Bad roads: MassDOT offers plan for Route 28 improvements through Yarmouth

SOUTH YARMOUTH — The state wants to build a roundabout at the intersection of Route 28 and Main Street in West Yarmouth and install a traffic signal at Town Brook Road to improve road safety.

Massachusetts Department of Transportation officials presented the plan at a Tuesday evening meeting with the Yarmouth Select Board.

Several design plans were showcased throughout the presentation. Officials estimate the project will cost roughly $22 million but expect it to grow to around $30 million by the time of completion.

The overall aim said John Tamburrini, project manager at GPI/Greenman-Pedersen Inc. who is a member of the MassDOT design team, is to improve bicycle and pedestrian access, update the safety and geometry of certain intersections and upgrade the drainage and sewer system along the corridor as well.

“This project will improve safety for all modes of transportation while staying consistent with MassDOT’s healthy transportation policy directive, which encourages and promotes multimodal accommodation with the long-term goal of increasing the number of trips made by walking, biking and transit,” Tamburrini said at the meeting.

Tamburrini said improving this corridor is imperative to reduce the high number of vehicular crashes along Route 28 in Yarmouth. In an analysis of state crash data, the Times ranked Route 28 in Yarmouth and West Yarmouth as the fifth worst stretch of road on the Cape.

From January 2022 through July 2023, there were 217 crashes along this corridor, according to MassDOT crash data analyzed by the Times.

Local officials welcome the effort to make the road safer.

“It's clear issues of traffic congestion, traffic safety, have increased in the Route 28 corridor, which, you know, are critical transportation links for the town of Yarmouth,” Yarmouth Town Administrator Robert Whritenour said in an interview with the Times. “And also, it serves as the commercial center for our community.”

Whritenour said the road, which is a state highway, needs infrastructure and aesthetic improvements to fix public safety concerns while preserving the village integrity of West Yarmouth.

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Not everyone a fan of roundabout at Main Street and Route 28

State planners said a roundabout at the Iyannough Road at Main Street/Route 28 intersection on the border with Barnstable is a good idea.

“The roundabout alternative improved safety, improved the geometry through the roundabout for all users and provided improved capacity,” Steve Babalis, part of the MassDOT design team, told Select Board members.

Michael Hayes, a divorce mediation attorney whose offices are right at the intersection, said in the meeting a roundabout would make traffic worse, due to the way traffic gets backed up going into Yarmouth from Hyannis.

“I (have looked) at this intersection every day of my life for the past 50 years,” Hayes said. “If you put in a roundabout, whether with a two-lane intersection, or a five-lane intersection, all the traffic is going to spin around and there's only going to be a handful of cars that can come out of the intersection onto East Main Street, and that's going to back up the whole works.”

Friction from neighbors about Town Brook Road plans

The other intersection recommended for improvements was Route 28/Main Street at Town Brook Road.

Much to the initial consternation of several residents in attendance, the presentation recommended installing a traffic signal, as well as updating the number of lanes.

Babalis said MassDOT recommends adding a shared-use path, right and left turn lanes into and out of Town Brook Road from Route 28. He said that Main Street/Route 28 after Town Brook Road would merge into one lane as well.

“With this combination, we found that this alternative provides not just the safety benefits associated with improved geometry, but the operational benefits are necessary for traffic flow support along this corridor,” he said during the meeting.

Susan Sulkoski, a West Yarmouth resident who said she was at the meeting representing the Hampton Inn and Suites Cape Cod-West Yarmouth, said she has “nightmares” about the two lanes merging into one lane after taking a right out of Town Brook Road onto Route 28/Main Street because of the Iyannough Road and Yarmouth Road intersection.

“The Iyannough Road and Yarmouth Road-Camp Street intersection, used to merge from two lanes into one near the railroad tracks, now it still merges two lanes into one, it's just further down toward the rotaries,” Sulkoski said. “It's still a mess, to put it politely.”

Improvements to accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists

Plans call for installing multimodal improvements including, bike paths, shoulder buffers and pedestrian walkways.

“It's a pretty consistent cross-section the rest of the way (along the roadway), where we're going to have —  traveling in each direction — five-foot shoulders, concrete sidewalks on the northern side of the road, and a shared use path with a five-foot grass buffer on the southern side of the road,” Tamburrini said.

Tom Currier, MassDOT project manager, said May 2028 is likely when this project will see construction, at which time it will take three to four years to be completed. He said utility work might be done ahead of that date in order to “speed things up,” but that would likely be in 2027 at the earliest.

“I know the town’s anxious to see that happen a lot faster than that,” Currier said during the meeting. “I don't envision that being possible, and I don't know if it will really do the town much good (to get the utility work done sooner), but we will continue to see if that would certainly help the speed of the construction.”

Walker Armstrong reports on all things transportation and the Joint Base Cape Cod military base. Contact him at WArmstrong@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jd__walker.

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This article originally appeared on Aberdeen News: MassDOT presents plan for Route 28 improvements through Yarmouth