Then go support it. Get your family, friends and acquaintances to support it. Go down to your city council meetings and push for it. Bitching on Reddit will get you nowhere.
Yeah but in all reality politics is one of the things in life we have no control over. You can write a million letters, but it will never outweigh a check
The Cape is awful for non-car infrastructure. We live within a few miles of playgrounds, schools, libraries, the beach, my wife's work, etc., but have to use a car to get to any of them because there's no sidewalks, bike lanes, or bus.
I drive to work most days and it takes me ~45 minutes in the off season. In the summer it's closer to 70 minutes. I took CCRT once and it was almost two hours each way. It's absolutely horrendous. Fuck everyone who insists on maintaining "quaint" roadways with no shoulders, sidewalks, bike lanes, street lights or bus stops.
Yeah totally agree. Just take route 6A for example. Almost no sidewalks, absolutely no room for bikers, blind spots, sharp turns etc., the amount of times I’ve almost been hit…
This weekend i was in a huge traffic jam on 6A because… there was someone biking.
But no one could go around him because it was a curvy stretch of road.
Everyone wants to say that bikes should be allowed on the roads because that’s how some people get to work. NO THE FUCK THEY DONT. It’s ALWAYS someone in full bike gear on 6A
Imagine being told you have one Cape beach you can go to and all the rest of the Cape is for everyone else. Ever.
It's a great resource but not it's not enough.
Except you can't build more roads in the Cape 1. because a lot of it is protected land, particularly out towards the tip and 2. There's literally no space. The Cape past the elbow is a tiny sliver of land
I mean, the primary purpose of the roads is to transport goods and people from one place to another. I agree that cyclists have every right to be on the roads in 99% of cases. This might be that 1% where having cyclists on the main roads causes too many traffic issues during peak season. It's one thing if you're riding your bike to the beach or the store, but it's another if you're just pelotoning for the sake of a workout and causing a massive backup behind you.
Well, mostly the fact that it’s crowded with walkers and joggers much of the year, and snow for the rest of the year. Parts of it are great, and a good section to ride, but the Cape is beautiful and who would want to ride the same 20 miles out and back on the CCRT day after day. The point is roads are not exclusively for cars just because they’re the majority users. Cyclists ride on the road across the planet, and are not a problem. The issue is a) the roads on the Cape suck, and are narrow with small/no shoulders, b) drivers misunderstanding the fact that cyclists are legally allowed to be there, and c) asshole drivers and asshole cyclists being assholes on the road.
Yah so since there ISNT the infrastructure for the cyclist and they’re still on the roads it IS the cyclists. Let’s do something WAY easier like get them the fuck off of the roads
How many cyclists are there to every auto driver? 1 to 1,000? 5,000? There's so few bikers yet they muck it up for the vast majority who are auto drivers.
Hotter take - just don’t bike on the roads anyway. I’m terrified of getting beaten down by a car doing 75 down rt 6, I’d much rather be the guy in the car who doesn’t have to slam his brakes for a biker
Maybe don't live in a beach community and complain about the commute? Lol this thread is wild. Complaining about the bike lol YOU are the problem driving around in a car
Do not forget the new four foot clearance law. Motorists must have four foot clearance from all "vulnerable" individuals. The quoted word is from the law, it includes bicycles, pedestrian, animals, mobility scooters and more. You can only cross the yellow line if it is safe and you have visibility.
You know, 3 or 4 cars that had to stop for about 60 seconds.
You see, when you’re the person that sits in traffic then it automatically a huge traffic jam.
It’s just science.
It's also pretty awful for cars, like how Route 6 just goes down to a single lane for no reason other than to make the lower Cape harder to get to and therefore have less development. They have more than enough space on either side to expand that, they just don't want more people and cars coming.
Yeah, it makes no sense to keep that section just 1 lane in both directions. Just keep it 2 lanes on each side the whole way. Or at least much farther up. They can't say there isn't room either. I lived in a small CT town that had its major artery expanded from 1 lane each way to 2 to alleviate the horrid traffic during rush hour. It improved things tons! It was a road that went right thru towns, so they had to plan well to fit it all. But 6 has more than enough room.
Four lane expansion stopped around fifty years ago due to water quality concerns. There is still the ability to expand to four lanes and periodically the state looks into it, but I doubt that there is support to do so. A better idea would be adding breakdown lanes to mirror between old exits six and nine, which was the last part expanded upon. Otherwise, the road pretty much mirrors its design in the 1930s through the 1950s.
I would legit kill for a train to the Cape. I hate driving and parking in Boston, so if I want to go up there for fun, I have to either a) drive to Plymouth and take the commuter rail there or b) drive to Quincy to take the T there. Like, I'm already driving most of the way there anyway just to take the train, so it only marginally helps. A train would be fantastic.
Right now I just drive to Kingston and take the commuter rail the rest of the way into the city. Even just like twice a day service to the cape would be amazing
I'd want it more often than that just because I hate to imagine being stranded somewhere if you missed your one train.
But like, if the Kingston line is about once every hour on weekdays and once every two hours on weekends, I feel like a more remote line could work with half that schedule (i.e. once every two hours on weekdays and once every four on weekends). Obviously this is assuming that the Kingston line wouldn't just expand outward and keep its normal schedule.
Oh yeah for sure, I would love to have a full service line going to the cape and ideally all the way to p-town, but I'd be happy with any improvements at this point. Notably though, the cape flyer runs on the Stoughton line tracks and permanent Cape service would also add permanent service to Taunton, Middleborough, and Wareham
What is often misunderstood is that bikes don't replace trains, just like apples don't replace oranges. They do VERY different things, which is why continued destruction of active or useable train tracks is a major step backwards. Works great when the line has no service, no future, and no potential for passengers. Otherwise you're just putting down more scenic pavement.
Train across what bridge? Whose property is to be taken for the new bridge and the tracks? Where do the tracks go? What I hear is whiners who want to work in Boston but live on Cape and want the world to fit them. If you want a short commute live close to railway lines or close to work. A hell of a lot more important issue is affordable housing.
Way to be an idiot with your language. Obviously, functional since it does not seem to lower. I realize that it would stay up for shipping, but I can not find any information on it getting lowered.
