Cape Cod Transportation

Cape Cod is connected to the mainland by a pair of canal-spanning highway bridges from Bourne and Sagamore that were constructed in the 1930s, and a vertical-lift railroad bridge. The limited number of access points to the peninsula can result in large traffic backups during the tourist season.

The entire Cape is roughly bisected lengthwise by U.S. Route 6, locally known as the Mid-Cape Highway and officially as the Grand Army of the Republic Highway.

Commercial air service to Cape Cod operates out of Barnstable Municipal Airport and Provincetown Municipal Airport. Several bus lines service the Cape. There are ferry connections from Boston to Provincetown, as well as from Hyannis and Woods Hole to the islands.

Cape Cod has a public transportation network comprising buses operated by three different companies, a rail line, taxis and paratransit services.

Bus

Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority (CCRTA) operates a public bus system called the Breeze, which covers almost the entire Cape. They have three year-round long-distance routes:

The Sealine, which covers the western half of Cape Cod between Hyannis and Falmouth
The H20, which runs between Hyannis and Orleans
The Flex, which covers the Outer Cape, from Harwich to Provincetown. The Flex permits off-route drop-offs and pickups of up to 3/4 miles for an increased fare.

There are also two Barnstable/Hyannis local routes that run year round. In the summer, additional local routes run in Falmouth/Woods Hole (WOOSH), Provincetown, and Yarmouth, as well as a free beach shuttle in Hyannis. CCRTA also operates the B-Bus paratransit service.

Long distance bus service is operated by Plymouth and Brockton Street Railway, with regular service to Boston and Logan Airport, as well as less frequent service to Provincetown. Peter Pan Bus Lines also runs long distance service to Providence T.F. Green Airport and New York City.

Rail

Regular passenger rail service through Cape Cod ended in 1959. In 1978, the tracks east of South Dennis were abandoned and replaced with the very popular bicycle trail, known as the Cape Cod Rail Trail. Another bike trail, the Shining Sea Bikeway, was built over tracks between Woods Hole and Falmouth in 1975; construction to extend this path to North Falmouth over 6.3 miles (10.1 km) of inactive rail bed began in April 2008. Active freight service remains in the Upper Cape area in Sandwich in Bourne, largely due to a trash transfer station located at Massachusetts Military Reservation. In 1986, Amtrak ran a seasonal service in the summer from New York City to Hyannis called the Cape Codder. From 1988, Amtrak and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation increased service to a daily frequency. Since its demise in 1996, there have been periodic discussions about reinstating passenger rail service from Boston to reduce car traffic to and from the Cape, with officials in Bourne seeking to extend MBTA Commuter Rail service from Middleboro to Buzzards Bay.

Cape Cod Central Railroad operates passenger train service on Cape Cod. The service is primarily tourist oriented and includes a dinner train. The scenic route between Downtown Hyannis and the Cape Cod Canal is about 2.5 hours round trip.

Taxi

Taxicabs are plentiful, with several different companies operating out of different parts of the Cape. Fares for a trip between Downtown Hyannis and Barnstable Village can be as high as $20-$25. In Provincetown, the taxi companies charge per person rather than by distance.

Copyright (c) 2009 brianserpone.com. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.

Brian Serpone can be reached in the Harwich office of Today Real Estate at 508-568-8104.