Visiting Cape Cod can be a joyous experience – unless, of course, you spend your time stuck in Cape traffic, which is not much fun at all.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts announced an agreement in 2020 to replace the aging Bourne and Sagamore Bridges. The bridges are approaching 100 years old and were designed to accommodate traffic from a different era.

Have you ever noticed how narrow the two lanes in each direction are? Perhaps when the bridges were constructed, no one anticipated how popular Cape vacations would become.

The Sagamore and Bourne Bridges may need a major overhaul just to keep them open while planning for replacement bridges drags on.
Barry Richard/Townsquare Media
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The cost to replace the bridges was estimated at just north of $1 billion, but that was two years ago. Rabid inflation and construction delays have pushed those estimates to somewhere near $4 billion.

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The Massachusetts Department of Transportation is responsible for the approaches on both sides of both bridges and is said to be prepared to begin. The replacement of the bridges is the responsibility of the federal government, which has yet to commit a nickel to the project.

In the meantime, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must decide how to proceed.

The Sagamore and Bourne Bridges may need a major overhaul just to keep them open while planning for replacement bridges drags on.
Barry Richard/Townsquare Media
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According to CapeandIslands.org "the Sagamore Bridge is scheduled for major repair work starting in 2025, and the Bourne Bridge in 2029." Reporter Jennette Barnes spoke with Congressman Bill Keating, who said that if replacing the bridges takes too long, they'll need a major overhaul to stay open.

It appears as though bridge traffic congestion, whether due to repairs or replacement, will keep us grumbling for some time to come.

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LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

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