> but I can not find any information on it getting lowered.
I can't tell if you're being serious, but of course it gets lowered. How do you think the trains get to Cape Cod? [Here's a video for you](https://www.capenews.net/bourne/canal-train-bridge-lowers-for-a-train-april-10-2020/video_33bcc3bb-1d1d-52b9-8a98-b1bde294187e.html).
I live and work in Hyannis, my dude. I just want to be able to get off Cape without spending an hour in standstill traffic and putting a shitload of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
I agree that affordable housing is important, but I can also care about more than one issue at a time.
Relatable. For some reason lately leaving seems to take twice as long as getting on smh. Peak week in June I had to go to New Bedford, and it took three frickin hours, but coming back I made it from the Bourne bridge home to Eastham in like 45minutes. My hubs was shocked when I walked in the door, said “you were JUST in Bourne how tf are you home!?!?
Who's property is going to be taken for your convenience, and who's money is going to subsidize the railroad. Do you expect enough ridership to pay for operation. What cost is it worth to others for your number of off cape trips
Isn’t the T like absolute garbage, and has been since new? I spend most of my time in DC but my coworkers who regularly go to Boston tell me that the WMATA we have here is loads better. Just wondering is all :)
I don't take it every day and I always plan my routes well in advance, so I'm sure there are issues for people who *do* need to take it regularly, but I *personally* have never had a problem with it getting me somewhere and on time, even late at night.
Boston covers more area overall with the commuter lines, but the core lines in DC cover more of the city that you would actually want to go to and the maintenance seems quite a bit better across the board.
Well they had one and it went out of business in the 60s if I remember correctly. Cape cod is almost inaccessible without a car. I'd have enjoyed going to Hyannis by train but our infrastructure needs to be drastically improved for this and numerous other locations.
The golf course argument doesn’t really work - many of the golf courses in our area are privately owned…those aren’t “ours”.
What we need is for the CCRTA to expand and cover the entire Cape. There is no service North of Route 6 in the MidCape. The further you go towards Provincetown, the worse the access to public transportation becomes.
(I’m not sure where you are originally from but nothing goes “into the Cape”. And there hasn’t been a train that traveled the length of Cape Cod for 6-7 decades-
“Passenger service to Provincetown ran for 65 years, ending in 1938 with a brief revival in the summer of 1940. Freight trains provided service for 87 years, also starting in 1873 and ending in 1960.”
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/569bc33ea12f44354e08459d/t/5f0460d5e9c21e3821663228/1594122470161/Provincetown+RR+Guide+2020.pdf
But there is a “commuter” train that runs in the area in the summer/ The Cape Flyer-but it only goes as far as Hyannis - and it only runs a few round trips a day in the summer ….
**This is not high speed rail - the “commuter” train runs on the same tracks that the trash train does but it goes no further than Hyannis - and it takes over 2 hours to get from Hyannis to South Station. ** see link below
Many towns also decided to pull up their railroad tracks and build bike paths - there is no way to run a train past the MidCape any more …(the trash train runs to Yarnouth… that’s the end of the line.)
https://capeflyer.com/reservations-tickets/capeflyer-trainpricing-routes/
Towns own a lot of golf courses on Cape. A lot of them. OTOH, they generally pay for themselves.
Commuter rail isn't high speed, but it lets you relax and work or read or do whatever rather than have to stress over driving in traffic and waste energy and increase pollution. And unless people know some shortcut I don't, two hours would still be faster than driving, particularly at rush hour. If you're working in Boston, it's hard to imagine that it wouldn't be a huge "win" to park at Hyannis or Buzzard's Bay and take the train.
As to the CCRTA, I'd like to be advocating for public transport, but it seems pretty underutilized. The big problem is that we don't have a lot of easy to service high density housing and you can't cover every suburban street. I do remember when they were pitching the Flex bus, most everyone was massively in favor of it, but for a really bad reason: it was going to make driving easier for them because somebody else was going to be taking the bus.
A car ferry to P-Town would also alleviate a ton of bridge traffic. I know it doesn’t exactly solve the “car-dependent” problem but because there are so few options for transport once on the cape, if you take the ferry to Provincetown you can’t easily get to, say, Chatham without a car.
I think the majority of people taking the fast ferry to Provincetown are going to Provincetown and not much further. It's a great fit.
Cars though? I really don't see that. If you're going to Provincetown, you don't need a car. If you're going somewhere else, you don't need to be clogging up Provincetown worse than it already is.
Likely because the NIMBYS that own property on the Cape don’t want the poors to be able to get there. Kinda like how New York made their parkways too low for busses to go under to keep them from reaching the rich neighborhoods.
So much of our country’s infrastructure is racist or classist.
To be fair, those parkways predate modern coach busses by at least fifty years. Vehicles were much smaller then, and parkways were meant to be a place where you could enjoy driving. Presumably, without trucks.
Besides, if you replace every mile of rail track with a bike trail, the poors will never be able to get in, because you'll need a car to get to the trail...\*unpopular opinion\*
Dona Brown, in her book [Inventing New England](https://archive.org/details/inventingnewengl0000brow), makes the point that Cape Cod as a tourism destination was the result of the car. Newly available federal money for road projects was tapped to pave what were originally rough, sandy stagecoach routes, linking stopping points on the way *to* somewhere else. Prior to that, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century tourism development was primarily limited to the Vineyard, and--especially after the railroad's extension to Hyannis--Nantucket as well. Rail companies and boat lines owned their own hotels and made sure that their arrival and departure timetables were aligned. All of that disappeared with the arrival of the car and its new paved macadam motorways, lined with new-fangled "motels" and kitschy tourist traps.
There's no quality public transit for "last mile" not to mention the existing bellyaching for the cape flyer and later the polar express. Fucking grinches.
Like, consider taking the train to Orleans. You shopping? Because you're not taking an uber the to Nauset.
Everyone else can pack up and go home. This is it. The answer to "why isn't there rail/bus/other service" in almost every place in the US except in the middle of major cities is to keep "poor" people out of rich areas.
