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Light Bright Bike Ride 2024

Light Bright Bike Ride 2024

Roll in the new year! We're back in 2024 for our 9th annual ride! Join fellow revelers on New Year's Eve for this free, fun ride along Commercial Street! This is an official First Light Provincetown event. * December 31 @ 4:30 PM * FREE event * 15 minute

Making Streets Safer: Prioritizing Complete Streets

Complete Streets

Making Streets Safer: Prioritizing Complete Streets

Provincetown is finally getting close to implementing its Complete Streets policy. The policy I wrote with Provincetown 365 back in 2016 has been revised, reviewed, and adopted. Now the town is on to the next step: Creating a “prioritization plan” of possible projects that the town could apply to the

Don’t Ban Bikes from Commercial St

UPDATE: The proposal was “indefinitely postponed” at the Select Board meeting on June 24. Thanks to everyone for your efforts to let our elected officials know this was a bad idea! The Provincetown Select Board is using recent crashes on Commercial St—none of which involved any bicycles—as a

Visualizing a better Standish Street

Visualizing a better Standish Street

Standish Street is a gateway to Provincetown’s waterfront. It’s also a designated bike route to the Cape Cod National Seashore. And it carries thousands of visitors on foot, buses on their way to the bus stop, sightseeing vehicles, and lots of cars heading to the MacMillan Pier parking

What is Daylighting?

What is Daylighting?

Daylighting is creating “clear zones” at intersections so that everyone can see each other. Doing this can reduce injuries by up to 30% (Bloomberg, FHWA) In Provincetown, there are already laws and local regulations in place to support this approach… they’re just not implemented. Key Daylighting Tactics • Daylighting Best

What’s missing from the Shank Painter Rd plan?

Safer Streetscape

What’s missing from the Shank Painter Rd plan?

The Shank Painter Road Project hit its "75%” engineering plan target in April 2024 when the latest version of the plan was submitted to MassDOT for review. This revision was delayed from November 2023 due to some really huge drainage and sewer engineering that was included to address persistent

Reimagining Shank Painter Rd with Protected Intersections

Safer Streetscape

Reimagining Shank Painter Rd with Protected Intersections

Protected intersections don’t need be huge projects, and they don’t need to be at signals. Elements like turning islands can be used at busy bike intersections where there are just stop signs. The upcoming Shank Painter Road project in Provincetown has two intersections that could easily be adapted

Reimagining Standish Street north of Bradford Street

Reimagining Standish Street north of Bradford Street

Standish Street is part of a low-traffic bike route from MacMillan Pier to the bike trails at Beech Forest in the Cape Cod National Seashore. Recent retail development has increased the number of motor vehicles using this intersection. When CVS came to town, it was required to build sidewalks and

Reimagining Winthrop Street at Bradford Street

Reimagining Winthrop Street at Bradford Street

There’s a lot of bike traffic across this intersection in both directions. It’s the primary low-traffic route to and from the Stop & Shop supermarket on Shank Painter Road, and is commonly used as a two-way route despite part of the street being marked as one-way for cars.

Reimagining Howland Street at Bradford Street

Reimagining Howland Street at Bradford Street

This intersection has the first stop sign coming into town from the east, and there are always lots of people walking and biking year-round to travel to and from the East End Market. In this visualization, painted sidewalks and curb extensions define the space to shorten the crosswalks, a bike

Reimagining Conwell Street at Route 6

Reimagining Conwell Street at Route 6

Here’s another of our 1950s-era intersections that is in need of updates, and this time the focus is on bicycling. (Google Map) When Conwell Street was rebuilt a couple of years ago to add bike lanes and a sidewalk, they gave up when they got to this intersection. The

Reimagining Ryder Street at Bradford Street

Reimagining Ryder Street at Bradford Street

Corners with lots of people walking and biking should be clear of visual obstructions so everyone can see what’s going on around them. Parked cars often block these sightlines and make people waiting to cross the street invisible to drivers. In this visualization, a parking space blocking the sightline

Reimagining Province Lands Road at Bradford Street Extension

Reimagining Province Lands Road at Bradford Street Extension

This 1950s-era former state road has never been updated to provide any space for walking and biking. It’s a beautiful location along the tidal marsh and connects the rotary at Commercial Street to the Moors Road entrance to the Province Lands in the Cape Cod National Seashore. (Google Map)

Counting Traffic

Counting Traffic

Traffic counts are a key piece of data that is helps us understand how a street is being used. But the majority of traffic counting devices only count cars, so even when a traffic study is done we don’t know how many people are walking or biking. A better

Visualizing a Protected Intersection in Wellfleet

Safer Streetscape

Visualizing a Protected Intersection in Wellfleet

A MassDOT project in Wellfleet that is about to start construction in fall 2023 is a good example of a lost opportunity. The intersection of Route 6 and Main St is getting rebuilt with sidewalks and bike lanes, but it isn’t designed as a protected intersection. I’ve spent

Wellfleet’s Main St at Route 6 intersection

Safer Streetscape

Wellfleet’s Main St at Route 6 intersection

MassDOT’s Main St at Route 6 intersection design is so disappointing. I last wrote about it here in 2020. I stumbled on the final engineering plans for this project recently and realized it was time to take a deeper look at what MassDOT will actually be building. The project

Reimagining Route 6

Safer Streetscape

Reimagining Route 6

Route 6 as it is today. Shank Painter Road intersects at the lower left, and the signalized intersection with Conwell St is about 2000 ft to the upper right. (Google map) Request for Proposals The town issued a request for proposals last week for a consultant to come up with