10
OCTOBER 5, 2019
and, unlike the current crossings, a
median separating the on-Cape and
off-Cape-bound traffic. The current
structures would remain in service
until the new bridges open to traffic.
“This is the best-case scenario,”
said Wendy Northcross, chief execu-
tive of the Cape Cod Chamber of Com-
merce. She said the bridge work, com-
bined with a massive project by the
state to improve roads and intersec-
tions leading on and off the Cape,
could make a huge difference.
Northcross said that even though
the bridge replacement may bring sig-
nificant traffic disruption at times,
the alternative that would have re-
quired closing the existing bridges
and rehabilitating them in succession
would have made it nearly impossible
for people to come and go.
“That would have been tragic,” she
said. “That would have been an eco-
nomic hit to the solar plexus.”
The Army Corps said the bridges
have gotten to the point where it is
more economical to replace them
than fix them. And the need for im-
provement is great; the corps released
a set of pictures from the bridge that
included unnerving conditions of pit-
ted concrete and rusted metal.
“As the bridges and their compo-
nents continue to age, the cost of op-
eration and maintenance and period-
ic rehabilitation slowly escalates,” the
Corps said in its report, describing
the existing structures as “functional-
ly obsolete.”
The Army Corps has not laid out a
timeline for the replacement. The
next steps include holding five public
meetings through October on the
Cape and in Plymouth and Boston,
and accepting public comments until
Nov. 1. It hopes to finalize its recom-
mendation early next year.
However, the agency will likely
want to move quickly to head off cost-
ly repairs scheduled in coming years.
The Sagamore Bridge is scheduled for
a $185 million rehabilitation as early
as 2025, while the Bourne Bridge
would undergo a similar, $210 mil-
lion project as soon as 2029.
uBRIDGES
Continued from Page 1
Though the Army Corps has not
commissioned detailed designs, pre-
liminary details for the federally
funded project suggest the new struc-
tures could be twice as wide as the ex-
isting spans, which have 46-foot road-
ways.
The new bridges’ travel lanes
would be 12 feet wide; the existing
travel lanes are 10.
Other additions intended to im-
prove travel flow include the merging
lanes, shoulders on both sides, and
the median. The bridges would also
have improved bike and pedestrian
access.
For people who live on the Cape,
where traffic congestion is much
more than a frustrating obstacle on
the way to vacation, relief can’t come
soon enough.
Angela Dalpe, who has lived in
Sandwich for a decade, said she wish-
es the Corps could keep the two exist-
ing bridges along with the new ones.
Dalpe, a nurse who works in cor-
rections in Bristol County, said her
commute can take as little as 45 min-
utes —“That’s using my best back
roads” — but it can easily take twiceas long. Bridge traffic, especially in
summer, can make her commute so
unpredictable that she sometimes has
to decline shifts.
“It turns me into an unreliable em-
ployee,” she said. “When it’s Labor
Day weekend, and I have to go over
the bridge, and I don’t know how long
it’s going to take me to get there, I just
have to say I can’t come in.”
The bridge replacement plan had
been widely anticipated. Massachu-
setts transportation officials are al-
ready making plans to rework the
state roads that lead to and from the
bridges. That work alone could cost
$350 million over several years, ac-
cording to preliminary estimates.
Officials believe the projects to-
gether will ultimately lead to easier
drives through the notoriously con-
gested area. They say they will do ev-
erything they can to minimize the dis-
ruptions while the work is happen-
ing.
“Our starting point on any big
project is making sure that we are
having the least impact on the travel-
ing public as possible,” said Jonathan
L. Gulliver, highway administratorfor the state Transportation Depart-
ment.
The Army Corps’ plan got early ap-
plause from the congressional delega-
tion representing the Cape. In a state-
ment, Senators Edward J. Markey
and Elizabeth Warren, and Represen-
tative William R. Keating praised the
agency’s recommendation.
“Two new bridges built up to mod-
ern standards will improve traffic
flow, allow better access to the Cape
and Islands in the coming years, and
provide vital evacuation routes,” Keat-
ing said. “As a year-round resident of
Cape Cod who depends on the Bourne
Bridge, I strongly feel that this is the
best outcome for our Cape and Is-
lands community and the greater
Southeastern region as a whole.”
The bridge replacement is another
huge infrastructure project for Mas-
sachusetts. In Boston, where memo-
ries of the Big Dig remain fresh, the
state is working toward a $1.1 billion
reconstruction of the Massachusetts
Turnpike’s Allston interchange — a
project that will open a huge area for
new development, but will also in-
volve eight years of construction and
traffic disruption.