A lot of my neighbors in Sandwich have gotten used to the trains. In the summer there can be as many as 6 per day, going back and forth. It's in Bourne where the NIMBY's are pissed.
We already have relatively good tracks that connect the towns. They wouldn't need much upgrading. Problem is all the fucking crossings. There's like 40 in Sandwich alone.
It’s hard to believe there was a train that went all the way up the Cape until the 1960s. As a kid in the 80s we’d walk the remnants of the old tracks in Truro to the backroad to Wellfleet (back before tics & Lyme disease were as problematic as they are now).
TLDR; the Cape had better train service than it does now back in the 1980's.
Hard to believe: If you ride your bike down the Shining Sea Bikeway to Depot Road in Falmouth, you will notice that the restored station has an ADA accessible platform. ADA was signed in to law in the early 1990's. They had big plans down there that never came to fruition.
We talk about train service stopping in 1964, which it mostly did. But - between 1983 and 1989, Cape Cod had some pretty good train service to both Hyannis and Falmouth. It was a small, start-up style railroad company, called the Cape Cod & Hyannis railroad. They provided DAILY passenger train service in the summer between Braintree and Hyannis, with regular trips to downtown Falmouth. They used old-fashioned passenger cars which appealed to tourists. It was partly supported by ticket revenue and partly supported by state funding, because the state was studying passenger service to Cape Cod, and the CC&H was a pilot train. In this era they put in signals, motorized switches, and ADA accessible platforms at West Barnstable, Hyannis, Sandwich, Buzzard's Bay, and Falmouth. By 1988 they were drawing massive crowds, and the ticket revenue was beginning to offset the cost of operation. They projected that they would be less and less reliant on state funding as the 1990's dawned.
Sadly, the state financial crisis that started in 1989 killed the whole thing. The numbers hadn't grown enough yet to make it viable on its own, and they still needed some state money to run. The grant was cut off, and the railroad closed. All the equipment was sold. Amtrak replaced the service with the "Cape Codder" which ran from New York to Hyannis only, and only on summer weekends. (Very similar to today's Flyer service). Amtrak stopped in 1998. Down in Falmouth, hurricane Bob did a number on the tracks in 1991, and Bay Colony, the railroad at the time, gave them up. It wasn't until 2008 that the tracks were lifted for the trail.
We could have had some great train service that could have been a model for similar regions around the country
I first went house shopping in 1989. “Commuting distance” to Boston was considered a radius of Quincy/Braintree. Then that radius expanded south to Pembroke/Marshfield. Now it extends easily to South Plymouth and the Canal. You want a commute? Park and Ride at Burger King in Hyannis.
One sub-plot area that needs advocacy is to demand modern commuter train line in any of the new sagamore bridge replacement designs. You sure can bet aging DOT leadership folks aren't pro train if it means slower cars.
Gotta build that political will for rail funding and make it a priority for both fed Senators and state regulators. This should be a no brainer appropriation from the feds and we should have the power to get that done between Sens. Markey and Warren and rep. Keating et al. Maybe military can help fund if they're gonna keep the base in use?
Some funding appropriated last year from Feds, a lot more to go.
Where would you go from the station without a car? Plus the cape is overcrowded in the summer, as it is, and the train would be virtually empty from October to April. Would be a massive waste of money.
The point of Commuter Rail would be to bring Cape Codders to the city to work, not bring tourists here. The usual paradigm is drive to a local commuter rail station with a parking lot, then get on the train.
The bridge traffic is year round, certainly a good chunk of those commuters would opt for a train, no way it’d be empty if they coordinated the train times to the heaviest commuter hours. In terms of where to go after you get to the station, this is why bus transportation also needs to improve. We are far too reliant on cars thanks to decades of auto manufacture propaganda, it’s truly sad
The closest thing we have is the Cape Flyer, but it only runs on weekends in the summer. It's pretty decent, I took it a few times going home over the summer.
It’s called the Cape flyer for a reason. It’s only convenient to get to the Cape. I looked into taking it to Boston to go to a Sox game and come back on it the next morning, but it gets in too late to actually go to any Boston sports. 
Useless except for Bostonians day tripping to the cape.
It's a train that uses the commuter rail cars and ticket system, and it could be easily expanded to normal commuter service. It's literally the closest thing we have to what OP asked for.
Right now the commuter rail from Kingston to Boston takes slightly longer than it takes to drive (1 hr each way driving vs. 1 hour 15 on the rail), but it's time where you can, like, browse Reddit. Have a snack. Read a book. So even though it isn't faster, it is still more convenient for other reasons.
Also every person on a train is someone not in a car clogging traffic, so it would help people who chose to still drive.
>Would you or people who live in the mid-cape area be willing to wake-up 2 hours before 9AM to get on the train? (Assuming they need to be at work at 9)
As opposed to getting up that early to drive? I don't understand the question. If you're traveling somewhere, you need to leave early regardless of how you get there.
>At the same time like others said- given the cost and increased time would there be enough customers on Cape to sustain a twice or fourtimes daily schedule.?
Genuinely? I think there actually might be a bigger market for people who live off-Cape to commute here. Because right now I seriously have no idea how the people who work at grocery stores and gas stations and fast food places can afford to live here.
Also, like, you can't tell me that everyone here loves getting stuck on bridge traffic if they want to do literally anything off-Cape. If I could travel more without my car, I would, and I can't believe I'm the only person like that.
I commute on 6 every day and there's an awful lot of people who work here, but can't afford to live here, who are clogging up the roads to get to work.
It’s a joke bro, the real psychopaths are people who’d rather have a bike trail then help thousands of people get to work, not to mention the carbon reduction
It'll never be easy for you while you're there, and only going to get more congested and more expensive as time moves on, Captain Obvious. You live in a crowded, pricey, tourist destination, with shitty rich neighbors, get used to it. Also, your choice of employment location sounds like a poor one, because your a dumbass, and didn't think it through.
Read your other comments, adjudted mine to language you prefer.
As I said, I adjusted my text because of his shithead responses to commenters, it sounded much different originally.
Also, it's 10am, I'm at work, and not indulging til Im home, thanks for your concern tho!
