Editor’s note: The BDN will publish a piece tomorrow explaining tricks for avoiding the worst traffic on Mount Desert Island.
From a sheer volume standpoint, it may not compete with rush-hour Storrow Drive in Boston or other congested commutes in major cities, but there is one thing that often stands out when Mainers talk about Mount Desert Island in the summer.
Traffic. The volume of cars funneling on and off the island on summer days creates congestion where there isn’t any for many months of the year. It also makes parking hard to come by and can lead to crashes that bring everything to a standstill, especially on the Route 3 causeway that connects MDI to the mainland.
And it has become more congested over time. The explanation for this, broadly speaking, comes down to one thing: tourism.
Since before the creation of Acadia National Park in 1916 — even during a few years when cars on the island were banned — MDI has always drawn people from far away. After World War II ended, and then a tremendous forest fire burned across much of the island and destroyed many old hotels and summer mansions, the island’s summer economy shifted away from wealthy benefactors and more toward short-term tourists.
That focus remains today, with Acadia and the scenic seaside villages that dot the island’s shoreline drawing millions of visitors every year, from mid-May through October. Most are out-of-state tourists who stay for a few days, some are Mainers who come on daytrips and others are seasonal residents who stay for weeks or months at a time. But unless they arrive by boat — which fewer are doing this year — the only way to get to and around MDI is on the roads.
This also is true for local residents, year-round workers at places such as The Jackson Laboratory and seasonal workers employed in the island’s growing tourism industry. The island supports a year-round population of roughly 11,000 people, including residents of offshore islands who access MDI for services or getting to the mainland, but by some estimates the island may hold as many as four times that amount on any given day at the height of summer.
The Island Explorer bus system was created in 1999 to alleviate the growing vehicle congestion and pollution on MDI. It provides service for free to all four MDI towns and to Trenton. It travels along the Park Loop Road in Acadia, but does not go to another popular Acadia attraction, the summit of Cadillac Mountain — where the park now requires reservations for motorists.
Many more tourists
The bus service, which is funded by federal grants and private donations, carries several hundred thousand passengers each year between late June and mid-October. It has expanded modestly over the years, but not nearly as much as visitation to Acadia, which over the past decade has seen its annual visit totals grow by more than 1 million.
For decades, the park had roughly between 2 million and 2.5 million visits each year.
But in 2016, when Acadia and the National Park Service both celebrated their 100th anniversaries, annual visits jumped to more than 3 million a year and stayed above that until 2020, when much of the world did not travel due to the COVID pandemic. But visits rebounded even higher in 2021, when Acadia’s annual visits exceeded 4 million for the first time, and have come close to 4 million every year since.
At the same time, the island’s year-round population base has stayed flat, declining by less than 1 percent from 2010 to 2020. The lack of resident population growth on the island has been attributed to sharply higher housing costs and pressure from commercial investors, who have converted many regular houses into more lucrative vacation rentals — which has significantly boosted the number of lodging options for tourists to stay on MDI.
The steeper housing costs have forced many residents to move off the island and, if they keep their on-island in-person jobs, to drive to work across the Trenton causeway.
Off-island, the population of the Ellsworth area has grown significantly in recent decades. But aside from widening part of High Street in Ellsworth, partially re-routing Route 3 in Ellsworth and redesigning the intersection of routes 3 and 102 at the head of MDI — all of which happened in the 2000s — there have been no major road expansion projects in the Ellsworth-MDI area aimed at alleviating traffic congestion in many decades.
Instead, the state has sought to develop a new welcome center and park-and-ride facility in Trenton — which was supposed to open earlier this summer — as a way to reduce seasonal congestion on MDI.
Drivers can park at and ride Island Explorer buses from the Trenton site now, but the welcome center is not yet open. The Maine Department of Transportation originally expected it to open by the end of June, but that was delayed.
