Transportation Goal:
To promote a transportation network that allows residents, visitors, and commuters to move safely, efficiently, and pleasurably throughout Mount Desert’s villages, the Town, and Mount Desert Island.
 Mount Desert’s transportation network is fundamentally intertwined with Mount Desert Island’s larger land-use patterns, and in supporting a safe and healthy community. Residents and visitors alike often rely heavily on personal automobiles, and therefore on
the roads on which they drive. With many residents moving off the island due to rising housing costs on the island, this dependency is increasing, putting extra pressures on the roads. Both housing opportunities and services should be more self-contained on the island to reduce this dependency, which could also strengthen the economy. This dependency could also be reduced both by promoting land-use patterns that encourage such, for example denser development, walkable communities, and infill in the villages, and by promoting a wide variety of transportation options, such as public transportation, and bicycle and pedestrian opportunities. By doing so, in addition to appropriately locating and designing the roadways themselves, the negative impacts to the natural landscapes can be minimized, while maximizing the interactions between and among residents and visitors.
Objectives:
1. Maintain the safety and quality of Mount Desert’s road network.
Strategies:
a. Develop a long-range infrastructure maintenance and capital improvement program that details the level of service at which Mount Desert’s roads will be maintained and for what cost.
b. Monitor locations that could become high-crash areas and make improvements to alleviate safety concerns, for instance widening road shoulders for parking near seasonal attractions.
c. Support the Police Department's efforts to strictly enforce speed limits throughout Mount Desert.
d. Support the improvement of public signage, in order to increase the clarity, consistency and enhancement of public signs throughout the town.
e. Develop standards to manage new curb cuts on our major roadways.
2. Improve the design, quality and type of safe connections (rights-of-way, trails, sidewalks, bike paths) between our town's villages, neighborhoods, and subdivisions, in a way that promotes physical activity as a part of daily life.
Strategies:
a. Require that new residential developments in reasonable proximity to each other have bicycle and/or pedestrian connections. The type of connections should depend on where the development exists in the community – trails/rights-of-way in less dense areas and sidewalks/paths in more dense areas.
b. Improve automotive, bicycle, and pedestrian connections throughout the Mount Desert between residential neighborhoods, community facilities, recreation areas, and commercial areas. Special attention should be given to designs that improve pedestrian and bicycle safety.
c. Create a sidewalk master plan that details where these facilities should be located, what level of service they should be maintained to, and an ongoing maintenance schedule to ensure these facilities provide a safe, convenient, and comfortable alternative to automobiles in our town’s villages.
d. Whenever possible, establish bicycle lanes to make alternative transportation easier for residents and guests alike, by widening the shoulders of local roads if necessary, but preferably through creation of separate bicycle trails. Priority should be given to those investments that connect residential neighborhoods to community facilities (water access points, playfields, parks, schools, etc) and our commercial villages.
3. Work with surrounding communities to decrease the burden on Mount Desert’s transportation network.
Strategies
a. Support an increase in year-round public transportation.
b. Support the creation of an off-island intermodal transit hub to reduce commuter and visitor traffic.
c. Support the creation of a ride-sharing network on and off the island.
d. Support the creation of a regional transportation organization whose mission is to address transportation concerns at the regional level.
4. Use Transportation Planning as a tool to manage new growth
Strategies:
a. Ensure consideration of opportunities for connected road networks and through-streets over cul-de-sacs and dead-end roads in new subdivisions. Where through-streets are not possible, encourage pedestrian or bicycle access-ways between them.
b. Promote the use of shared driveways to increase safety and minimize impacts to natural resources.
c. Update the Land Use Ordinance to allow more flexible on-site parking arrangements in the pedestrian-oriented villages.
d. Require new developments to upgrade adjoining public infrastructure to meet minimum standards.
5. Invest in infrastructure and service improvements that will imporve the quality of life for residents and visitors.
Strategies:
a. Quantify the demand for new or better parking facilities in peak summer months and create a plan to mitigate this demand. This could include improving the existing parking supply (new parking facilities, easements and rights-of-way; or more efficient use of current parking facilities) or reducing parking demand (investments in public transportation, alternative transportation facilities such as bike paths, sidewalks, etc).
b. Create a sidewalk management plan that improves the existing sidewalk network and expands the sidewalk network to connect commercial centers, neighborhoods, community facilities, parks/playgrounds, and other pedestrian facilities.
c. Make infrastructure and service improvements to the marina so that Northeast Harbor retains its status as a top harbor for visiting pleasure craft.
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