One of many mysteries that attends living on Cape Cod manifests in an unlikely location:
Route 6, Harwich, around what most people still call Exit 10 at Route 124, now officially Exit 82.
Why does that stretch of highway turn into a parking lot afternoons, year-round, headed west? There are only two ways to get on that ribbon between the Orleans rotary and the jam in Harwich, neither back up, and Route 124 is far from a freeway traffic funnel. So why is this happening?
Right about now some of you listeners might be sitting in that traffic, and in case you need proof of what you’re experiencing, the Cape Cod Commission has it. They study traffic data gathered by cameras. Off-season, over a typical three days, between 3 and 6 pm, the average speed around the Harwich interchange headed west gets as low as 10 miles an hour. That means as many are stopped, going 0, as are going 20.
Now there’s a bonafide bottleneck.
Dave Nolan, senior transportation manager at the Cape Cod Commission, agrees this is a mystery, though he has some theories.
“For starters,” he says, “look at the accelerator lane.” Translation: on-ramp.
Because it’s much shorter with less leeway than what traffic planners now recommend, a vestige from the 1950s, small numbers of merging cars cause slowdowns, tension, and worse: Exit 10 hosted 56 crashes from a recent two-year period, the most anywhere on Route 6.
Bad driving etiquette doesn’t help: Despite a yield sign, with the main lane clearly having the right of way, entering drivers often don’t slow down let alone yield. What could be a short wait on the entrance ramp turns into jammed brakes and longer backups on the highway.
Meanwhile, a big percentage of traffic is trucks, pickups, work vehicles. Are we seeing what amounts to a Cape Cod commuter rush-hour?
Nolan says yes, many people who live closer to the bridges, including the mainland, come to the Lower Cape for work. The obvious reason? No affordable housing closer by.
In which case there should be a jam in the morning headed east. True, but Exit 9 (sorry, Exit 78) at Route 134 in Dennis already bottlenecks as the road reduces to one lane. So the evening’s westerly slowdown is more singly focused.
Nature also plays a role. Solar glare on sunny afternoons whites out western-facing windshields, making drivers brake.
But mainly, as more commuters join than exit ramps remove, a tipping point occurs, small impediments merge to block flow. Next thing you know? Our mini-version of the Southeast Expressway.
Is there relief for Cape drivers who expect congestion during the summer, but are shocked to encounter any off-season?
No. Work in 2027 will spruce up overpasses, painting and paving, but nothing to redefine flow.
Planners argue that push to shove — fender-bender to totaled vehicle — the best way to reduce congestion and improve safety is longer on-ramps.
There are cost and design questions the Massachusetts Department of Transportation is responsible for answering. But according to Cape Cod Commission staff, nothing insurmountable:
The short answer is, They could fix it.
