Over the years we’ve heard many ideas for relieving Wiscasset’s seasonal traffic headache. Everyone agrees the bottleneck is Main Street. The worst traffic backups are in the afternoon during the work week and pretty much all day on the weekends.

For something like 60 years, the Maine Department of Transportation considered building a Wiscasset bypass. At least a dozen different routes were laid out, but none were chosen. The story was always the same: Build it YES– but not in my backyard!

MDOT finally gave up, not because building a bypass wasn’t the best solution, but due to the cost, $100 million by one recent estimate. For that amount it would almost be easier to move Wiscasset’s downtown!

There have been a number of other ideas besides a bypass including building a pedestrian tunnel under Main Street like the one in Woolwich. Another was to erect a pedestrian overpass. Both of these “solutions” in theory would reduce motorists’ having to stop to allow pedestrians to cross Main Street. The problems with each are pretty obvious. Would people use them? Probably not. Also, how could they ever be made ADA accessible? Neither addresses the problem of motorists backing out of parking spaces, another reason for the stop and go of traffic.  

At one point MDOT boldly proposed construction of a towering viaduct over Main Street similar in size to the one under reconstruction in Bath. Imagine what that would have looked like and the impact on the downtown’s historic character.

Another less intrusive idea that’s come and gone is restricting Water and Middle streets to one-way traffic for the summer, or keeping them open to two-way traffic but eliminating parking on one side of each. The idea here was to improve traffic through the village. It was tried and had some success 30 years ago.

Others have suggested replacing diagonal parking on Main Street with parallel parking like downtown Damariscotta and Bath. The criticism in this case would be the loss of a good deal of parking spaces. Paving Railroad Avenue and adding a sidewalk and a parking lot there as MDOT has proposed addresses that. The town could also enlarge the existing municipal parking lots on Middle and Water streets.

One problem is neither MDOT nor Wiscasset officials ever took any of the ideas seriously. Over the years commuters and other motorists figured out alternative routes to circumvent summer traffic.

It’s encouraging the state is willing to commit monies here for the current, $5 million downtown traffic improvement plan, along with the new traffic signal and sidewalks at the corner of routes 1 and 27 and the recently announced other highway improvements south of town. And MDOT has promised to work closely with the town on the downtown project. With the formation of the Advisory Committee, traffic engineers and their design team have the opportunity to make good on that promise.

Going forward we hope whatever changes are made downtown will benefit the area’s business community while addressing the concerns of Wiscasset’s downtown merchants. The goal will be to develop a plan which following its completion will draw more not fewer downtown shoppers.

One challenge will be the design of MDOT’s planned sidewalks. Can these be constructed so that they tie-in to the existing store entrances making these entryway’s ADA accessible while maintaining the downtown’s historic character?