Let's Talk Traffic . . . Lights
State wants to take control of multiple towns' lights
TRENTON—The Maine Department of Transportation wants to upgrade the traffic signals and intersections in many Trenton, Bar Harbor, and Ellsworth locations. It also wants to install message boards.
Those boards would relay the time and distance information at four different locations along the traffic corridor on Route 3/Bar Harbor Road.
“They’re going to take over all the controllers and monitor the traffic from Augusta,” Trenton Select Board Chair Fred Ehrlenbach said during the town’s Select Board meeting earlier this week.
Ehrlenbach told members of the League of Towns at its Tuesday morning meeting, that the state was going to be able to control the lights from Augusta.
“Everything is going to be cameras,” Ehrlenbach said.
The towns will not have access to the lights, Ehrlenbach said. The state, he said, are going to take over the maintenance and control of the light boxes, but the control arms, poles, and other aspects would be paid for by Ellsworth, which would then bill other towns.
The traffic lights will not be synchronized, Ehrlenbach said, but some of the lights within Ellsworth will.
Jordan River Road, Oak Point Road, and the head of the island lights will not be synchronized because the state said those lights are too far apart to do so, Erhlenbach said.
Lamoine Town Administrator Stu Marckoon said the biggest bottleneck locally is the Ellsworth High School. He also suggested that the October 17 League of Towns’ officials meeting at the Neighborhood House in Mount Desert will be a good time to discuss the potential changes to the traffic lights.
Managers and town administrators shared quick stories about times they’d reset and restarted malfunctioning lights in their town.
Marckoon spoke of how recently the Jordan River Road light in Lamoine was cycling at 18 seconds and he went down and reset it.
Currently, there are no plans for a light at Acadia National Park’s Acadia Gateway Center, which is currently under construction in Trenton, but just a flashing yellow light. According to Friends of Acadia, “the center is meant to be the easiest location for day visitors to leave their cars and ride the Island Explorer for a carefree and car free day in the park.” The regional transit hub is slated to open in May 2025.
If there was to be a traffic light there, Ehlrenbach said, there would be four traffic lights in six miles.
TRAFFIC
Traffic and bottlenecks on the route in and out of Bar Harbor was also mentioned in Bar Harbor Town Council Vice Chair Gary Friedmann’s remarks during a Town Council workshop, also on Tuesday.
Friedmann spoke about how really minor construction off the island can back the traffic a mile.
“It seems like there should be some kind of mechanism,” he said for having work done and to not allow it during high-travel times. “I just thought that was really ridiculous.”
That traffic slow-down, he said, was caused by one bucket truck working on a utility pole.
Traffic coming on and off the island was a Bar Harbor Town Council discussion topic last year. During a presentation to the Bar Harbor Town Council in September 2023, Planning Director Michele Gagnon said the peak hours in January are between 6-7 a.m. and then 3 p.m. in the afternoon. The peaks in August occur later in the morning and then again at 3-4 p.m.
When people visit Bar Harbor and stay overnight, they stay in what the town calls transient accommodations. Those include rooms in hotels and motels and bed and breakfasts. It also includes campsites and then also RV sites. Short-term rentals in houses are a different category than rooms rented in hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts.
The peak population, the Bar Harbor Planning Department estimates, is displayed in the charts above. That population does not necessarily mean all the people are wandering around Bar Harbor at those times. They could be in beds. They could be in Acadia National Park or other towns.
Traffic and housing are the two main topics the October 17 League of Towns’ meeting is focused on.
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This is an APRIL's FOOLS joke right. Let the State take control of lights from Augusta? This sounds like a horror show before it starts. Let's see here, Myself and my boss sitting in a control room I gotta go to the bathroom and he is on his phone; HELLO I been sitting at this redlight for 20 minutes does anyone see me, I have an appointment HELLO Hello hello Augusta do you see me.
STUPID stupid Idea