By Tom Walsh; Part 3 of 4 Parts

Summertime Route 1 traffic makes traveling through downtown Camden a tedious challenge for residents and visitors. Sandwiched between the sea and the mountains, a bypass seems to be precluded by the Knox County community’s geography. Staff photo by Steven Pappas “Being able to expose visitors to our downtown businesses in slow motion is a big benefit. At 10 miles an hour you get a chance to look in the windows and see what interests you. At 50 miles per hour you don’t.” — Wiscasset Director of Economic and Community Development Don Alexander  Vote Now! What do you think about the Bypass Issue?

Should Ellsworth build a bypass? Have you got more on your mind? Send us yours thoughts! Be sure to include your email address so we can contact you. Email        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? STAFF GRAPHIC BY CATHERINE MCKINNEY      Gateway-1: Bringing the Towns to the Table By Tom Walsh Like 19 other communities located on the 110-mile Route 1 corridor from Brunswick to Prospect, both Camden and Wiscasset are now involved in a new Maine Department of Transportation (DOT) long-term strategic planning effort called Gateway-1.    Gateway-1 was developed to encourage the 21 towns involved to cooperatively develop long-term strategies for coordinating growth and transportation decisions.    It’s a program that, if successful, DOT plans to expand to Ellsworth, and beyond, within five years.    “These solutions need to be explored not on a community-by-community basis, but on a corridor-wide basis,” said Kathy Fuller, director of DOT’s Environmental Office and Gateway-1 project manager.     “The Route 1 corridor is an organism that has to work as a whole. Communities need to understand that land use decisions that occur in one town have a ripple effect on the next town. They need to get excited about talking about mutual problems and problem-solving together.    “It probably won’t happen for at least three or four years, but we will at least take the Gateway-1 approach to Ellsworth and to other high-priority Route 1 corridors in the state, where we can apply some of the best management practices we’re learning now,” Fuller said.    John Dority, DOT’s chief engineer, sees cooperative transportation planning as essential to construction of any new Route 1 bypasses.    “We need buy-in for the need for a bypass, as opposed to early development of a no-build position,” he said. “If we get all the communities thinking on the same plane, the process will be more proactive than reactive.”    Gateway-1’s phase one began last year and involved local and regional meetings designed to identify problems and establish a process for determining solutions. It also involved all 21 communities signing a memorandum of understanding that commits them to working cooperatively with surrounding communities and with state and federal transportation planners.    “We needed all 21 towns along the corridor and the state and federal transportation agencies to be clear on their roles and responsibilities as we now move into phase two this fall,” Fuller said. “In phase two we will be taking the problems identified in phase one and exploring a variety of solutions.”    Camden, Wiscasset and each of the other Gateway-1 communities are now in the process of identifying seven to 15 residents to serve on a community panel. Each panel would nominate one member and one alternate to serve on a Gateway-1 Project steering committee, with those selections being ratified by local boards of selectmen or city councils.    Throughout the phase-one fact-gathering process, Route 1 backups in Wiscasset were identified as a problem for many other communities within the Gateway-1 corridor.    “Every community between Brunswick and Rockport indicated that congestion in Wiscasset affects their ability to do business,” Fuller said.    That includes Damariscotta, which has a Route 1 bypass.    “People who get tied up in traffic in Wiscasset aren’t as likely to travel into our downtown,” said William Post, Damariscotta’s town manager. “After being delayed there, they are more likely to use the bypass here. Whatever happens to the south of us affects every Route 1 community to the north.” Fuller said seasonal traffic congestion in Wiscasset, Camden and elsewhere along Route 1 also jeopardizes public safety and public health.    “It affects the ability of emergency response vehicles to get to the scene of an accident,” she said. “That’s especially true where there is not a good grid of alternative routes for reaching accidents. And anywhere that you have very long delays and vehicles idling in traffic, it’s a concern for people with respiratory problems who live in or near a congested area.”    Tim Pellerin, director of Lincoln County’s Emergency Management Agency, shares Fuller’s public safety concerns.    “We’ve never had a case where an ambulance couldn’t get through, but certainly response is slowed by heavy traffic on Route 1,” he said. “A bigger issue is the problem that Wiscasset volunteer firemen have getting through traffic to reach the fire station so they can respond to a fire call.”    Camden Police Chief Phillip Roberts said heavy summer congestion often delays police response to accident scenes north of town near Camden Hills State Park, but that alternative routes exist to reach locations south of town.    “One benefit of traffic moving so slowly through town is that the proportion of personal injury accidents is low,” Roberts said. “The accidents we do get in the summer time are little fender-benders, where a driver who was looking in a store window bumps into the vehicle in front of him.”    Roberts said he’s looking forward to any Gateway-1 solutions that improve congestion.    “Anything will be an improvement,” he said.

