Getting to Cape Cod, and Moving Around Once You Are There

Cape Cod became an island in 1914, when the Cape Cod Canal was cut across the neck of the peninsula. It is 7.4 miles of land cut, 480 feet wide and 32 feet deep at mean low water, it is operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers, and it is free to transit. It is also the reason everything about arriving here is more complicated than the map suggests.

The two bridges, which are the whole story

There are exactly two road crossings: the Bourne and the Sagamore. Both opened in 1935, both are steel arch bridges maintained by the Army Corps, and each carries four narrow lanes with no shoulders. The Sagamore is 1,408 feet long with a 616-foot main span and 135 feet of clearance over the water, and it takes US-6, which is the road almost everyone wants. The Bourne carries Route 28 and serves the Upper Cape and Falmouth.

There is no third option. No back road, no tunnel, no bypass. When one of them closes for an incident, the other absorbs the entire traffic of a peninsula.

A journey that a mapping app offers at an hour and a quarter can take three hours in the wrong window. Plan arrival and departure around the bridge rather than around your check-in time, and if you have any flexibility at all, do not travel on a summer Saturday.

Both bridges are due to be replaced. New spans are to be built alongside the existing ones so that traffic keeps moving during construction, and the new crossings would be owned by Massachusetts rather than the federal government. Funding has been assembled in stages and the schedule has shifted more than once, with construction discussed as beginning in the late 2020s and running for the best part of a decade. Check the current programme status before a trip; this is genuinely moving ground.

Arriving without your own car

Boston Logan is the practical airport for most visitors, at about an hour and a quarter to the bridges in no traffic and considerably more the rest of the time. Providence is a reasonable alternative. Cape Cod Gateway Airport at Hyannis handles regional flights and has the Cape's main car hire desks.

The island ferries

The Steamship Authority is the only operator that carries cars to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, which makes it the one to plan around.

• Woods Hole to Vineyard Haven, year-round, roughly 45 minutes, vehicles and passengers.
• Woods Hole to Oak Bluffs, seasonally from about the third week of May to the third week of October, roughly 45 minutes, vehicles and passengers.
• Hyannis to Nantucket, year-round traditional ferry with vehicles, around two and a quarter hours, plus a passenger-only high-speed catamaran of about an hour running from roughly mid-April to late December.

Vehicle space sells out far earlier than foot passage, often months ahead for summer weekends, and the honest advice for a day trip is to leave the car on the mainland. Both islands have buses, taxis and bicycle hire at the terminal. Hy-Line Cruises runs additional passenger fast ferries from Hyannis, and a seasonal passenger boat crosses to Oak Bluffs from Falmouth Harbor.

The three roads, and which to use

US-6 is the spine. Four lanes as far as the Mid Cape, then two lanes the rest of the way out to Provincetown. It is the fast road and the boring one, and past Orleans it is the only road.

Route 6A, the Old King's Highway, runs along the bay side through Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth Port, Dennis and Brewster inside one of the largest historic districts in the country. Speed limits are low and there are traffic lights and pedestrians, so it is the wrong choice for covering distance and the right choice for an afternoon. Nothing else on the Cape looks like it.

Route 28 runs along the south side from Falmouth through Hyannis and up to Orleans. Through Yarmouth and Dennis it is a commercial strip of motels, mini golf and lights. It is the slowest of the three in summer.

One practical trap: Massachusetts renumbered its highway exits to a mileage-based system, so exit numbers on US-6 no longer match older directions, printed guides or long-standing local habit. Navigate by town name rather than exit number.

Getting around without a car

The Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority runs a network that is better than visitors expect and thinner than residents would like. The useful routes for travellers are the Flex service along the Outer Cape between Harwich and Provincetown, the H2O line along Route 28 between Hyannis and Orleans, the Sealine between Woods Hole and Hyannis, and seasonal shuttles in Provincetown out to the beaches. Frequencies drop sharply outside summer and fare arrangements have changed in recent years, so check the current position before relying on it.

Realistically, you need a car everywhere except Provincetown. Most beaches, trailheads and ponds sit on roads with no bus service, and the distances between towns are longer than they look.

Provincetown is the exception and a genuine one. Arrive by ferry, walk everywhere in town, take the seasonal shuttle to Race Point and Herring Cove, and hire a bicycle for the Province Lands. A week there without a car is not a compromise.

For cyclists, the Cape Cod Rail Trail covers 25.5 miles of the Lower and Outer Cape, the Shining Sea Bikeway runs from Falmouth down to Woods Hole, and the canal service roads give seven flat miles on each bank with no road crossings at all.