BAR HARBOR (AP) – A new report ranking the road from Ellsworth to Acadia National Park as one of the nation’s worst traffic bottlenecks for summer travelers has some local officials and vacationers scratching their heads.

The report by AAA, the American Highway Users Alliance and The Road Information Program listed Route 3 as No. 20 on a list of the top 25 summer tourist destinations with the worst seasonal traffic delays as a result of traffic bottlenecks. The rankings were based on traffic delays, number of summer trips and the estimated time delay per trip.

But even with a steady line of cars and trucks meandering through Bar Harbor on a recent summer day, not everybody thought the congestion so bad.

“What traffic?” asked Gary Hutchinson as he and seven family members climbed out of their rented minivan. “We’re from Northern California. This is beautiful compared to what we’re used to.”

Costas Christ, executive director of the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce, was surprised to hear the area has been ranked nationally as a bottleneck. Christ, who travels Route 3 on his daily commute from Brooksville to Bar Harbor, said the chamber has received no official complaints about the traffic from motorists.

“I think they got it wrong,” Christ said. “Statistics and this type of thing are always something to take a second look at.”

The report, entitled “Are We There Yet?”, concluded that getting to beaches, lakes and other summer destination points is becoming more difficult as the level of tourism and traffic to those spots increases.

Rich Margiotta, the traffic engineer who analyzed data for the report, said researchers began their work last February by asking state transportation departments to list their biggest traffic concerns.

Besides the road to Acadia, Maine officials listed U.S. Route 1 in Hancock County, Route 1 in Ogunquit and state Route 302 near Naples and Sebago Lake as among the state’s worst, he said.

“We looked at the data for all these places, and the only one that bubbled to the top was Route 3,” Margiotta said.

He said the high vehicle counts on the road, along with its two-lane status, helped put it on the list. The purpose of the report was to draw attention to the issue of congestion as a whole, not to single out any individual locations, he said.

“(It was) not to highlight that these areas are terrible but to highlight that this is a growing problem,” he said. “It is not just in urban areas. It is creeping into the rural. In the future, congestion is going to be a problem affecting not just metropolitan areas.”

The report ranked the Oregon coast as having the worst summer bottlenecks, followed by the Tidewater region in Virginia; the Maryland/Delaware shore; Branson, Mo.; the Outer Banks of North Carolina; Cape Cod in Massachusetts; the New Jersey shore; and Napa Valley, Calif.

Elsewhere in New England, Lake Winnipesaukee, N.H., was ranked 17th, and New Hampshire’s White Mountains came in at No. 21.

The high ranking for the road to Acadia wasn’t a surprise to Fred Michaud, a planner at the state Department of Transportation. DOT figures show an average of 20,000 vehicles use Route 3 every day.

“Frankly, I was surprised that there weren’t a couple more Maine towns” on the list, he said, mentioning Camden, Rockland and Freeport.