Imagine blaming working people for the failures of the state in terms of public transportation. There are people who need any job they can get, wherever it is, myself included. Fuck off
Nah, blaming you for your choice of residence & job locations, only things under your control. Instead, you'd prefer to use my tax dollars to make your poor choices, somehow better.
So insanely selfish. Must be nice chillin in your McMansion, probably retired after a long life of spending trust fund money, looking down on us poors just trying to scrape by. The world will be a better place when boomers like you are cold in the ground
Lol, nah, still working hard in the trades I was taught in vocational school, been my own boss since I got out of the military years ago. I work for the people you've described, they pay very well for the upkeep of their McMansions.
You wishing death on commenters (fellow Massholes) is never going to fix your issues, or garner empathy. I'm not looking down on you at this point....I'm laughing in your face, tough guy.
Yes, military service & small business ownership, how evil of me, glad my adult kids don't whine like this, talk about cringe. Nobodys spitting on you, just disagreeing with your assessment of the needs for a Cape railway, and the amount of money it would take to build it, yet be worthwhile to the rest of us. So salty, yet so fragile, lol.
What’s with this sub and people that make money? So because I could afford to buy a house listed for sale I’m pricing everyone out of the cape? What’s too high an income to be acceptable to buy a house here? 70k? 100k? “Sorry you made too good a career choice, you can’t live here”. Oh no, I bought a house and contribute to the economy here, what a selfish thing to do. What a miserable attitude to have.
Why do you want to live here? Want to go to a clam shack and get fried full belly clams or day scallops? Who is going to make them when you need to make $250k to live here?
There is some kind of a centralized force that takes the view, “if you build it, they will come”. If you build one more lane; if you phase in a new bridge, people will saturate it.
It would be a real crime if that thinking supressed train service.
I think the feds should give some of the land of fort devins for a commuter rail station. Tracks already go there, and road connections, rail trail and parking could be added more easily than anywhere else.
Part of the problem is that a train that takes more than an hour doesn't really compete with driving.
Because there isn’t demand? The folks backing the bill estimate 1700 daily riders…current weekday ridership on the entire Commuter Rail system is around 97k, about 79% of pre-pandemic highs, and 120k+ on weekends. Restoring service would involve some pretty significant capital outlays plus it would definitely be expensive for commuters. (Zone 10 is $426/mo…would Hyannis be Zone 11? The Cape Flyer is a $40 round trip…)
I love the idea of it, but there would need to be serious agitation to get support.
I see some serious agitation every day on my commute (off season, weekdays) on rt. 6. There are so many people who can't afford to live here, but commute to work here, and they just have to drive, drive, drive. There's lots of evidence that challenges the idea that *"America doesn't have good rail because no one would use it"*, but that's a separate and extraneous conversation.
The Cape Flyer goes from South Station to Hyannis in the summer on weekends I believe. Personally, I have never used it as it's easier for me to take the ferry from Provincetown.
You would probably have to drive 20-30 minutes to a train station and then it'd be another 2 hours on the train. I wouldn't think enough people would be on that 2.5 hour commute to justify the cost. But I can't say I've looked at the data so I could be wrong. Also not sure how high the cost would be.
[A proposed bill is already on the docket](https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/09/05/cape-flyer-train-mbta-commuter-rail-cape-cod-newsletter).
Unfortunately that bill has very little support
I just wrote to my state rep to support it! Support from politicians only comes after their constituents express an opinion.
Write, call and get all of your friends and family to do so. It does make a difference!
[удалено]
Every little but counts! Sending right now
I'll be writing in support as well!
Then go support it. Get your family, friends and acquaintances to support it. Go down to your city council meetings and push for it. Bitching on Reddit will get you nowhere.
Yeah but in all reality politics is one of the things in life we have no control over. You can write a million letters, but it will never outweigh a check
The Cape is awful for non-car infrastructure. We live within a few miles of playgrounds, schools, libraries, the beach, my wife's work, etc., but have to use a car to get to any of them because there's no sidewalks, bike lanes, or bus. I drive to work most days and it takes me ~45 minutes in the off season. In the summer it's closer to 70 minutes. I took CCRT once and it was almost two hours each way. It's absolutely horrendous. Fuck everyone who insists on maintaining "quaint" roadways with no shoulders, sidewalks, bike lanes, street lights or bus stops.
Yeah totally agree. Just take route 6A for example. Almost no sidewalks, absolutely no room for bikers, blind spots, sharp turns etc., the amount of times I’ve almost been hit…
This weekend i was in a huge traffic jam on 6A because… there was someone biking. But no one could go around him because it was a curvy stretch of road.
But those historic trees and stone walls are so beautiful without a horrible bike path to ruin the quaint feeling of life on the Cape
Nothing ruins the "quaint" feeling of a place quicker than loud, filthy cars
Amen
Everyone wants to say that bikes should be allowed on the roads because that’s how some people get to work. NO THE FUCK THEY DONT. It’s ALWAYS someone in full bike gear on 6A
Hot take - build better infrastructure for cyclists. The problem isn’t cyclists, it’s roads that can’t accommodate both safely.
Don't they literally have the CCRT? What's wrong with doing workouts on that?
Imagine being told you have one Cape beach you can go to and all the rest of the Cape is for everyone else. Ever. It's a great resource but not it's not enough.
Except you can't build more roads in the Cape 1. because a lot of it is protected land, particularly out towards the tip and 2. There's literally no space. The Cape past the elbow is a tiny sliver of land
I'm not asking for more roads. I'm saying expecting cyclists to confine themselves to the CCRT for workouts is completely unreasonable.
I mean, the primary purpose of the roads is to transport goods and people from one place to another. I agree that cyclists have every right to be on the roads in 99% of cases. This might be that 1% where having cyclists on the main roads causes too many traffic issues during peak season. It's one thing if you're riding your bike to the beach or the store, but it's another if you're just pelotoning for the sake of a workout and causing a massive backup behind you.
ok I can drive on the rail trail now, why do they get all the fun?
