Marjorie Moore timed her arrival from Texas to avoid the inevitable crowds, hitting Portland’s Casco Bay Lines ferry terminal Wednesday afternoon, two days before the official start of the holiday weekend.
In Maine, the Fourth of July period is the heaviest travel weekend of the year, and this year could be one of the busiest ever. Citing a healthy economy and gas prices nearly a dollar lower than last July, transportation executives and officials say Maine’s roads and ferry lines could carry record traffic this weekend.
The Maine Turnpike Authority is bracing for the possibility that there will be more than 1 million transactions at the tolls on the state’s chief thoroughfare this weekend.
“We’ve predicted a 4½ percent increase over last year’s Fourth of July traffic,” said Erin Courtney, a turnpike authority spokeswoman.
Courtney said that last year from July 3 to July 6 – the period Thursday through Sunday – nearly 975,000 transactions were recorded, which included one or more cash tolls paid by an individual motorist and one entry for motorists with E-ZPass transponders. Traffic last year was heaviest on July 3 with about 300,000 transactions, compared with about 184,000 on the Fourth of July.
The turnpike authority has seen a 4½ percent increase in traffic so far this year over 2014 and used that figure to predict the holiday weekend traffic. Last month, turnpike officials said traffic on the 113-mile road was on pace to surpass the record of 76.6 million vehicles set in 2007.
The AAA travel organization lists average gas prices this week at $2.80 per gallon, compared with last year’s July price of $3.75.
Courtney said the decline in gas prices has been the biggest factor in the increased passenger and commercial vehicle traffic this year.
“If we stay on pace as we are now, it could be our best year in terms of turnpike traffic,” she said.
Although traffic ahead of the weekend was climbing, anyone traveling Friday or Saturday, the actual holiday, can expect even more.
That’s why Moore flew in Tuesday night, did all of her grocery shopping Wednesday morning and got it packaged in a ferry cargo container by early afternoon. Instead of contending with crowds, she sat calmly with her dog, Rahzi, in the moderately crowded terminal waiting for the 2:15 p.m. ferry to her summer home on Great Diamond Island.
“One of the reasons we arrived in the middle of the week was to avoid the weekend, because we know it’s crazy,” said Moore, an artist and teacher who lived in Maine for 26 years before moving to Austin.
HOTELS, BUS LINES ALSO KEPT BUSY
This weekend also is keeping people in the hospitality industry hopping.
“This has been an incredibly busy summer already,” said Jean Ginn Marvin, owner of the 109-room Nonantum Resort in Kennebunkport. “We had our busiest June ever, and July is shaping up to be our busiest July ever.” She doubts there are any rooms to be had this weekend in Kennebunkport.
People endured a harsh winter and are enjoying a strengthening economy, so they are more inclined to come to Maine and spend money, she said.
“Whenever there’s a holiday weekend like this, the restaurants and the shops definitely feel a nice bounce,” she said.
Concord Coach Lines responded in advance to predicted holiday traffic by adding extra bus trips into Maine, anticipating it would carry as many as 150 passengers an hour northbound from Boston at the peak of travel.
“We’re pretty busy,” said Harry Blunt, president of the New Hampshire-based bus company. “Our business has generally been quite strong, so we are anticipating a quite strong Fourth of July weekend.”
C&J Bus Lines, which launched a luxury bus service between Ogunquit and New York City this year, already had sold out for the holiday weekend by Wednesday, said Jim Jalbert, the bus company’s owner.
Train traffic is typically greater on the Fourth of July weekend as well, but the Downeaster train service has been hampered this year by delays caused by needed repairs to tracks, rail beds and bridges.
“If we were running a regular schedule, we would probably be up to 1,800 (passengers) per day,” said Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which oversees the Downeaster service.
But with fewer Downeaster trains running because of the repairs, Quinn expected no more than 1,000 passengers per day, even during the height of holiday traffic.
Quinn called the delays caused by the repairs a “shame,” because summer ridership is peak season for the Downeaster, with an average of about 1,500 passengers per day under normal operating conditions.
“It’s just one of those things. It has to be done,” she said of the track work and the restricted train schedule.
MORE CARGO, RIDERS ON FERRIES
Back at Casco Bay Lines, Nicholas Mavodones, the terminal’s operations manager, seemed delighted with the lines of cars waiting to board the ferry, and the cranes hoisting shrink-wrapped pallets of cargo onto another ferry dedicated to freight.
“It’s really our busiest weekend of the year,” he said.
Mavadones said the crowds riding ferries to the eight islands that Casco Bay Lines serves – Peaks, Great Diamond, Little Diamond, Long, Bailey, Diamond Cove, Cliff and Chebeague – started picking up on Wednesday, and the ferry service responded by adding extra trips for both passengers and cargo. Four of Casco Bay Lines’ ferries can accommodate 400 passengers, and a fifth can carry 244 passengers.
Mavodones said families and restaurants were shipping much more food, beer and soda than usual to get ready for holiday visitors and guests.
Last year, Casco Bay Lines carried a total of 37,825 ferry passengers from July 2 to July 7 and 1,049 vehicles, he said. Mavadones predicted this year’s numbers will increase.
“This year, I think, would be up,” he said.
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