I had to wait for this one,” she says.
So, where’s the balance between time and money, between carbon emissions and convenience? The answer may still be down the road.
And who’s on that road?
One more time, here’s driver Andrew Ianniello: “The fact of the matter is, is we move the workforce, whether it's the year-round workforce or the J1s that supplement in the summertime,” he says. “We move the people that keep the wheel rolling.”