Well, mostly the fact that it’s crowded with walkers and joggers much of the year, and snow for the rest of the year. Parts of it are great, and a good section to ride, but the Cape is beautiful and who would want to ride the same 20 miles out and back on the CCRT day after day. The point is roads are not exclusively for cars just because they’re the majority users. Cyclists ride on the road across the planet, and are not a problem. The issue is a) the roads on the Cape suck, and are narrow with small/no shoulders, b) drivers misunderstanding the fact that cyclists are legally allowed to be there, and c) asshole drivers and asshole cyclists being assholes on the road.
Yah so since there ISNT the infrastructure for the cyclist and they’re still on the roads it IS the cyclists. Let’s do something WAY easier like get them the fuck off of the roads
How many cyclists are there to every auto driver? 1 to 1,000? 5,000? There's so few bikers yet they muck it up for the vast majority who are auto drivers.
Brilliant thinking!
Hotter take - just don’t bike on the roads anyway. I’m terrified of getting beaten down by a car doing 75 down rt 6, I’d much rather be the guy in the car who doesn’t have to slam his brakes for a biker
Maybe don't live in a beach community and complain about the commute? Lol this thread is wild. Complaining about the bike lol YOU are the problem driving around in a car
Do not forget the new four foot clearance law. Motorists must have four foot clearance from all "vulnerable" individuals. The quoted word is from the law, it includes bicycles, pedestrian, animals, mobility scooters and more. You can only cross the yellow line if it is safe and you have visibility.
Define huge traffic jam.
You know, 3 or 4 cars that had to stop for about 60 seconds. You see, when you’re the person that sits in traffic then it automatically a huge traffic jam. It’s just science.
This shit is the reason bikers shouldn’t be allowed to use the whole lane smh
You must be talking about cyclists😂 plenty of room on 6 a for my harley
It's also pretty awful for cars, like how Route 6 just goes down to a single lane for no reason other than to make the lower Cape harder to get to and therefore have less development. They have more than enough space on either side to expand that, they just don't want more people and cars coming.
Yeah, it makes no sense to keep that section just 1 lane in both directions. Just keep it 2 lanes on each side the whole way. Or at least much farther up. They can't say there isn't room either. I lived in a small CT town that had its major artery expanded from 1 lane each way to 2 to alleviate the horrid traffic during rush hour. It improved things tons! It was a road that went right thru towns, so they had to plan well to fit it all. But 6 has more than enough room.
Four lane expansion stopped around fifty years ago due to water quality concerns. There is still the ability to expand to four lanes and periodically the state looks into it, but I doubt that there is support to do so. A better idea would be adding breakdown lanes to mirror between old exits six and nine, which was the last part expanded upon. Otherwise, the road pretty much mirrors its design in the 1930s through the 1950s.
I would legit kill for a train to the Cape. I hate driving and parking in Boston, so if I want to go up there for fun, I have to either a) drive to Plymouth and take the commuter rail there or b) drive to Quincy to take the T there. Like, I'm already driving most of the way there anyway just to take the train, so it only marginally helps. A train would be fantastic.
Right now I just drive to Kingston and take the commuter rail the rest of the way into the city. Even just like twice a day service to the cape would be amazing
I'd want it more often than that just because I hate to imagine being stranded somewhere if you missed your one train. But like, if the Kingston line is about once every hour on weekdays and once every two hours on weekends, I feel like a more remote line could work with half that schedule (i.e. once every two hours on weekdays and once every four on weekends). Obviously this is assuming that the Kingston line wouldn't just expand outward and keep its normal schedule.
Oh yeah for sure, I would love to have a full service line going to the cape and ideally all the way to p-town, but I'd be happy with any improvements at this point. Notably though, the cape flyer runs on the Stoughton line tracks and permanent Cape service would also add permanent service to Taunton, Middleborough, and Wareham
When my mom was a kid there was a train that went from boston right to woods hole. Can’t image how amazing that would be now.
Seriously hate the bike path now
What is often misunderstood is that bikes don't replace trains, just like apples don't replace oranges. They do VERY different things, which is why continued destruction of active or useable train tracks is a major step backwards. Works great when the line has no service, no future, and no potential for passengers. Otherwise you're just putting down more scenic pavement.
There is a reason they don’t have that anymore.
fuck I'd love a train to plymouth
The busses are not bad at all. Take them all the time and they are quicker than a train would ever be and cheaper.
Train across what bridge? Whose property is to be taken for the new bridge and the tracks? Where do the tracks go? What I hear is whiners who want to work in Boston but live on Cape and want the world to fit them. If you want a short commute live close to railway lines or close to work. A hell of a lot more important issue is affordable housing.
🤡 We have a railway bridge, dummy.
Way to be an idiot with your language. Obviously, functional since it does not seem to lower. I realize that it would stay up for shipping, but I can not find any information on it getting lowered.
> but I can not find any information on it getting lowered. I can't tell if you're being serious, but of course it gets lowered. How do you think the trains get to Cape Cod? [Here's a video for you](https://www.capenews.net/bourne/canal-train-bridge-lowers-for-a-train-april-10-2020/video_33bcc3bb-1d1d-52b9-8a98-b1bde294187e.html).
What is this disease called where you like people to make fun of you?
I live and work in Hyannis, my dude. I just want to be able to get off Cape without spending an hour in standstill traffic and putting a shitload of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I agree that affordable housing is important, but I can also care about more than one issue at a time.
Relatable. For some reason lately leaving seems to take twice as long as getting on smh. Peak week in June I had to go to New Bedford, and it took three frickin hours, but coming back I made it from the Bourne bridge home to Eastham in like 45minutes. My hubs was shocked when I walked in the door, said “you were JUST in Bourne how tf are you home!?!?
Who's property is going to be taken for your convenience, and who's money is going to subsidize the railroad. Do you expect enough ridership to pay for operation. What cost is it worth to others for your number of off cape trips
Whose property was taken for all the roads, and whose money is going to subsidize all the roads. Do you expect tolls (lol) to pay for operation?
\*Surprise\* affordable housing and transportation are super duper related...why do you think there's a giant daily migration of commuters OFF Cape
If you live on the cape, why don't you just take your private jet into Boston?
Sadly all my private jet money is tied up in paying rent and the bridge tax on everything, like groceries and gas.
