As Bridge Replacement Work Nears, Officials Stand Ready

Imagine a Sagamore Bridge with wider lanes, dedicated lanes of travel on and off Cape and space for pedestrian and bicycle traffic.

It’s coming sooner than you think.

In July, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation unveiled renderings for a new Sagamore Bridge, bringing the long-discussed replacement project closer to fruition. In 2028, ground is expected to be broken on the project, which calls for two separate spans dedicated to bringing traffic on and off Cape. Other features include 12-foot vehicle lanes, an improvement over the narrow 10-foot lanes on the existing bridge, as well as a 14-foot wide lane for pedestrian and bicycle travel.

“These are our literal connections to the rest of the world,” said Paul Niedzwiecki, CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce. “They are iconic bridges, so this is going to be the biggest single infrastructure project that the Cape’s going to see for the next 100 years.”

The bridge itself will be constructed remotely and brought to the site via the Cape Cod Canal for installation, said Steven Tupper, deputy director of the Cape Cod Commission. Substantial completion is still about a decade away.

For Niedzwiecki, who has followed developments on the project closely since its inception dating back to his former role as executive director of the Cape Cod Commission, there’s urgency to replace the aging Saganore and Bourne bridges, which opened in 1935.

“This is a real inflection point for this process,” he said. “This is really where it gets real. We’re really happy we’re at this point, because the replacement of the bridges is the greatest known existential threat to every resident and visitor on Cape Cod. Those bridges have to be replaced.”

The bridges have been subject to regular maintenance in recent years that have resulted in lane closures. That has only exacerbated the ongoing traffic issues facing motorists trying to cross to and from the Cape. 

Niedzwiecki said the region can’t handle those continued closures. In the case of the Bourne Bridge, which is also slated for future replacement, significant maintenance would be needed by 2029 if it were decided not to fully replace it. That would require a full closure of the bridge for as much as six months, Niedzwiecki said, which would come at a significant economic impact, he added. He cited Cape Cod Commission data that estimated the Cape would lose about a third of its business during that extended closure.

“What we’re trying to do is avoid an economic armageddon,” he said.

In Orleans, Amanda Converse, the town’s economic development coordinator and public information officer, sits on the Barnstable County economic development commission, which has been closely following the project. She also cited “down-Cape impacts” related to bridge work as a topic of discussion among the commission.

But with new bridges designed to last the next 100 years, Mass DOT and the Army Corps of Engineers are aiming to give motorists the dependability and security that’s been lacking in the existing structures as they continue to age.

“The overall focus, the idea that really drove the design, is reliability,” Tupper said. “You’re going to get reliable bridges built with maintenance in mind, that are up to modern standards in terms of lane width, shoulder width and bicycle and pedestrian accommodations.”

Traffic remains top of mind for many people as it relates to talk of replacing the bridges. Tupper said while new infrastructure won’t fully address traffic issues related to the bridges, the proposed design of the Sagamore Bridge will smooth out areas near the bridge most prone to congestion. The new design calls for a dedicated lane for merging on and off the bridge, for instance.

The twin span design, in addition to the wider 12-foot lanes, will also help move traffic over the bridge and hopefully reduce congestion at the approaches, Niedzwiecki said. 

“The bridge itself is a literal bottleneck,” he said. “The approaches to and from the bridges can handle more capacity than the bridges themselves. So to redesign the bridges so that they can carry the same level of capacity will help a lot.”

Brewster Police Chief Heath Eldredge, who co-chairs the Barnstable County regional emergency management committee, said better traffic flow will hopefully make it easier for public safety resources to make their way on and off Cape. He also envisions improved overall traffic safety with the new Sagamore design through the twin spans, which would largely eliminate the threat of head-on collisions. 

But there are also a lot of unknowns about how bridge construction will impact residents  and visitors to the Cape in the short term. Eldredge said there could be the potential for traffic patterns to shift as a result of the work. 

“I think even in the last year or two, anecdotally at least, we’ve seen more people coming, say, Thursday to Monday,” he said. “So will this potentially impact people to extend those weekends to make them longer weekends?”

There may only be so much that can be done to avoid summer traffic, but Niedzwiecki said he doesn’t anticipate that the bridge work will add significantly to what already exists during the peak season. Mass DOT has committed to keep two lanes of traffic open in each direction for the duration of construction, he said.

“Given the size of the project, I think there will be minimal traffic disruption associated with construction,” he said.

Tupper said the commission continues to visit towns and hold information sessions to update residents about the bridge project and answer their questions. That includes an upcoming session at the Brooks Free Library in Harwich on Oct. 8 at 10 a.m.

Questions and concerns have varied from town to town, Tupper said. On the Upper Cape in Bourne and Sagamore, for instance, there has been particular interest in traffic circulation near the bridge. Further out on the Lower Cape, he said, people want to know about how the construction will trickle down to their communities.

“Audience by audience, it gets more specific,” he said of public feedback about the bridge project.

For Brewster Town Manager Peter Lombardi, one of the issues worth looking at is how town employees who live over the bridge will be impacted. 

“At this point, about 15 percent of our public safety workforce (fire and police) reside on the other side of the bridge — so we are hoping that the approach to traffic management is well planned and executed,” he said in an email.

Tupper said educating the broader public about the project will be key, especially as work advances out of the design phase and into construction. As that nears, he said the Cape Cod Commission will further its efforts to make more detailed information available to the public.

“Once we get more real detail in terms of the construction phasing, that’s when everyone will want to stay up to date in terms of what’s happening,” he said.

Construction of the new Sagamore Bridge won’t be without its disruptions. But Cape officials say the long-term benefits stand to vastly outweigh the short-term inconveniences. Niedzwiecki said for the Cape Chamber, that means the ability to continue to support residents and visitors alike.

“It means we’re going to be able to continue to support the regional economy the way we have been,” he said. “Because the real issue is what happens if we don’t replace the bridges.”

Eldredge on Tuesday attended a quarterly meeting of the Cape and Islands Bridge Coalition, which represents the interests of approximately 50 groups and organizations from the Cape and Islands, South Coast and Metro Boston. 

“It seems that everything continues to be on the timeline that they set out,” he said. “Hopefully it will continue that way, as they’re still in the pre-construction phase, and [when they] get into the actual construction phase.”