downeast-transportation Archives - Acadia National Park on My Mind

A huge new transit and welcome center quietly opened this month, launching a high-stakes effort by Acadia National Park and key partners to persuade more visitors to take the park’s fare-free shuttle and reduce Acadia traffic and parking problems.

The arrowhead emblem of the National Park Service graces a main sign for the Acadia Gateway Center in Trenton.

The Acadia Gateway Center, a key aspect of the park’s transportation plan, is strategically situated off Route 3 in Trenton about 11 miles north of the national park’s Hulls Cove Visitor Center, which can be so busy, drivers may circle around for minutes looking for a parking spot while at the same time having to watch out for pedestrians, bicyclists and RVs.

The Gateway Center, as yet largely undiscovered, aims to head off southbound visitors, allowing them to obtain information about the park and region, leave their cars and board the Island Explorer to reach popular attractions in Acadia on Mount Desert Island. The Gateway Center could also be used by commercial tours, boost carpooling and app-based ride sharing, and allow electric vehicles to charge up.

State owned and run by the MaineDOT in partnership with the National Park Service, Downeast Transportation, which operates Island Explorer, and the Maine Office of Tourism, the Gateway Center cost $32 million, including $27.7 million, to construct.

Planned for more than 20 years, complete funding for the project was uncertain until the first Trump administration awarded a stunning $9 million election-year grant in 2020, pushing financing to the finish line to tackle Acadia traffic and parking problems. US Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican up for reelection at the time, announced the grant as part of the Federal Transit Administration’s grants for buses and bus facilities program. Separately, in 2020, Trump signed the Great American Outdoors Act, a bipartisan, multi-billion-dollar funding law, introduced by Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent and cosponsored by Collins, that provided $32.6 million for a maintenance facility at Acadia and $7.8 million to rehab water and wastewater systems in Acadia’s Schoodic District.

The Acadia Gateway Center in Trenton features Level 2 and fast-charging EV chargers and more than 400 spots in the day-use lot, which was mostly empty on a recent Friday.

The 270-space parking lot was full to capacity at the Hulls Cove Visitor Center on a sunny Friday afternoon at Acadia National Park.

Meanwhile, that same day, it was tough to find a place to park in the 270-space lot at the Hulls Cove Visitor Center 11 miles south in Acadia National Park.

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Jim Turner, an Island Explorer bus driver this year, said he is impressed with his site at Acadia National Park’s new RV camp, called White Birches and built partly to help attract seasonal
workers at Acadia during a shortage of such workers at the park.

“This camp is fantastic,” said Turner, a retired optical network engineer and Army veteran who has stayed at RV places around the US while volunteering or working at national parks, a national forest and other sites. “They did a great job laying it out,” said Turner, who is working for the first time as a driver for the fare-free bus that services Acadia.

Amid scarce affordable housing in communities around Acadia, the new RV camp and a string of other new housing projects are aimed at lowering housing costs for seasonal workers at Acadia and thereby boosting services for visitors. With more economical rents, the number of seasonal employees at Acadia should eventually increase from the low numbers each of the past several years that have hurt some services for visitors, officials said.

Jim Turner, driver for the Island Explorer, at the new RV camp for seasonal employees and volunteers at Acadia National Park.

Jim Turner, with his dog, Kara, a mixed Chihuahua breed, stands outside his RV at the new camp for seasonal employees and volunteers at Acadia National Park.

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