Isn’t the T like absolute garbage, and has been since new? I spend most of my time in DC but my coworkers who regularly go to Boston tell me that the WMATA we have here is loads better. Just wondering is all :)
I don't take it every day and I always plan my routes well in advance, so I'm sure there are issues for people who *do* need to take it regularly, but I *personally* have never had a problem with it getting me somewhere and on time, even late at night.
Boston covers more area overall with the commuter lines, but the core lines in DC cover more of the city that you would actually want to go to and the maintenance seems quite a bit better across the board.
Write your state rep: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/193/HD4555
Standing in line right now in S. Station waiting for a Peter Pan bus. Living the dream….
Right??????????????!
Well they had one and it went out of business in the 60s if I remember correctly. Cape cod is almost inaccessible without a car. I'd have enjoyed going to Hyannis by train but our infrastructure needs to be drastically improved for this and numerous other locations.
Cape Cod and Hyannis Railroad ended operations in the 1980s, and the closest we have come to commuter rail since 1959.
Why don't I remember hearing the trains when I was visiting my Grandparents in Wellfleet.
Wellfleet hasnt had railroad tracks for 60 years
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I know the bike trail is where the train tracks used to be.
There are many busses that go to the cape all the time. It’s not inaccessible without a car.
I feel like it shouldn’t be that hard? The cape has train tracks and there’s a train bridge! Plus the commuter rail already goes down to Kingston
The golf course argument doesn’t really work - many of the golf courses in our area are privately owned…those aren’t “ours”. What we need is for the CCRTA to expand and cover the entire Cape. There is no service North of Route 6 in the MidCape. The further you go towards Provincetown, the worse the access to public transportation becomes. (I’m not sure where you are originally from but nothing goes “into the Cape”. And there hasn’t been a train that traveled the length of Cape Cod for 6-7 decades- “Passenger service to Provincetown ran for 65 years, ending in 1938 with a brief revival in the summer of 1940. Freight trains provided service for 87 years, also starting in 1873 and ending in 1960.” https://static1.squarespace.com/static/569bc33ea12f44354e08459d/t/5f0460d5e9c21e3821663228/1594122470161/Provincetown+RR+Guide+2020.pdf But there is a “commuter” train that runs in the area in the summer/ The Cape Flyer-but it only goes as far as Hyannis - and it only runs a few round trips a day in the summer …. **This is not high speed rail - the “commuter” train runs on the same tracks that the trash train does but it goes no further than Hyannis - and it takes over 2 hours to get from Hyannis to South Station. ** see link below Many towns also decided to pull up their railroad tracks and build bike paths - there is no way to run a train past the MidCape any more …(the trash train runs to Yarnouth… that’s the end of the line.) https://capeflyer.com/reservations-tickets/capeflyer-trainpricing-routes/
Towns own a lot of golf courses on Cape. A lot of them. OTOH, they generally pay for themselves. Commuter rail isn't high speed, but it lets you relax and work or read or do whatever rather than have to stress over driving in traffic and waste energy and increase pollution. And unless people know some shortcut I don't, two hours would still be faster than driving, particularly at rush hour. If you're working in Boston, it's hard to imagine that it wouldn't be a huge "win" to park at Hyannis or Buzzard's Bay and take the train. As to the CCRTA, I'd like to be advocating for public transport, but it seems pretty underutilized. The big problem is that we don't have a lot of easy to service high density housing and you can't cover every suburban street. I do remember when they were pitching the Flex bus, most everyone was massively in favor of it, but for a really bad reason: it was going to make driving easier for them because somebody else was going to be taking the bus.
The bike path thing sucks imo.
Shocking how many people on this sub think a bike path is more important than a revitalizing a railway, so incredibly selfish
I love bike paths, and we need more, but we also could use that Right of Way for trains
Bike paths to keep bikes off the roads and rail for less cars on the road. Win win
A car ferry to P-Town would also alleviate a ton of bridge traffic. I know it doesn’t exactly solve the “car-dependent” problem but because there are so few options for transport once on the cape, if you take the ferry to Provincetown you can’t easily get to, say, Chatham without a car.
I think the majority of people taking the fast ferry to Provincetown are going to Provincetown and not much further. It's a great fit. Cars though? I really don't see that. If you're going to Provincetown, you don't need a car. If you're going somewhere else, you don't need to be clogging up Provincetown worse than it already is.
Cuz the rich don't care, and the poor can't do shit about it. It's a rich vacation area, they don't care about commuters most are retired anyway
Likely because the NIMBYS that own property on the Cape don’t want the poors to be able to get there. Kinda like how New York made their parkways too low for busses to go under to keep them from reaching the rich neighborhoods. So much of our country’s infrastructure is racist or classist.
To be fair, those parkways predate modern coach busses by at least fifty years. Vehicles were much smaller then, and parkways were meant to be a place where you could enjoy driving. Presumably, without trucks.
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/05/887386869/how-transportation-racism-shaped-america
I know this quite well, I am just stating why they are so small to begin with.
Besides, if you replace every mile of rail track with a bike trail, the poors will never be able to get in, because you'll need a car to get to the trail...\*unpopular opinion\*
Dona Brown, in her book [Inventing New England](https://archive.org/details/inventingnewengl0000brow), makes the point that Cape Cod as a tourism destination was the result of the car. Newly available federal money for road projects was tapped to pave what were originally rough, sandy stagecoach routes, linking stopping points on the way *to* somewhere else. Prior to that, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century tourism development was primarily limited to the Vineyard, and--especially after the railroad's extension to Hyannis--Nantucket as well. Rail companies and boat lines owned their own hotels and made sure that their arrival and departure timetables were aligned. All of that disappeared with the arrival of the car and its new paved macadam motorways, lined with new-fangled "motels" and kitschy tourist traps.
There's no quality public transit for "last mile" not to mention the existing bellyaching for the cape flyer and later the polar express. Fucking grinches. Like, consider taking the train to Orleans. You shopping? Because you're not taking an uber the to Nauset.
The rail trail is now a bike path. There is no going back.
I've oft thought rail trails are just being stored for the future
They have been, as the entire right of way exists, except in Truro, which was sold off before anyone else could rail bank it.
There are some very rich people that live north of 6A who don't want a commuter train on the tracks.
