Bar Harbor: Bus Traffic Dominates Ship Forum

By Bill Trotter, Bangor Daily News, Maine

Mar. 24–BAR HARBOR — It’s hard to talk about the local issues of the cruise ship industry without talking about tour buses.

That fact was evident Thursday night as 40 people met at the municipal building for a workshop on a cruise ship management plan for Bar Harbor that has been commissioned by the state.

The buses clog up roads around Agamont Park, the scenic downtown park that overlooks the harbor. There aren’t many places where there is room for them to stop for loading and discharging cruise ship passengers. And their idling engines churn out clatter and exhaust that can irritate nearby businesses and passers-by.

But Mark Ittel, the Florida consultant hired to draft the plan, cautioned that the document is not meant to be focused on how to improve tour bus flow or how to mitigate other impacts the buses might have.

“This is about the safety and security of visitors to the community,” Ittel stressed.

Nonetheless, the issue of tour buses dominated conversation at the workshop. Ittel, bus tour operators, and local residents talked Thursday about what might be done to alleviate the effect of the buses on downtown Bar Harbor.

But it is not just bus tours for cruise ship passengers that contribute to the summertime congestion, residents were told. It’s also overland bus tours that come through New Hampshire to see Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor that need to be managed better.

“You need to educate those people so they know what your rules and regulations are,” Greg Gordon of Destination New England said. The firm specializes in arranging bus tours of Acadia National Park for cruise ship passengers that disembark in Bar Harbor from May to October.

Ittel has told local officials that they should do more to regulate land-based tour bus operators. Buses that cater to cruise ship passengers have to pay fees and abide by certain rules, such as not stopping on some streets and not leaving their engines idling.

All tour buses that bring tourists into Acadia National Park are supposed to pay park fees. People agreed that if the town required fees from land-based bus tours, it might be able to better restrict bus traffic down residential streets such as Ledgelawn Avenue.

Because Agamont Park can be so congested with buses and cruise ship passengers, there was discussion about other places in town where the buses could stop to load and unload tourists. The village green was mentioned as a possibility, but some people seemed concerned that the streets around the green were too narrow and congested.

Town Councilors Rob Jordan and Val Scott pointed out that there is plenty of room farther out Main Street and by the town ball fields, but others thought that might be too far away from the pier for most cruise ship passengers to walk back to the cruise ship tender pickup point.

“You have to be careful how you position it,” Ittel said. “It can’t be too far away.”

The idea of making more room along West Street, to the west of where people board the tour buses now, was appealing to Paul Matte of Destination New England.

And there may be advantages to loading buses even farther west on West Street at Harborside Hotel. Ocean Properties, which owns the facility, hopes to expand a pier at the hotel so it can be used to screen cruise ship passengers as they come and go from shore.

“One of the issues that needs to be resolved is the bus capacity of Harborside,” Ittel said.

Ittel said he will be happy to take comments for another two weeks before he writes up the final draft of the plan. He can be reached through officials at the town’s planning office or through his company, Bermello Ajamil & Partners of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Bangor Daily News, Maine

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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