More than 200 people joined an online meeting last night on the Cape Cod bridge replacement plan, and many raised questions about the bridge locations, height, pedestrian safety, and other issues.
Mary Jane Mastrangelo, a member of the Bourne Select Board, said residents of the host community need more information from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and its consultants about properties that could be affected by the new, larger bridges.
“There was a comment that there was an impact on some Sagamore businesses on the canal,” she said. “What businesses are those? And how are those going to be impacted?”
Officials identified some of the properties that lie in the path of the proposed $4 billion project. Both bridges would be closer to the middle of the canal — meaning the Bourne Bridge would move east, and the Sagamore Bridge would move west.
“This is causing a lot of community angst and we need to get a handle on that and find a better way to communicate what's happening,” she said. “And we want the bridges. They need to be replaced, but we need to address the needs of the community.”
One person asked if the design team had considered tunnels.
Bryan Cordeiro, project manager for MassDOT, said they did consider sending traffic underground, but tunnels would need to be much longer than the bridges and would not allow bikes or pedestrians.
Others asked about the construction timeline, which Cordeiro said could start in 2027 and last seven or eight years — though those numbers are only estimates.
He said one of the big reasons the state plans to build twin bridges — two closely spaced spans at each location — is that building one side at a time makes it easier to maintain traffic flow during a years-long construction period.
One member of the audience said dangerous highway interchanges near the bridges need to be safer for pedestrians. Students should be able to walk home from school, he said.
The Bourne middle and high schools and Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School are near the Bourne Bridge.
Cordeiro said additional meetings to address interchanges and roadways will take place within about two months.
Residents’ concern about whether larger, faster bridges would bring more traffic to Cape Cod came up several times. Each bridge will have wider lanes, a higher speed limit than in the past, and a new entrance-and-exit lane.
Officials said the entrance-and-exit lanes are for safety, but Chatham resident Stephen Buckley said wider bridges will allow more cars to cross.
“This is going to be a major change for Cape Cod,” he said. “If you can make it easier for people to come to Cape Cod, day trippers who would have been discouraged from coming to Cape Cod will come down because, hey, there's no backup at the bridges.”
Dave Anderson of engineering consultant HNTB said the anticipated speed limits would be 55 mph on the Bourne Bridge and 60 mph on the Sagamore Bridge. The current speed limit on both bridges is 40 mph.