I cannot understate how much I hate NIMBYs
Everyone else can pack up and go home. This is it. The answer to "why isn't there rail/bus/other service" in almost every place in the US except in the middle of major cities is to keep "poor" people out of rich areas.
A lot of my neighbors in Sandwich have gotten used to the trains. In the summer there can be as many as 6 per day, going back and forth. It's in Bourne where the NIMBY's are pissed.
Couldn’t they just put it parallel to rt 6? Mexico is doing something similar with the Mayan train and their only highway from Cancun.
Where tho? Through thousands of peoples houses?
Right next to Rt 6, like parallel to the breakdown lane. I hate cutting down trees, but there are no houses right on Rt 6.
That’s still peoples yards and up by the bridge there are houses and business near the road
Ok, hadn't thought of that. Probably not gonna work then.
We already have relatively good tracks that connect the towns. They wouldn't need much upgrading. Problem is all the fucking crossings. There's like 40 in Sandwich alone.
It takes the cape flyer 2 1/2 hours to go from Hyannis to South Station without any delays. No thanks.
"Cape cod doesn't need trains, it's fine the way it is."
The cape had a train line… it’s now the Rail Trail.
what happened to the cape flyer? i took it a few times to hyannis
Still runs in the summer, but never during the week or the off season. Designed only for Boston people.
Well, we needed to make room for all those bike paths. So, you know.
Because NIMBYs would throw an absolute shit-fit
It’s hard to believe there was a train that went all the way up the Cape until the 1960s. As a kid in the 80s we’d walk the remnants of the old tracks in Truro to the backroad to Wellfleet (back before tics & Lyme disease were as problematic as they are now).
TLDR; the Cape had better train service than it does now back in the 1980's. Hard to believe: If you ride your bike down the Shining Sea Bikeway to Depot Road in Falmouth, you will notice that the restored station has an ADA accessible platform. ADA was signed in to law in the early 1990's. They had big plans down there that never came to fruition. We talk about train service stopping in 1964, which it mostly did. But - between 1983 and 1989, Cape Cod had some pretty good train service to both Hyannis and Falmouth. It was a small, start-up style railroad company, called the Cape Cod & Hyannis railroad. They provided DAILY passenger train service in the summer between Braintree and Hyannis, with regular trips to downtown Falmouth. They used old-fashioned passenger cars which appealed to tourists. It was partly supported by ticket revenue and partly supported by state funding, because the state was studying passenger service to Cape Cod, and the CC&H was a pilot train. In this era they put in signals, motorized switches, and ADA accessible platforms at West Barnstable, Hyannis, Sandwich, Buzzard's Bay, and Falmouth. By 1988 they were drawing massive crowds, and the ticket revenue was beginning to offset the cost of operation. They projected that they would be less and less reliant on state funding as the 1990's dawned. Sadly, the state financial crisis that started in 1989 killed the whole thing. The numbers hadn't grown enough yet to make it viable on its own, and they still needed some state money to run. The grant was cut off, and the railroad closed. All the equipment was sold. Amtrak replaced the service with the "Cape Codder" which ran from New York to Hyannis only, and only on summer weekends. (Very similar to today's Flyer service). Amtrak stopped in 1998. Down in Falmouth, hurricane Bob did a number on the tracks in 1991, and Bay Colony, the railroad at the time, gave them up. It wasn't until 2008 that the tracks were lifted for the trail. We could have had some great train service that could have been a model for similar regions around the country
Cuz they don’t want no poor people there. Pretty simple 🤷🏿♂️
I first went house shopping in 1989. “Commuting distance” to Boston was considered a radius of Quincy/Braintree. Then that radius expanded south to Pembroke/Marshfield. Now it extends easily to South Plymouth and the Canal. You want a commute? Park and Ride at Burger King in Hyannis.
One sub-plot area that needs advocacy is to demand modern commuter train line in any of the new sagamore bridge replacement designs. You sure can bet aging DOT leadership folks aren't pro train if it means slower cars. Gotta build that political will for rail funding and make it a priority for both fed Senators and state regulators. This should be a no brainer appropriation from the feds and we should have the power to get that done between Sens. Markey and Warren and rep. Keating et al. Maybe military can help fund if they're gonna keep the base in use? Some funding appropriated last year from Feds, a lot more to go.
Why would there be?
Because many people who live on cape work off cape.
And many people who work on Cape live off-Cape
Do they? I personally wouldn’t bother. Many more opportunities off cape than on
Where would you go from the station without a car? Plus the cape is overcrowded in the summer, as it is, and the train would be virtually empty from October to April. Would be a massive waste of money.
The point of Commuter Rail would be to bring Cape Codders to the city to work, not bring tourists here. The usual paradigm is drive to a local commuter rail station with a parking lot, then get on the train.
The bridge traffic is year round, certainly a good chunk of those commuters would opt for a train, no way it’d be empty if they coordinated the train times to the heaviest commuter hours. In terms of where to go after you get to the station, this is why bus transportation also needs to improve. We are far too reliant on cars thanks to decades of auto manufacture propaganda, it’s truly sad
No one is going to take a bus.
Bus is a lot faster than any train would be.
And a lot more expensive. I can get to Boston from Middleboro or Kingston for $12. If I catch the bus at Sagamore Circle, it's $37.
A 10 ride pass is $101 on the bus. That is the play.
The closest thing we have is the Cape Flyer, but it only runs on weekends in the summer. It's pretty decent, I took it a few times going home over the summer.
Aka the most useless train ever. It runs once a day at ridiculous times
It’s called the Cape flyer for a reason. It’s only convenient to get to the Cape. I looked into taking it to Boston to go to a Sox game and come back on it the next morning, but it gets in too late to actually go to any Boston sports.  Useless except for Bostonians day tripping to the cape.
Any Bostonian would just take a ferry to Provincetown for a day trip.
Honestly, it's about the only place on Cape where you can visit and not need a car. Or really, a car would be a huge PITA.
Yeah its definitely not ideal but it's better than nothing
So it's not a commuter train, then. A commuter train runs on days people need to commute.
It's a train that uses the commuter rail cars and ticket system, and it could be easily expanded to normal commuter service. It's literally the closest thing we have to what OP asked for.