Ask an Abenaki what “Wiscasset” means in her Native American language and she’ll tell you: “At the hidden outlet.”

Ask a state transportation planner to define “Wiscasset” and he might say: “Coastal Maine’s worst Route 1 traffic nightmare.”

The Lincoln County coastal community of Wiscasset bills its well-preserved downtown as “Maine’s prettiest village.” That may be, but the National Historic District is also the epicenter of a seasonal traffic bottleneck that at times has motorists backed up for four miles or more on either side of the Route 1 bridge over the Sheepscot River.

Route 1 congestion at Wiscasset is more than an inconvenience. A 2004 Maine Department of Transportation (DOT) analysis describes the Wiscasset traffic snarl as “legendary” and claims “Wiscasset village is rapidly becoming unwalkable and unlivable due to noise and fumes.”

The situation isn’t much better farther north in Knox County, where Route 1 seasonal traffic moves at a crawl through downtown Camden. As predicted in a 1993 U.S. Route 1 Mid-Coast Transportation Study, traffic in Camden is a problem that’s getting worse.

That DOT study estimated 1990 summer average daily traffic volume in Camden at 14,000 vehicles. By 2002, DOT traffic counts for Camden stood at 20,000 vehicles, as compared to 26,000 vehicles in Wiscasset.

“Camden is not quite as bad as Wiscasset but, like Wiscasset, it’s a bottleneck because there is no alternate route,” said Jeffrey Nims, Camden’s planner and code enforcement officer. “On a summer day, vehicles heading north are backed up to the town line. Going south, traffic backs up all the way to the Whitehall Inn. It’s taken me as long as 20 minutes to drive a mile.”

Both Wiscasset and Camden were on a 1972 list of eight Maine communities being targeted by DOT for bypass construction. So was Ellsworth. For different reasons, a bypass never happened in any of the three communities.

Not for Lack of Trying

There is no Route 1 bypass to deflect traffic around downtown Wiscasset, but not because residents didn’t want one. Despite decades of promises by the DOT and a citizens’ petition drive, it hasn’t happened. At least not yet.

Instead, Wiscasset residents endure the inconvenience, truck noise, exhaust fumes and central business district gridlock, joking that getting around their village often requires mastering the art of making a right turn in order to go left.

Don Jones, chairman of Wiscasset’s Transportation Committee, said there was strong local support for a bypass when the concept was first proposed in 1958 by the Maine State Highway Commission, as the DOT was known then, after completion of a new Route 1 bridge connecting Bath and Woolwich.

While a route for a Wiscasset bypass was being studied under a federal grant, the highway commission turned its attention to a bypass around Damariscotta, which it constructed in the early 1960s.

In 1968, still seeing no movement toward a bypass, Wiscasset submitted a citizens’ petition with hundreds of signatures in support of construction. “Don’t worry,” State Highway Commissioner David Stevens assured a Wiscasset audience in 1968. “You will be driving on a bypass in five years.”

Bypass planning also was derailed by the emergency closure in 1979 of Wiscasset’s Route 1 bridge to trucks over 19 tons. Repairs diverted DOT funding for a local bypass.

In 1991, statewide voter approval of the Sensible Transportation Policy Act not only stopped the widening of the Maine Turnpike, but prompted DOT to pull the plug on design of a Wiscasset bypass.

Instead of a bypass, Wiscasset got studies, one in 1972, another in the late 1980s. A third study begun in 1997 remains ongoing and has cost over $1 million.

“It involves a federal environmental impact statement, and it was due to be completed at the end of 2003, then at the end of 2004,” Jones said. “Now we’re told it will be completed by the end of this year. Maybe, maybe not.”

During the eight years that the current planning has been underway, more than two dozen possible Wiscasset bypass routes have been discussed, including four different tunnel options and route alignments running north, south and through the village. Two possible northern alignments remain under discussion, Jones said.

“Surrounding towns have weighed in with their preferences, while environmental activists have generally argued against any bypass,” he said. “There’s concern about the amount of silt that bridge construction would put into the Sheepscot River, which is one of Maine’s salmon rivers.”

Public hearings and a public comment period will follow release of the Environmental Impact Study. Jones predicts spirited debate over two bypass options: building a short bypass to a new, longer bridge just north of the existing bridge over the Sheepscot River, or building a longer bypass to a shorter bridge located farther upstream, where the river narrows.

While Jones favors the short bridge approach, he realizes there’s no guarantee that any bypass route will win the hearts of a changing community.

“Since 1958, there’s been a large majority feeling that a bypass should be built around town one way or another,” he said. “More recently, as the demographics of who lives here are changing, there’s been a shift from those who have jobs and want a strong economy to those who don’t work and want less development. Resistance [to a bypass] has been increasing over the years.”

