A traffic signal with advanced sensors helping it respond to traffic conditions is set to come to Bucksport’s Route 1 intersection by next year.
It’s been years in the making, and comes at a time when summertime traffic has started to back up for a mile or more toward Orland during the peak of tourism season.
“We’ve all suffered a lot because of the traffic backup on Route 1 the last several summers,” Rep. Steve Bishop, a member of the Legislature’s transportation committee, said at a Bucksport planning board meeting last week.
He’s lived in Bucksport his whole life and has never seen the traffic as bad as it has been in recent years, he told the Bangor Daily News.
The new light will use sensors to help adjust the length of green lights, which can help move more traffic southbound across the Penobscot River via the Route 1 bridge between Verona Island and Bucksport, and the Penobscot Narrows Bridge.
Improved traffic flow through the town could help alleviate a common concern around business development proposals on Route 1 as new projects continue to pop up there, and reflect adjustment to a local consequence of increasing tourism at Acadia National Park.
These traffic problems are not unique to Bucksport, Bishop added, but are an issue faced by coastal towns along Route 1 with older roads engineered for lower volumes of traffic than they see today.
The Maine Department of Transportation has installed traffic signals that use smart technology to adapt to conditions in other municipalities for years, and at the end of last year announced it had almost finished modernizing traffic signals in 32 other towns.
Most visitors to Maine travel by car, according to the state office of tourism. Route 1 in particular, which passes through Bucksport, is a major path for tourists heading to Acadia, where visits have surged to hover around 4 million people annually since the pandemic. Before 2021, the park’s busiest years saw about 3.5 million visitors, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.
The Maine Department of Transportation’s current three-year work plan states the new traffic light work is slated to begin this year at a cost of $520,000. The project will likely be completed by 2027, according to Bishop.
Existing light times have been adjusted for now, Bishop said at a planning board meeting to review plans for Tractor Supply Company last week.
Concerns arose at meetings for that project and a new Aroma Joe’s drive-thru approved in December about their potential to worsen traffic. At the same time, local officials have prioritized attracting businesses along the corridor as part of the town’s strategy to continue to rebound from the closure of the Verso Paper mill more than a decade ago.
“I have high hopes that this traffic light scenario will be the answer to allowing more businesses to come into town,” Bishop said.