The state is nearing completion of a visitors’ center in Trenton that is designed to help reduce seasonal traffic congestion on Mount Desert Island.
The $27 million Acadia Gateway Center is expected to be completed by the end of June, according to the Maine Department of Transportation. The building will be a place where people visiting MDI and Acadia National Park can stop, use the restroom and talk to staffers about recreational services and related businesses on the island, which draws millions of tourists each year.
The 10,000-plus square-foot building — with solar panels on its south-facing roof and a large soaring window that faces Route 3 — will resemble other visitor information centers that are run by the Maine Tourism Association, in that it will cater to travelers who may be unfamiliar with the area.
But it will differ from those other sites in one significant way. A major function of the facility is to serve as a transit center, where day visitors to the island can park their vehicles and instead ride Island Explorer buses to and from their destinations. Both tourists and commuters will be able to use the center as a transit hub.
“It will be a one-of-a-kind in Maine,” Jarod Farn-Guilette, regional planner for Maine DOT, said of the project. “It’s pretty unique in what it does for the region.”
The Maine Tourism Association will operate and manage Acadia Gateway Center, but other entities such as the National Park Service will have staff onsite to assist visitors.
Since at least the early 2000s, the department has had its eyes on Trenton as a location for a transit hub that could help alleviate seasonal traffic congestion in Hancock County. Officials with Acadia National Park, which in the past decade has made improved traffic management one of its top priorities, has been an active partner in the project as it tries to cut down on increasing car congestion in the park, where visitation has soared in the wake of the global COVID pandemic.
Key to the objectives for the visitor’s center site is the seasonal Island Explorer bus system, which has operated no-fare, low- or no-emission buses on and around MDI since 1999. The bus system, largely funded with federal grants, was created as a way to reduce the number of passenger vehicles that converge on MDI each year from late June through mid-October.
Acadia Gateway Center will have parking for nearly 300 passenger cars and 19 recreational vehicles, according to Ed Karpinski, Maine DOT’s onsite resident engineer for the project. These new parking spaces will join 100 others at an abutting park-and-ride lot that opened on Gateway Center Drive in 2012, along with Island Explorer’s operations and maintenance building.
Island Explorer is planning frequent bus service between the visitors’ center and downtown Bar Harbor, according to a schedule posted on the bus service’s website.
Buses will depart daily from the center every 20 minutes from 9 a.m. to 5:20 p.m. to go to Bar Harbor. For commuters traveling to Bar Harbor in the morning for work, there will be two earlier departures from Trenton, at 7 a.m. and 7:45 a.m.
For visitors who want to travel back to Trenton from Bar Harbor, daily runs will extend into the evening. Buses will leave Bar Harbor every 20 minutes from 10 a.m. to 6:40 p.m. and, after that, will have departure times of 7:30, 8:00, 9:15 and 10:15 p.m.
Before 10 a.m., Island Explorer buses will leave Bar Harbor for Trenton each day at 8:30 and 9 a.m.
The Trenton building will have a dedicated bus lane by the front entrance, along with an electronic display sign with a schedule, to facilitate easy access to the buses from the center, according to Karpinksi. Near the parking lot will be a large arrowhead-shaped Acadia National Park sign that people can stand next to for photos during their visits, he said.
Inside will be restrooms, staffed information desks, vending machines and seating areas for people waiting for companions or buses, he said. Most of the building interior that is publicly accessible is a large room with a high vaulted ceiling that goes all the way up to the roof.