The Cape bridge construction will
have many complexities as well. The
projects would likely require the Ar-
my Corps to acquire land adjacent to
the bridges, including some that cur-
rently is home to a Market Basket pla-
za near the Sagamore Bridge and a
Dunkin’ Donuts near the Bourne
crossing. In total, the report estimates
that the projects would require 15
acres, and cost more than $15 mil-
lion.
Even with the project, people on
the Cape are realistic: Bridge traffic
will never really go away during the
high season. But it might not get
worse, either.
“If everyone still decides to come
into the Cape on the same day, we
should have some back-ups,” North-
cross said. “But for most of the year,
this should handle quite nicely. We’re
unclogging the clog, if you will.”Andy Rosen can be reached at
[email protected].pop-pop-pop in the road as they’re
crushed by cars. On the sidewalk, pe-
destrians tiptoe around them. They’re
the bane of the bike lane.
The region appears to be experi-
encing a “mast year,” experts say — a
natural phenomenon in the boom-
and-bust life cycle of oak trees. Cer-
tain conditions, including the weath-
er, lead the trees to produce a higher
volume of fruit every few years.
“There’s definitely tons more
around,” said Marjorie Rines, a natu-
ralist with Mass Audubon. “It’s been
coming down pretty hard and fast.”
A few people in recent days have
lodged requests about acorns with
the city through its BOS:311 constitu-
ency service, asking for a street
sweeper to pass through their respec-
tive neighborhoods.
“Constituent reports many acorns
in the street making it dangerous to
walk down,” one report said.
Craig Leite of Stoughton was
among an unknown number of acorn
victims.
As the 26-year-old was walking on
a paved trail in Needham recently,
acorns were “falling from overhead
like tiny meteors.”
While looking at his phone and
worrying about what was coming
from above, he miscalculated the
abundance of acorns on the path
ahead.
“My foot hit a patch of them, and
they act like marbles on this paved
ground,” he said. “I lost my footing,
I’m flailing around, and I ended up
falling.”
There was slight bruising, but it
was mostly his ego, he said.
While driving through Chestnut
Hill to drop her kids off at school,
uACORNS
Continued from Page 1
Richelle Smith, 37, of Roxbury started
hearing strange “dings” on her vehicle,
she said. The first time, she thought it
was kids being kids, maybe tossing ob-
jects at her car. Later, one hit the
windshield and she figured it out.
“I’m saying, ‘Dang! What is going
on?’ ” Smith said. “They hit hard.
They’re falling from a very healthy,
strong, vibrant tree. Chestnut Hill is
definitely popping with acorns — or
acorns are popping, whichever you
want to say.”
Mark S. Ashton, professor of forest
ecology at Yale School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies, said, “It is a
mast year but not a big one.” The pro-
liferation of acorns is most noticeable
in urban and suburban environ-
ments, where oak trees can make up
much of the canopy, he said.
“All of these trees are open-grown
trees,” Ashton said. “They aren’t com-peting with other trees for sunlight,”
giving them more resources to allo-
cate to flowering and fruiting.
While some people have shared
stories of their run-ins with acorns,
Rines said she hasn’t received any in-
quiries from troubled residents.
“I can usually get a pretty good
handle on how the public is perceiv-
ing nature by the kind of phone calls I
get,” she said. “I get a lot of calls when
there’s something that concerns peo-
ple...butIhavenotgottenanycalls
about people complaining about
acorns.”
She also noted that the large quan-
tity is a hardly a bad thing. Many crit-
ters feed on the acorns, including
squirrels, chipmunks, and some spe-
cies of birds.
“Animals basically have three
things they have to keep in mind: re-
production, avoiding predators, andeating,” Rines said. “And feeding is
critical this time of year, so the acorns
are great for that.”
Meteorologist and horticulturist
David Epstein,who writes a weather
column for the Globe, agreed.
“It’s not bad — it’s nature’s way of
supporting critters with more acorns
on a rotating basis, so it’s a way to
regulate nature,” he said of the boom
and bust cycles. “It might be a pain in
the butt for a car or bike, but it’s a
necessary thing.”
Michael Dosmann, keeper of the
living collections at the Arnold Arbo-
retum of Harvard University, said
more acorns doesn’t just mean ani-
mals will be “very happy” — it also
has implications for future forest tree
growth.
“When you’ve got a heavy mast
year, after that you’re going to have
what they call more seedling recruit-
ment — there’s just more oak seed-
lings, which is a good thing,” he said.
“Those acorns germinate, and they
become the seedlings, and they re-
place the forest.”
Williams, the Cambridge resident
who had to readjust evening plans to
account for the squirrel activity, said
he understands the benefits of a plen-
tiful acorn season — and not just be-
cause of how it affects nature.
On a recent night, he overheard
what sounded like a conversation be-
tween a father and his young daugh-
ter outside.
