Warning: the author is suffering from pandemic fatigue and seasonal disorder, which, for a Cape Codder, means missing the sun, sand between your toes, lobster stew, and sparking tonic with your gin. Still, as I recently travelled Route 6 on the Cape, I found myself shaking my head in resignation at the absurdity of our federal transportation planners.
Sequential numbering of exits (1, 2, 3) is giving way to something as ridiculous as using tomato-based broth to make clam chowder.
Heading to the Cape Playhouse? Look for exit 78. Heading further down to Orleans? Exit 89.
It’s like going to the Squire and ordering a glass of milk. It makes no sense.
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation is updating the Cape’s highway signs because a refusal to do so will cost the Commonwealth federal transportation dollars. You see, up until this season, we had not been using highway numbers to confirm mile markers.
How does one get to an exit 89 when travelling down Rt. 6 from the Sagamore bridge?
Well. Route 6, the main artery for the Cape, technically runs from the Rhode Island border in Seekonk, MA through to Provincetown. You’ve never traveled the length of Rt. 6, you say? Of course, you haven’t! There is no reason to do so. The road off-Cape parallels Interstate 195, and there are portions of it in places like New Bedford where you’d have no idea what road you are actually on.
But, it is 89 miles from Seekonk to Orleans. Hence, exit 89. And it seems that this makes more sense than sequential numbering, say going from exit 1 to exit 2 to exit 3 because they’re, well, next. No, now you will go from exit 78 to 82 to 85. Miss exit 80? There is no exit 80, silly motorist, because there isn’t an offramp 80 miles from Seekonk. Sheesh!
Absurdity, thy name is federal highway numbering policy. The entire Cape statehouse delegation, regardless of party, has opposed this travesty. Patriots all.
No one drives over the Cape Cod Canal while thinking, “we’re 55 miles away from Seekonk. Let’s go antiquing in Sandwich.”
And what purpose does it serve from a public safety perspective? Are the Massachusetts State Police on the Cape better able to pinpoint a motorist in distress if they call from 75 miles from Rhode Island border?
The purpose is compliance, local customs and character be damned. Rules must be followed.
The new nominee for Secretary of Transportation claims that one can find romance in American transportation. Perhaps he’s right. I recall once having a porter press my suit so I could order a gibson while meeting Eva Marie Saint in the cocktail lounge car during a cross-country train trip. Though maybe that was a Cary Grant movie . . . I digress.
Driving a crowded highway in the middle of July might not seem terribly romantic. But generations of tourists have made the excursion. President Kennedy found solace here in the sand and sea and traditions of family and friends. Luckily, he could land Marine One on his family’s front lawn rather than taking exit 68 in Hyannis (it’s 68 miles from Seekonk to Hyannis, you see).
There’s a familiarity with the rituals of going down the Cape. Part of the experience is crossing the canal, getting on Rt. 6, and finding your way to one of the “quaint little villages here and there.” Crossing the canal brings you onto a new landscape. The act itself is not a continuation of an asphalt line from some other place. You’re somewhere different. You can relax, smell the salt air, breathe. Relax.
Our new numbering regime will also appear to be a crooked pathway. For many people, going over the Sagamore from Rt. 3 south seems the only continuous route. You don’t turn.
You can travel Route 6 via the Cranberry Highway (the portion of Rt.6 from Bourne through Wareham that has no highway markers whatsoever), go over the Sagamore Bridge and head down what appears to be a different road surface. Or you can access Rt. 6 from the Bourne Bridge by taking Sandwich Road.
None of these routes could be described by a traveler as a smooth one taking you from Seekonk to the Cape.
Also, the Cape happens to be home to quite a few year-round residents, who do not use our main thoroughfare as a passageway to Rhode Island.
Those “Church bells chimin’ on a Sunday morn’ which “Remind you of the town where you were born” are all some distance from Seekonk. It’s just that no one cares, needs to know, or is particularly impressed by a silly waste of money that serves only to add a checkmark on a spreadsheet in the federal DOT building. The money wasted includes the time and labor to install new signs plus secondary signs that inform you that Exit 63 is Old Exit 4.