Playing the Hand You’re Dealt

Not everyone in Wiscasset sees downtown congestion as a problem, even at an average summer traffic count of 26,000 vehicles a day.

“Overall, I’d say the traffic here is a positive,” Don Alexander, Wiscasset’s director of economic and community development, told The American.

“Especially on the retail side, we’ve got companies like Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins that are seeing that car count and looking at how they might take advantage of all the traffic. There’s a new mall development underway two miles south of town that’s happening because of its exposure to traffic.”

While admitting that peak summer congestion does have some impact on retail activity downtown, Alexander said it also lures some motorists back to town.

“The traffic acts as a mild deterrent at its heaviest,” he said. “When the queue is at its worst, summer visitors are reluctant to get out of it for fear that they may not be able to get back in, especially when they get downtown and realize the extent of the congestion in both directions.

“When they’ve been traveling two miles at a snail’s pace, they just want to get back up to speed and get going toward their destination. They just want to get out of here.

 “We’re not a significant destination village like Camden, Boothbay or Bar Harbor. But, as a pass-through community, being able to expose visitors to our downtown businesses in slow motion is a big benefit. At 10 miles an hour you get a chance to look in the windows and see what interests you. At 50 miles per hour you don’t.

“Even if they don’t stop, they’ve had their curiosity piqued. On a slow, rainy day in Boothbay Harbor, they might say: ‘Lets go up to Wiscasset and check out Big Al’s Super Values, the antique stores and have lunch at Sarah’s Café.’ So, to some extent, we benefit.”

How a Wiscasset bypass would affect business remains to be seen, Alexander said.

“We’ve been assured by the DOT that we will have a bypass, but it may take 12 years,” he said. “The outcome will be largely dependent on what the community does during the planning phase. It’s not what hand you’re dealt, but how you play it.”

Geography an Issue in Camden

As in Wiscasset, there are differing feelings in Camden about the impact of heavy Route 1 traffic on businesses there and on quality of life.

“There is concern on the part of business people here that, if you take away the traffic, you also take away their business,” said Town Manager Roberta Smith.

“It’s the people who see your business as they drive through who might stop. On the other hand, you may have customers trying to sleep in your B&B, so you want it quiet. But you still want some traffic so that you have customers in your B&B.”

A DOT summary of a 2004 community meeting on transportation issues says a Camden bypass isn’t likely.

“In the past, residents would have vociferously refused a bypass,” the report says. “Now many (but not all) would be for it because Camden has now become a destination in and of itself. However, it was widely noted that geography, NIMBY [Not In My Backyard] and land acquisition costs would now make a bypass nearly impossible.”

With Camden shoehorned between the Camden Hills and Camden Harbor, Camden Planner Jeffrey Nims doesn’t see a bypass in the town’s future. He’s more concerned about making the best of the status quo.

 “I think people here have resigned themselves to the fact that a bypass is impossible to do here, as we’re wedged between the mountains and the sea,” he said. “I think this is the way it’s always going to be.

“The advantage is that heavy traffic is great for local business. The downside is that it discourages people from getting out of traffic. It’s a wash overall.”

Camden is now looking at parking strategies that will make it easier for Route 1 motorists to patronize local businesses.

“I think a lot of our congestion problem is that people come in and then start circling around on side streets in hopes of finding a place to park,” Nims said. “And when they can’t, they get back into traffic. So, we have people who are on Route 1, then off and then almost immediately back on that are contributing to the congestion. We’re looking now at better signage to direct them to town-owned parking.”

Nims said there was a proposal in the late 1960s for a short bypass around Camden’s business district that would have routed traffic through a residential area and required construction of a new bridge.

“That never happened because of local opposition and the cost,” Nims said. “In the mid-90s there was a much more serious DOT proposal for a bypass that would have started somewhere south of Knox County and cut inland through the Washington, Union and Hope areas and then reconnected with Route 1 north of Camden.

“When DOT had a public hearing in Hope, there was such a huge turnout they had to establish satellite parking lots and bus people in,” Nims said. “After hundreds of people turned out in opposition, DOT dropped the idea.”

Jane LeFleur lives in downtown Camden, a block off Route 1. As the executive director of Friends of Midcoast Maine, she and 400 other members of the “smart growth organization” work to encourage regional transportation and economic development planning.

“It’s a blessing and a curse, and you take the good with the bad,” she says of Camden’s congestion. “We hear the traffic, and we feel the soot, but we wanted to live downtown. It’s the people at the inns, especially, that will feel it as its gets worse.”

“As far as I can see, no one in Camden is talking about a bypass,” she said. “The most frequent comment I hear is ‘We’ve already had that discussion.’

“At this point, through widening and improvements to the existing road, they’re just trying to keep traffic moving and free-flowing and at the same time not destroy the quality of life here.”