“The dad stopped and took the op-
portunity to teach his daughter how
to whistle with an acorn cap, just out-
side my window,” Williams said. “It
was pretty cute.”Steve Annear can be reached at
[email protected]. Follow him
on Twitter @steveannear.A $1 billion fix for Cape’s bridges
US ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERSPreliminary designs for the bridges feature four travel lanes with additional merging lanes, as well as medians.
Heads up — it’s one of those big years for acorns
DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF
Along the Muddy River by the Riverway, paths are littered with acorns.By Sean Sullivan
WASHINGTON POST
Senator Bernie Sanders suffered a
heart attack earlier this week before a
stent procedure was conducted to
clear an artery, doctors said Friday in
a statement released by his presiden-
tial campaign.
Sanders, 78, was released from a
Las Vegas hospital Friday.
‘‘Sen. Sanders was diagnosed with
a myocardial infarction,’’ his treating
physicians, Arturo Marchand Jr. and
Arjun Gururaj, said in the statement
Friday.
The independent Vermont senator,
dressed in a blue button-down shirt
and a dark blazer, waved to cameras
as he departed the hospital Friday af-
ternoon alongside his wife, Jane. He
told reporters he felt ‘‘great, thank
you’’ before entering a dark SUV.
The statement, released after
Sanders left the hospital, marked the
first time the campaign had acknowl-
edged he had a heart attack. Aides
had previously declined to answer
questions about his diagnosis.
Asked Friday why they waited to
announce the diagnosis, Sanders
campaign spokesman Mike Casca
said, ‘‘We just wanted to wait until he
was discharged to give out the infor-
mation all at once.’’
On Wednesday, Sanders’ campaign
said he was hospitalized after experi-
encing chest pains at a Tuesday night
campaign event. After doctors discov-
ered an artery blockage, the cam-
paign said then, they inserted two
stents.
‘‘The senator was stable upon ar-
rival and taken immediately to the
cardiac catheterization laboratory, at
which time two stents were placed in
a blocked coronary artery in a timely
fashion,’’ his doctors said Friday. ‘‘All
other arteries were normal.’’
They said his hospital stay was
‘‘uneventful with good expected prog-
ress. He was discharged with instruc-
tions to follow up with his personal
physician.’’
It was not immediately clear what
effect Sanders’ health issues would
have on his second straight campaign
for the presidency. While he was hos-
pitalized, a senior aide said his cam-
paign events were canceled ‘‘until fur-
ther notice.’’
Sanders planned to fly home to
Vermont on Saturday, his campaign
said. Over the weekend, surrogates
are fanning out across early nominat-
ing states to campaign on his behalf.
His wife said before his release
that Sanders would ‘‘take a few days
to rest’’ but would take part in the
Oct. 15 Democratic presidential de-
bate. It was not clear whether he
would resume his normal campaign
activities before then.
An artery blockage such as Sand-
ers’ typically has a good prognosis
and does not normally require a long
recovery period, medical experts said
earlier this week, before it was known
that he had suffered a heart attack.
Sanders’ condition has revived a
debate over age and health in the
Democratic Party. The three candi-
dates leading the polls in the Demo-
cratic primary — Sanders, former vice
president Joe Biden, and Senator Eliz-
abeth Warren, Democrat of Massa-
chusetts - are in their 70s. President
Trump is also a septuagenarian.
Earlier in the campaign, some
younger candidates made the argu-
ment that it was time to turn the par-
ty’s leadership over to a new genera-
tion. But that pitch was mostly aimed
at Biden, at the time the clear leader
in the polls.
Sanders’ medical crisis occurred
amid some good news for his cam-
paign — an announcement this week
that he raised $25.3 million, more
than any other candidate for the
Democratic nomination, in the third
quarter. In recent weeks, Sanders has
slipped in the polls, dropping behind
Biden and Warren.
Sanders campaign manager Faiz
Shakir sought to emphasize his posi-
tion in the money chase on Friday.
‘‘Our third quarter fundraising to-
tals make clear that Bernie’s cam-
paign is part of a working class move-
ment taking on the greed and corrup-
tion of the corporate elite,’’ Shakir
said in a statement. ‘‘Let me thank all
of our contributors and volunteers.
We’re going to win and create the po-
litical revolution.’’
Sanders, in a tweet issued from the
hospital this week, used his hospital-
ization to argue for his agenda, specif-
ically the Medicare-for-all plan he has
long championed. He noted that a
health emergency can come as a sur-
prise, as his did.Sanders
reveals he
had heart
attack
Senator is released
from hospital
GLOBE FILES
The Bourne Bridge opened for cars and pedestrians in June 1935. It
was intended to last for 50 years.