Given the money spent and how federal bureaucracies work, our new absurdity is likely here to stay.
But suppose new Secretary Buttigieg truly sees romance in our transportation system. In that case, he’d order the status quo ante restored and admonish transportation planners for their disregard of tradition. Better yet, I invite him to invite his team to the Cape this summer. I’m sure we can right this wrong over Wellfleet Oysters and a Shucker’s Reward Oyster Stout from Cape Cod Beer.
In complete agreement, Professor!
Recently I left my Dorchester home to travel to the wilds of Hingham, in search of exit 15. I thought perhaps I’d entered a parallel reality when I tuned into to the highway signs just south of Braintree and discovered numbers heretofore never seen.
Don’t we have better things to do?
Christine, It’s worth noting that nearly every major highway in eastern Massachusetts except for the Mass Pike (I-90), US 3 from Burlington northward & Route 140 from New Bedford to Taunton has had their interchange numbers change *at least once* over the last 58 years due to either highway re-routings/extensions (I-93, I-95 & I-495) or the changeover to compliance with Federal Highway standards for having exit numbers increase while heading northbound or eastbound (Rt. 128 at the time feel though the cracks, more on 128 in a moment). Prior to the latter occurring in the early-to-mid 70s, Rt. 3 along the South Shore, I-93 north of Boston, I-95 from Canton southward, Rt. 24 followed an ‘Exit 25 = Route 128’ convention and increased as one headed away from Boston.
Even the exit numbers along the Peabody-to-Gloucester stretch of Rt. 128 aren’t the originally assigned numbers; the current numbers date back to 1962 when a proposal to extend the highway further into Rockport was proposed then ultimately abandoned.
Long story short; exit number changing, regardless of the reason(s), has occurred in the Bay State more often than many would believe. Updating the numbers along the Mid-Cape Highway to reflect US 6’s total mileage in Massachusetts isn’t going to be the end of the world as we know it (apologies to R.E.M.). It’s also worth noting that the mile markers along the Mid-Cape Highway reflecting the US 6 mileage already exists in the form of small green ground-posted signs every tenth of a mile.
Follow-up to my earlier reply:
US 3 from Burlington northward was the only highway in eastern Massachusetts to maintain its ‘Exit 25 = Route 128’ convention because its northbound numbering was already in compliance with Federal standards at the time.
BTW, your Exit 15 in Hingham was originally Exit 29 prior to 1977.
Silly, the whole thing. We’ve many more important things to do/
Sorry, but the mileage-based system, used by almost the entirety of the rest of the country, makes a lot more sense. For one thing, adding intermediate exits is no longer an existential crisis. What would we do if, for example, they added an exit BETWEEN old exit 5 and old exit 6? Make the new exit “6” and renumber everything east of there?
It’s also user friendly for the motorist. If I’m at mile point 61 and I’m looking to get off at exit 89, I know by simple in-my-head arithmetic that I’ve got 38 miles left to go. With the old system, if I’ve just passed exit 5 and am aiming for exit 7, I have no idea if that exit is a half a mile down the road or 50 miles down the road; I have to pay attention and count exits.
But what if you don’t need to add another exit, or there’s only a mile or so between them – 8 becomes 8A, and you add 8B. There’s nothing wrong that. Plus, other than I-90/the Massachusetts Turnpike, there aren’t many other places in Mass. (or even elsewhere in New England) where mile-based numbering would be useful.
TJG says, “If I’m at mile point 61 and I’m looking to get off at exit 89, I know by simple in-my-head arithmetic that I’ve got 38 miles left to go.” Yep, that good old simple in-my-head arithmetic works every time…
If your life comes to a halt because the exit numbers on a nearby expressway have changed I pity you. I hope you don’t have some sort of fit when they change the combo numbers at your local fast food restaurant.
It’s a light take, Mike. No one’s life is coming to a halt. I don’t have sorts of fits. I occasionally make attempts at wit. Sometimes I miss, as I gather I did with you. And we don’t really have fast food restaurants in Sandwich as someone from the Cape Cod Association might know.