Between June 1 and August 31, Island Explorer buses at the Acadia Gateway Center in Trenton have been boarded 6,409 times.
That’s the news Amanda Pollock gave park officials and the Acadia National Park Advisory Commission on Monday.
The news came to the citizen commission after a slight year-to-date visitation decrease this year and 2025’s busiest year in the park.
The Acadia Gateway Center itself is state-operated and owned, but many players and administrations were quietly part of its creation. The center opened in September 2025, but the full-season and official reopening for the $27.7 million center was May 2026, just before Memorial Day weekend’s start of the tourist season.
The center in Trenton hosts 300 parking spots, is a stop for the fare-free Island Explorer bus, and is meant to be a step toward reducing both pedestrian congestion in the park’s Hulls Cove visitor center as well as vehicular congestion on Mount Desert Island.
The peak day for bus boardings this season was July 19 when there were 183 boardings. All of July had ten days where boarding numbers were above 100, but the average July daily bus boardings was 91. That number decreased to 75 in August.
Pollock’s goals, she said, were to “support and promote ridership on the Island Explorer” from the Acadia Gateway Center; give visitors an orientation to the park and a feeling that they’d arrived in the park; disperse tourism and trip planning information for the Mount Desert Island region, Downeast Maine, and state; and to issue park entrance passes and information about planning trips.
“Since the ribbon cutting, I am proud to say that we have done all of those things,” Pollock said. “We are in there every day working from 8 in the morning to 6 in the evening.”
People are boarding the bus there as well, she said.
Pollock explained that visitors to the center typically come in and talk to the (Maine Tourism Association) MTA desk before heading to the gift shop, and then coming to the park’s desk to get a park pass.
Friends of Acadia representatives stand outside the center to survey people as they exit.
Counting the visitors at the door, there have been 69,061 visits to the center in Trenton. In that same time there have been 55,748 at the nature center in the park. The number of people who go to the Hulls Cove Visitor Center in that same time period—63,780—is likely roughly one-third of all who enter that busy center. Pollock explained that door counts weren’t possible at that location because it was so busy.
Lasers embedded into the door count humans entering the Acadia Gateway Center.
The Friends of Acadia visitor stewards learned that of those entering the visitor center, the highest percentage, or 29%, stayed on Mount Desert Island the night before. Another 19% stayed in Trenton and Ellsworth. Lamoine, Surry, and Hancock combined for another 6%.
Of those surveyed, 28% said they expected to use the Island Explorer, another 23% were unsure and 49% said they did not plan to.
After leaving the Acadia Gateway Center, 85% said they planned to drive their own vehicle and 9% said they would be taking the Island Explorer. Others hadn’t decided.
“Not only are visitors going to the Acadia Gateway Center, but they’re making it their last stop on the way out of town,” Pollock said.
Most of the people who stopped at the center did so to gather information about the park. The second highest choice was to check out the center, which was followed by the need to use the restrooms. Responders were allowed to check more than one reason for stopping.
Approximately 50% of those who took the survey had heard about the gateway center from road signs.
“It’s the third busiest fee station in the park,” Pollock said of the use.
She also shared a word cloud from FOA’s surveys where the words most used to describe the center are the biggest. The word “beautiful” dominated that word cloud.
An express bus to Hulls Cove is a hope for the future, Pollock said, once the Island Explorer fleet is expanded by 6-8 buses, which it will be thanks to a grant from the federal Department of Transportation.
Every visitor that goes into the building, she said, gets talked to about the Island Explorer. There are also panels outside and in other spaces about the fare-free bus.
“As we increase the fleet, we’ll hopefully decrease the wait time” for those buses, she said.
That wait time could decrease from 30 to 15 minutes. An express route would also encourage the use. Currently, there are stops on routes to major hubs such as the Hulls Cove Visitor Center or Bar Harbor Village Green.
Downeast Transportation determines what routes the Island Explorer will service via demand and what routes will get the most use.
“There is also a sensitivity to areas that are underserved,” ANP Management Assistant John Kelly said.
That could mean a future express route to Southwest Harbor or Mount Desert.
During the meeting it was mentioned that Bar Harbor has a town-focused route and Bar Harbor provides more funds than other towns to the service.
So far in 2026, the amount of visits from the Island Explorer bus system increased 13.3% from 88,759 to 100,606.
Commission member Kirk Emerson asked if there were other kinds of low-cost incentives to people to use the service.
Approximately 73% of the funding comes from ANP entrance fees, Kelly said.
This story was originally published by The Bar Harbor Story. To receive regular coverage from the Bar Harbor Story, sign up for a free subscription here.