Acadia National Park’s peak tourist season is in full swing now that the Fourth of July has passed, and with it comes downtown Bar Harbor’s notorious parking shortage.
The town’s limited parking supply is exacerbated with the park’s climbing visitation numbers — Acadia recorded more than 4 million visits last year — and this year is no different.
On Monday I timed how long it takes to find a parking spot in downtown Bar Harbor during lunchtime. Over several attempts, it took me an average of 23 minutes to snag a parking spot near Bar Harbor’s cozy but bustling Main Street intersections, the day after one of the park’s busiest holiday weekends.
Town staff proposed an adjusted parking policy at the Bar Harbor Town Council’s Tuesday meeting that would offer residents a weekly coupon for two hours of free downtown parking, offset by a slight bump in hourly premium rates. The proposed plan, which the council may act on at its July 21 meeting, could raise premium parking to $5 per hour and extend the paid parking season to May 1. The season now runs from May 15 through Oct. 30.
Bar Harbor has three tiers of parking spots during its paid parking season, according to a map published by the Bar Harbor Police Department.
Premium spaces cost $4 per hour and are those closest to Cottage and Main streets — where most of the town’s commercial storefronts are located. Standard spaces are a bit farther from the center of downtown and cost $2 per hour. The remainder of the parking requires a permit and lines the interior residential streets.
All street parking in premium downtown sections has a four-hour time limit, while the town’s 11 parking lots, seven of which are in premium zones, offer all-day spaces.
The experiment involved three trips starting from the Hulls Cove visitors center, which is about a five-minute drive from the heart of downtown Bar Harbor.
The first parking attempt was by far the most challenging: around noon on Monday, I spent 32 minutes navigating Mount Desert Island’s commercial hub before I found a single spot at the town pier’s premium parking lot. I’d passed two other spots earlier, but the cars on either side had spilled over the lines, leaving too little space for my bulky Honda Passport.
My experience was far from unique. A Facebook group called “Welcome to Bar Harbor’s famous parking show,” which has more than 16,000 members, documents the many “parking failures” that befall the town with the summer influx of residents and visitors. Facebook users share pictures of vehicles — many of which are oversized or RVs —- taking up two spots, parking in illegal places and holding up traffic.
My second attempt also began from Hulls Cove, which was packed with visitors dropping by the welcome center and boarding the park’s free shuttle system, the Island Explorer. That time I was lucky and found a standard spot within nine minutes in front of the Bar Harbor town office on Cottage Street, across from Hannaford.
But my third try was more like my first: I spent 28 minutes searching for a spot along congested roads, only locating a space once I moved towards the town’s western waterfront. I found two standard spaces on the north side of West Street, close to La Rochelle Mansion and Museum, the headquarters of the Bar Harbor Historical Society.
James Ohr, who was returning to Bar Harbor from a visit to Acadia on Wednesday, said he found parking along Cottage Street — the stretch that sits in the premium zone — across from the Citgo gas station, in about 15 minutes.
“We circled around — I guess one loop around,” Ohr said, adding that parking hadn’t been too difficult since Tuesday, when he arrived.
Debbi, a Bar Harbor visitor who snagged a space on Wednesday along Cottage Street, said her family had found their spot within 20 minutes. Debbi declined to provide her last name.
Last year, the town received more than $4.2 million in parking revenue, according to a town memo. It was not immediately clear if that revenue referred to the 2025 calendar or fiscal year, and town Finance Director Sarah Gilbert did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the Bangor Daily News.
In the first three days of the 2026 paid parking season, the town recorded $30,000 in revenue, according to Gilbert’s report to the Bar Harbor town council in mid-May.