'Totally outdated.' Top 5 most dangerous roadways on Cape Cod: Here's what the data shows

Downtown Falmouth looks like the quintessential Cape Cod town. Shops and restaurants with steeply pitched roofs, walls clad in shingles and dormer windows line Main Street.

But another feature that has become quintessentially Cape Cod over the years has made its way into this Falmouth hotspot: traffic.

“I loathe having to drive here,” said South Dennis resident Dani Secher, general manager of The Black Dog General Store in Falmouth on Main Street, or Route 28.

According to vehicle crash data, this stretch of roadway in Falmouth is the most dangerous on Cape Cod.

Between January 2022 and July 2023, there have been 7,502 vehicle crashes on the Cape, according to state Department of Transportation data analyzed by the Times. From that analysis, the Times has identified the top five most dangerous stretches of road on Cape Cod for vehicle crashes.

'Tremendous reluctance' to upgrade Cape Cod traffic infrastructure

Mark Forest, chair of the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners and a member of the intermunicipal transportation collaboration the Cape Cod Metropolitan Planning Organization, said upgrading and developing new traffic infrastructure to fit the needs of a growing population can be tricky because locals and visitors don’t want to “urbanize” their respective towns.

“There has been, over the years, a tremendous reluctance to expand infrastructure and roadways to make our roads systems look more urban,” Forest said. “People are worried about losing the sort of rural seaside charm, and that has at times made it difficult to get roadway improvements done in certain areas.”

Despite a need to preserve the integrity of towns on the Cape, Forest said the infrastructure in place can’t serve the current volumes of visitors and residents, leading to increased risks to public safety.

Intersections are not where the most car crashes occur

And while many might assume traffic intersections are ground zero for the majority of vehicle crashes, the data shows sections of roadways are actually the source of most collisions by a wide margin. In 2022, there were 2,807 crashes on Cape Cod roadways. In 2023, there have been 1,313 crashes as of July.

Four-way intersections, on the other hand, made up only about 14% of the overall number of crashes between 2022 and July 2023 — as collisions on roadways made up a little over half of the overall crashes in that timespan.

1. In Falmouth, Route 28 from Jones Road to Fresh Pond Road fork

“You can't put 10 pounds of something in a five-pound bag,” Secher, who was born on Cape Cod, said. “And that's basically what's happening with the amount of traffic or tourism that there is on these roads, they weren't really designed for this much traffic.”

Between January 2022 and July 2023, there were 477 vehicle crashes along this roughly six-mile corridor of Route 28 in Falmouth — from the Jones Road intersection to the Fresh Pond Road fork, according to the crash data analyzed by the Times.

2. Route 28 in Barnstable from Osterville West Barnstable Road to the Airport Rotary

Next up on the list of the Cape's most dangerous roadways is Route 28 from Osterville West Barnstable Road in Centerville to the Airport Rotary in Hyannis.

From January 2022 to July 2023, 356 crashes were recorded in this roughly 5 1/2 mile corridor — 232 in 2022 and 121 crashes in 2023 so far. About a quarter of the total number of crashes in this corridor occurred just within the stretch of road between Old Stage Road and the Main Street fork in Hyannis.

On Thursday at 9 a.m., a bumper-to-bumper line of cars inched along the single-lane roadway between Lumbert Mill Road and King Arthur Drive — various types of oak trees encase this stretch of Route 28 and make it feel more like a forest than a busy thoroughfare.

Steven Tupper, deputy director of the Cape Cod Commission, said a number of safety challenges contribute to this corridor's high crash rate.

“We've seen a number of crashes, and unfortunately fatalities, from bicyclists, pedestrians and vehicles as well,” Tupper said. “There’s just a lot of conflicting movements, a number of challenging intersections, very high volume roadways, and many segments of which are not well designed.”

Two of the top 5 most dangerous intersections the Cape Cod Commission named in their 2022 Barnstable County High Crash Locations report were along this corridor. They were Route 28 at Bearses Way and Route 28 at Osterville West Barnstable Road.

Tupper said since the report was issued, both intersections have been improved with new traffic lights, pedestrian walkways and upgraded traffic lanes.

“Overall, the Route 28 corridors have been a focus of investment over the last couple of decades, and there’s certainly still a lot of work to do,” he said.

