The complete series of Bypass stories will be archived here on www.ellsworthamerican.com Part 1: Examined the 70-year history of the bypass debate in Ellsworth. Since 1933, a familiar theme has been downtown businesses’ resistance to plans to divert traffic — and potential customers — from the commercial district. Part 2: Recounted the debate, misgivings and advocacy that preceded the creation, in 1962, of bypasses around downtown Belfast and Damariscotta. Bottom line today: It was painful at first but proved to be the right move. Part 3: Examined the situations in Camden and Wiscasset, two towns that missed out on opportunities for bypasses. All agree that downtown traffic is thick and slow as a result — but there's something less than consensus about whether that's a bad thing. Part 4: What Does the Future Hold for Ellsworth? Bypass Discussion Started 70 Years Ago By Aaron Porter ELLSWORTH — For anyone caught in summer traffic on High Street or waiting through three cycles of the lights on Main Street to turn left toward Bangor, a bypass around Ellsworth seems like an idea whose time has come.    But there are few new ideas under Maine’s summer sun, and today’s frustrated driver might find it surprising, and just a little disheartening, to know that knotted traffic in Ellsworth has spawned the same idea since the 1930s, to no avail.    For a variety of reasons, no bypass has ever been built.    A short memory is a common characteristic of the human condition. Fortunately, there are records and a few individuals around who recall the earliest discussions about an Ellsworth bypass.    The first notable mention of the concept appeared in The Ellsworth American in 1933. Following the fire that consumed much of its downtown core, the city was rebuilding, and planning was in the air. The proposed bypass would have taken traffic from the Bucksport Road, behind the Black House, across the river and up a swale between Dean and Washington streets to the Bar Harbor Road. Even at that early date the concerns of merchants countered the advice of planners.       “But the Ellsworth merchants do not want relief from through traffic; they want more of it,” The American reported. The editorial staff of the day also correctly predicted that the creation of such a bypass was highly unlikely. The idea was put on hold for a few decades.    The next notable reference to the idea came in 1967 when planner Murray Segal of Brookline, Mass., was hired by the Maine State Highway Commission to conduct a 20-year traffic and highway planning study of Ellsworth.    In August of that year, Segal’s report was presented to the city of Ellsworth. The bypass Segal proposed would run from Route 1A, parallel to the Christian Ridge Road. It was to cross and interchange with Route 1, cross Route 172 with limited interchange, and cross the Union River on a bridge that would have landed on Tinker Hill. From there the route would have crossed Bayside Road with no interchange, intersected with Route 3 at Beckwith Hill and rejoined Route 1 where Route 184 heads down to Lamoine.    The plan would have effectively routed through-traffic around Ellsworth. The project would have cost an estimated $5.4 million at the time.    However, even at that early date the future of High Street shopping seemed to color considerations for any improvements.    In December of 1967, Segal made a second presentation to the city. This time he included an alternative plan that included widening High Street to four lanes with a 16-foot median, the elimination of parking on Main Street and the widening of Oak and State streets and the existing Union River bridge. This plan would have cost an estimated $2.5 million and would have entirely redesigned High Street which, at the time, had the highest traffic rates for any two-way city street in the state, according to Segal.    While it isn’t clear from accounts of the presentation just why the High Street alternative was presented, it was apparent from Segal’s reported comments where his preference lay. He said the High Street effort “would result in a higher accident rate and would interrupt and damage business during construction because there is no alternative route for existing traffic lanes.”    His words are disturbingly relevant for travelers, shoppers and shop owners confronting the 2005 High Street improvement project under way this summer.    Segal told his 1967 audience that the bypass alternative “would spare the city through-traffic and trucking in the future, thereby improving shopping.”    He said the earliest possible completion date was 1971. Then he disappeared from the discussion.    By 1969 the state had in excess of $1 million in the budget marked for the bypass and High Street. Bypass planning and engineering was projected to cost $535,000 while $600,000 was earmarked to start the actual improvement of High Street. It looked as if the Maine Highway Commission was driving both projects forward. Then in June of 1970, the wheels came off.    Commissioner David Stevens came to Ellsworth for a public meeting. He explained why the state was pursuing both projects. One of his assistant planning engineers told the 180 Ellsworth residents gathered at City Hall that “the bypass would greatly cut High Street traffic, but leave more traffic than a two-lane highway should handle.”    In that context, both projects had to be pursued.    Caspar Sargent, who was at the meeting, remembered the crowd and the highly charged atmosphere. He said there was predictable opposition to the bypass from downtown merchants.    “They were afraid of losing control, obviously,” he said.    However, he recalled there was also concern from advocates for the Black House, which would have been close to the proposed new route, and advocates of the Union River who didn’t want another bridge spanning it.    “There was some reasonably contentious debate,” Sargent said.    And then Stevens asked for a non-binding vote. The results were 93–11 against the High Street widening project, and 91–17 in favor of the bypass.    “He was angry as hell,” Sargent recalled of Stevens. “He said, ‘They’re not going to get anything.’”    Tom Leavitt, who had a business and real estate on Main Street and was soon to be on the City Council, had a similar recollection of the meeting and Stevens’ response to it.    “He pursued it because it was needed and some people asked for it,” Leavitt said in reference to the entire two-phase project. “Then he found that the people running the city weren’t going for it.”    “I’m not sure that the community thought anything was acceptable at that point,” recalled Roger Maller, who was a traffic engineer for the state at the time, and served as transportation commissioner in the late 1970s.    In the short term, Stevens seemed to make good on his threat that the city would get nothing. In January of 1971 the state highway budget did not include funds for High Street improvement. In a February 1972 address to the Rotary Club, Stevens suggested that four lanes were needed on High Street.    “It is a highly congested area, especially in the summer, and more so with the new shopping center,” he said.    “We did come down here and held a hearing to talk about working on High Street and a bypass at some time. The results were so disastrous that we withdrew it from our program,” he explained.    It seems that his focus had shifted from a bypass to High Street improvement in spite of the results of the vote at that “disastrous” meeting. However, after some Rotarians suggested that it might be nice to have a bypass in place before the High Street work commenced, Stevens said the state was looking to build bypasses in eight Maine towns including Ellsworth, Camden and Wiscasset, at a cost of about $53 million for all eight.    In the summer of 1972, Stevens told the city a bypass was an unlikely project in the near future. He presented a three-stage proposal to widen High Street. The City Council was amenable.    Why did the state and city pursue that project when the straw vote in 1970 indicated local sentiment in favor of a bypass and against widening High Street? “My guess is that merchants along High Street decided something needed to be done,” Maller said in a recent conversation, “and merchants have a fairly effective way to communicate with town officials.”    So the bypass was bypassed and High Street became the focus of state and local efforts.    Protracted negotiations over the particulars of the project, and its accompanying sewer upgrades, followed. The bypass was, for all intents and purposes, a dead issue. While there was regular seasonal interest, little actually made it to the level of formal discussion, even at the municipal level, until talks about comprehensive plans and traffic management stirred again in the late 1990s.    Those discussions have persisted until today.