3 Comments

The town needs more traffic lights to control vehicle-pedestrian interactions

Cottage street - Main Street and Mount Desert Street - Main Street in particular. With a steady stream of pedestrians and vehicles, these intersections are quite dangerous.

At least with a traffic light pedestrian crossings would be coordinated with traffic control

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Please put a camera at the stop sign on School St. and Newton Way. I've observed cars blowing through the sign at high speeds. Rare is the vehicle that actually stops. I worry about the children which cross School St. and somehow, so far, have managed to avoid injury. I offer my porch and coffee to any police officer who will sit on my porch from 6:30 am to 9:00am. If you bring the donuts and a traffic cam, it should make for an interesting morning.

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Another example of spending thousands of dollars on "studies" when all that's really needed is just a bit of common cents! If I were an ambulance chasing lawyer I'd build an office on the side of the road by the traffic light at the head of the island. The sign reading "Alternate Merge" should be changed to "Alternate Reality." Because the traffic engineer who came up with the concept of a 100' long double lane merge at a stoplight must live in some different version of reality than the rest of us. Let's see now, at a stoplight with bumper to bumper traffic at least 3 times a day with dozens of harried drivers already late for their next appointment, etc, you add a 100' merge lane and a light that instantly turns green. What do ya suppose is going to happen? Just ask any Bar Harbor police officer and he'll tell you. When I called the police department a few months ago to report a close call everyone I spoke with agreed with me that the merge lanes were not only a bad idea they were a guarantee that accidents would happen. One officer I spoke with said that even when he parked his police cruiser in open view at the gas station people continued to race each other in an effort to gain one place in the bumper to bumper line. Given that an "expert" created the problem via an insane design I'm going to suggest we skip spending thousands on other "expert opinions" and just use common sense. Simple solution make the right lane at the light "Right Turn Only"and make the left turn to Trenton a single lane.

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