3. From the Bourne Rotary to the Otis Rotary

Next in line is the nearly four-mile stretch of Route 28 between the Bourne Rotary, at the Bourne Bridge, and the Otis Rotary to the south. The data showed 344 crashes occurred in the 2022-2023 timeframe.

“The area has a lot of entrances and exits, both off the left and right lanes, and that makes for a lot of crossover traffic,” said Judith MacLeod Froman, a representative for the Upper Cape on the Cape Cod Metropolitan Planning Organization.

Froman said the aging infrastructure of the road leads to a lot of collisions.

“Based on conversations that we've had at meetings, and based on observations in the area along Route 28, it is too much traffic to be handled for just a single lane each way,” she said. “But there are restrictions, you know, people own property and they’re not going to want a highway right out in front of their homes.”

4. Iyannough Road from Route 6 to Airport Rotary

One of the main arteries for traffic into Hyannis, Route 132, or Iyannough Road, from the Route 6 exit to the Airport Rotary, is fourth on the list.

In 2022 and 2023, there were 320 crashes along this three-mile roadway — the shortest distance out of all the corridors on this list — with the data showing 205 crashes taking place in 2022 and 115 so far in 2023.

The road feels more like an expressway than Route 28 or any other main causeways on the Cape. But there is an almost industrial-like theme to Iyannough Road through Hyannis — to the north lies Hyannis Golf Course and a number of strip malls dot the corridor leading to the Cape Cod Mall to the south.

Southbound traffic going into the Airport Rotary at 5:15 p.m. on a recent Wednesday was backed up almost to Nightingale Lane.

Forest said this stretch of road has one of the highest traffic volumes on the Cape, with poor infrastructure unable to accommodate the crush.

“When these roads were originally built, they weren't built to handle these volumes, and so there are design features that are just totally, you know, I don't say inadequate, but they're totally outdated,” Forest said.

Like Route 28, Tupper said, this stretch of Route 132 has a number of infrastructure shortcomings, including a lack of medians, problematic intersections and a number of curb cuts flowing into and out of business along the roadway.

“Certainly, we recognize it's an issue, and the town does as well, so we participated in a road safety audit that the town did for that segment of Route 132,” Tupper said. “We're looking to make some improvements, and that road safety audit is a way to objectively look at the issues and come up with solutions.”

5. Route 28 in South Yarmouth and West Yarmouth

Fifth on the list is the nearly four miles of Route 28 that ramble through South Yarmouth and West Yarmouth, and ending near the town line for the village of Hyannis. The stretch of road starts to the east in South Yarmouth at Route 28 and Willow Street.

This corridor doesn't share the same densely packed traffic as Route 28 through Falmouth, but shares in some of the same problems.

Forest, who also serves as a Yarmouth selectman, said the road has many curb cuts, with traffic flowing into and out of parking lots and businesses. He said the road sees a lot of pedestrians and low visibility, making it difficult to see where traffic is coming from.

“On the one hand, we want better public safety, on the other hand, we don’t want the roads to look like the Southeast Expressway,” Forest said.

Preservation of a village feeling is important, even for roads, on Cape Cod

Public transportation could also be an important aspect of reducing the high number of crashes seen on local Cape roads, Froman said, and could also be a way to curb infrastructure initiatives aiming to construct expressway-like corridors throughout the Cape.

“We can't always be thinking we're going to be able to drive 80 miles an hour on the Cape, it's not set up that way,” Froman said. “The integrity of the Cape would be diminished if we did that, if we turned it into a freeway. So, here on the Cape, slow down.”

Tupper said the tension between preservation and upgrading roadways needs to be met with a degree of “context sensitivity.”

“There are certainly options to make sure that the roadways meet the local character,” he said. “We are not in the business on Cape Cod of building new roads of significance. We’re not out there adding capacity, by and large. It's about trying to work with what we have and adapt the roadway network to both meet the (growing) needs, but also fit within context.”

Secher, who has worked at The Black Dog General Store throughout the summer, said traffic problems from her vantage point are “measurable” and underscore the need to upgrade the current infrastructure.

“I think a lot of towns are trying to continue to keep the integrity of what the town originally looked like, you know, without destroying what they built,” Secher said.

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.

Thanks to our subscribers, who help make this coverage possible. If you are not a subscriber, please consider supporting quality local journalism with a Cape Cod Times subscription. Here are our subscription plans.

This article originally appeared on Aberdeen News: Rural charm pitted against safety: 5 most dangerous roads on Cape Cod