Route 6A Improvements

Updated November 21, 2019

Over the past several years, concerns have been raised about the Route 6A corridor from Willow Street to Union Street regarding overall maintenance, safety, speed, signage, pedestrian accommodations, on-street parking and village center amenities. In response to these concerns, the Town engaged the Cape Cod Commission (CCC) in 2013 to conduct a Road Safety Audit (see link below). A number of audit recommendations were implemented including: chevron signs at Summer Street, new crosswalk signage, vegetation pruning and a flashing speed sign. Building on the Safety Audit, the Town again partnered with the CCC in 2017 for the Route 6A Corridor Streetscape Study (see link below) to identify other ways to improve Route 6A. This study outlined recommendations regarding overall aesthetics, defined on-street parking, gateway and parking signage, sidewalks, crosswalks and Village Center amenities.

Most recently, the Town hired a consultant (VHB) to develop visualizations illustrating the recommendations from the 2017 CCC report and to conduct public input meetings to vet various concepts and help define potential improvement projects for the corridor. Through this scope of work, VHB developed conceptual designs, cross sections and images for presentation to the public in three public input meetings in May 2019. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation can be viewed at the link below, along with a Video of the May 15th public meeting.

All three public meetings were very well attended with over 150 people in total. A Summary of Comments from the May 2019 Public Input Meetings can be viewed at the link below. Comments were diverse and there was limited consensus regarding any one concept design that was presented, and no clear direction for the project.

Input is being sought from the Board of Selectmen (BOS) on how best to proceed prior to expending additional resources, providing further direction to the consultant, or having further discussions with specific stakeholders and the general public.

To facilitate the Selectmen’s review, Town Staff carefully reviewed the comments received at the Public Meetings and prepared an outline of potential action items (see Discussion Topics link below). Where appropriate, specific functional/safety issues along the corridor have been identified along with potential solutions that range from simple to more complex to implement. All suggestions require funding to implement and allocation of Staff time.

For further information, see the links below: