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 lot.
It’ an odd street, which is typical for Provincetown. For decades it was the railroad right of way to the end of the pier. When the railroad was abandoned, the town realigned it slightly, tore down a few houses, and added sidewalks.
It hasn’t been updated since then, and it shows.
(The intersection with Bradford St was updated in 2018 as part of an agreement with the town when CVS moved in; it was the catalyst to add sidewalks and landscaping there for the first time. Alas, the project was rushed through, designed by engineers for CVS, and there wasn’t any opportunity to provide feedback before the curbing was ordered by the contractor.)
Problems
The sidewalk on the East side is useless. It’s barely two feet wide, is interrupted with telephone poles and new sewer vent posts, has dramatic grade changes, and lacks any curb ramps. Cars parked in the two driveways jut out into the street. The sidewalk’s asphalt surface is failed and potholed with scars of utility work. It does a nose dive at the corner of Freeman Street into a drainage grate, where there is a painted crosswalk. The crosswalk takes you to the West side of the street into a raised curb, so it’s useless for folks who need a ramp. People try to use this sidewalk, but they end up walking in the street instead.
There’s no shade. The wide expanse of asphalt makes the street really hot in the summer. There are a couple of small trees at the end near Commercial St., but they aren’t very healthy since they are trapped in tiny 2-ft tree pits.
The intersection at Bradford St doesn’t provide any support for folks who are on bikes heading to the Seashore. Folks ride and walk in both directions along the northern part of Standish St, but the street is poorly defined and they get dumped into the intersection at what looks like a parking lot between CVS and the Gulf gas station. Drivers often ignore the one-way restriction and try to drive out onto Bradford St.
Improve it now
The street is being repaved this spring (2024) and all of the lines will be re-striped (the West sidewalk [shown above with the street trees] will also be repaved in brick as part of the same paving contract).
Repaving is a great opportunity to improve the street right now.
These improvements can all be done with paint, bike racks, planters, and some temporary bollards:
- Standardize the motor vehicle travel lanes to 10-11 ft.
- Daylight the corners at Commercial Street with bike racks and planters. Make the unloading zone a walking space after loading hours with removable bollards.
- Stripe the intersection with Bradford St with bike crossings and a counter-flow bike lane on the northern section of Standish St. This will help define the street edge to look more like a street rather than a parking lot. And it will give people riding bikes a defined place to cross the street rather than riding in the crosswalks as they do today.
- Paint yield triangles at crosswalks and the bike crossings to tell drivers that they need to yield.
- Paint a white line a few feet out from the East sidewalk to create a usable walking space next to the useless sidewalk.
- Break up the continuous wall of parking spaces with trees in planters (and maybe a few small benches).
- Put in an asphalt ramp at the crosswalk on the West side. Adjust the crosswalks and make them wider so folks have a more direct, flat route to avoid the drainage grate pit.
Plan for the future
If these simple improvements work, plan to make them permanent. Here’s what that could look like:
