Town of Sandwich Opens New 4-Mile Segment In Planned Cross-Cape Pathway
Last Friday, local officials officially cut the ribbon on the new Service Road shared-use pathway in the Cape Cod town of Sandwich – a four-mile trail alongside Service Road that partially fills one of the biggest gaps in the Cape’s network of off-street bike and pedestrian trails.
The new path runs alongside Service Road, a relatively quiet two-lane roadway that also parallels the Route 6 highway.
The western end of the path begins near Route 130/Forestdale Road, about 1.5 miles south of Sandwich’s town center, and the eastern end of the path is at the intersection of Service Road and Chase Road, near the Barnstable town line.
The path fills in a large gap in a proposed 88-mile network of car-free trails that would traverse the entire Cape, from Provincetown to Bourne to Woods Hole.
The new pathway in Sandwich fills in roughly a quarter of the gap between the existing Cape Cod Canal shared-use pathways in Bourne and the western end of the Cape Cod Rail Trail in Yarmouth.
MassDOT and the Town of Barnstable are currently building a 4-mile extension of the Cape Cod Rail Trail to connect it to Mary Dunn Road in Barnstable.
The next phase of the Cape Cod Rail Trail – filling the gap to the new Service Road path in Sandwich – is currently in design. Most of the proposed alignment would also run alongside Service Road and Route 6 through the town of Barnstable.
Finally, the Town of Sandwich has a conceptual plan to connect the new Service Road path to the existing Cape Cod Canal pathway with new pathways along Route 130 and along the Old King’s Highway through Sandwich’s village center. That project is currently in its early design stage.
You can learn more about the new Sandwich Service Road Path in this segment from Sandwich Community Media:
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