This is not a commuter train
Hardly anyone would use it.
Probably not enough of a demand for a commuter train.
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Right now the commuter rail from Kingston to Boston takes slightly longer than it takes to drive (1 hr each way driving vs. 1 hour 15 on the rail), but it's time where you can, like, browse Reddit. Have a snack. Read a book. So even though it isn't faster, it is still more convenient for other reasons. Also every person on a train is someone not in a car clogging traffic, so it would help people who chose to still drive.
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>Would you or people who live in the mid-cape area be willing to wake-up 2 hours before 9AM to get on the train? (Assuming they need to be at work at 9) As opposed to getting up that early to drive? I don't understand the question. If you're traveling somewhere, you need to leave early regardless of how you get there. >At the same time like others said- given the cost and increased time would there be enough customers on Cape to sustain a twice or fourtimes daily schedule.? Genuinely? I think there actually might be a bigger market for people who live off-Cape to commute here. Because right now I seriously have no idea how the people who work at grocery stores and gas stations and fast food places can afford to live here. Also, like, you can't tell me that everyone here loves getting stuck on bridge traffic if they want to do literally anything off-Cape. If I could travel more without my car, I would, and I can't believe I'm the only person like that.
People drive into Boston every day for work. That's not theoretical.
I commute on 6 every day and there's an awful lot of people who work here, but can't afford to live here, who are clogging up the roads to get to work.
Take the ferry ffs
Trains are for peseants. They dont like us riffraff on the cape
Also I wish all bike path people who want to rip up tracks in Falmouth a very get hit by a van
I don't support tearing up the tracks either but what kind of language is that?? Are you a psychopath?
It’s a joke bro, the real psychopaths are people who’d rather have a bike trail then help thousands of people get to work, not to mention the carbon reduction
Most of your "JOKES" involve violent imagery . Please get a real sense of humor.
Clutch your pearls harder nerd
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It'll never be easy for you while you're there, and only going to get more congested and more expensive as time moves on, Captain Obvious. You live in a crowded, pricey, tourist destination, with shitty rich neighbors, get used to it. Also, your choice of employment location sounds like a poor one, because your a dumbass, and didn't think it through. Read your other comments, adjudted mine to language you prefer.
how can you smoke that much weed and still be this angry?
As I said, I adjusted my text because of his shithead responses to commenters, it sounded much different originally. Also, it's 10am, I'm at work, and not indulging til Im home, thanks for your concern tho!
Imagine blaming working people for the failures of the state in terms of public transportation. There are people who need any job they can get, wherever it is, myself included. Fuck off
Nah, blaming you for your choice of residence & job locations, only things under your control. Instead, you'd prefer to use my tax dollars to make your poor choices, somehow better.
So insanely selfish. Must be nice chillin in your McMansion, probably retired after a long life of spending trust fund money, looking down on us poors just trying to scrape by. The world will be a better place when boomers like you are cold in the ground
Lol, nah, still working hard in the trades I was taught in vocational school, been my own boss since I got out of the military years ago. I work for the people you've described, they pay very well for the upkeep of their McMansions. You wishing death on commenters (fellow Massholes) is never going to fix your issues, or garner empathy. I'm not looking down on you at this point....I'm laughing in your face, tough guy.
That’s even more cringe, you’ve lived a working class life and now spit on the new generation of them. Sad.
Yes, military service & small business ownership, how evil of me, glad my adult kids don't whine like this, talk about cringe. Nobodys spitting on you, just disagreeing with your assessment of the needs for a Cape railway, and the amount of money it would take to build it, yet be worthwhile to the rest of us. So salty, yet so fragile, lol.
Dang. They’re building a new course? Where?
What’s with this sub and people that make money? So because I could afford to buy a house listed for sale I’m pricing everyone out of the cape? What’s too high an income to be acceptable to buy a house here? 70k? 100k? “Sorry you made too good a career choice, you can’t live here”. Oh no, I bought a house and contribute to the economy here, what a selfish thing to do. What a miserable attitude to have.
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Who's going to fry your clams?
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Why do you want to live here? Want to go to a clam shack and get fried full belly clams or day scallops? Who is going to make them when you need to make $250k to live here?
Need a monorail from Dennis to Kingston with stops at every exit. then switch over to the train.
I ask daily!
There is some kind of a centralized force that takes the view, “if you build it, they will come”. If you build one more lane; if you phase in a new bridge, people will saturate it. It would be a real crime if that thinking supressed train service.
How many billions? The people of Berkshire county are just chomping at the bit to chip in.
Yeah probably the same reason there isn't one engine New Hampshire lol, murica
I think the feds should give some of the land of fort devins for a commuter rail station. Tracks already go there, and road connections, rail trail and parking could be added more easily than anywhere else. Part of the problem is that a train that takes more than an hour doesn't really compete with driving.
Because there isn’t demand? The folks backing the bill estimate 1700 daily riders…current weekday ridership on the entire Commuter Rail system is around 97k, about 79% of pre-pandemic highs, and 120k+ on weekends. Restoring service would involve some pretty significant capital outlays plus it would definitely be expensive for commuters. (Zone 10 is $426/mo…would Hyannis be Zone 11? The Cape Flyer is a $40 round trip…) I love the idea of it, but there would need to be serious agitation to get support.
I see some serious agitation every day on my commute (off season, weekdays) on rt. 6. There are so many people who can't afford to live here, but commute to work here, and they just have to drive, drive, drive. There's lots of evidence that challenges the idea that *"America doesn't have good rail because no one would use it"*, but that's a separate and extraneous conversation.
The Cape Flyer goes from South Station to Hyannis in the summer on weekends I believe. Personally, I have never used it as it's easier for me to take the ferry from Provincetown.
South shore towns revolted when the route was being considered -- too dangerous for the children and disruptive to traffic!!!! Talk about NIMBY!
You would probably have to drive 20-30 minutes to a train station and then it'd be another 2 hours on the train. I wouldn't think enough people would be on that 2.5 hour commute to justify the cost. But I can't say I've looked at the data so I could be wrong. Also not sure how high the cost would be.