NEWRY — Of the 157 days of ski season this past year, a handful in the Sunday River Valley were congested with traffic.
To address those complaints and concerns, Sunday River (SR) and the Town of Newry will conduct a highway traffic study this winter and will also participate in a corridor committee.
“We did learn some valuable information from these days, and we will aim to continuously improve as we did throughout our season,” responded SR President Dana Bullen and SR Communications Manager, Ellen Wainwright.
The corridor committee will be made up of town officials from Newry, and Bethel; the Chamber of Commerce; and the Maine Department of Transportation (DOT). The group will also invite and include business owners and residents to join, said Sunday River President Dana Bullen in an April 10 letter to Newry Select Chair Gary Wright and Planning Board Chair John Gauthier.
The highway traffic study will take place during the winter of 2023/24 and is a condition of approval by Newry Planning Board for replacement of Sunday River’s Barker chairlift this summer. SR and the planning board are also waiting for a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) permit to proceed with construction of the six-seat lift.
The traffic study will include, Sunday River Road, Skiway Road and Monkey Brook Road on high traffic volume winter weekends and must meet the standards set by Maine DOT.
Newry Planning Board member Ted Baker said he has three points of concern regarding SR Valley traffic. The first is congestion. “For certain days out of the year … access from first responders from outside of Newry or even within Newry would be impeded severely. There were a couple of weekends this past year, [when] the back up went all the way from up Route 2, into Bethel. Then out of Bethel towards Locke Mills. It literally took people from Locke Mills three hours to get to Sunday River, including employees.” he said.
Asked if they are concerned with traffic obstructing emergency vehicles and if they have a disaster plan, Bullen and Wainwright wrote, “Ensuring the safety of all our guests is our highest priority. Our resort has emergency response protocols in place that cover a variety of events, and we routinely assess and update those plans with the team. As this question relates to emergency response vehicles accessing the resort, this question may be better addressed by the emergency response professionals.”
Baker’s second concern is that the intersection of Skiway Road and Sunday River Road is dangerous. Specifically the wait to turn left while exiting the Jordan area from Merrill Hill, Mahoosuc Glenn and the new Jordan lift. He is concerned, too, with motorists leaving South Ridge to head toward Jordan. As Sunday River continues to be developed, the current heavy congestion at this intersection will only increase, he believes.
Finally, Baker said, while not a town issue, the Sunday River parking lots and lack of parking management impacts his first two concerns.
In his letter to town officials, Bullen addresses the parking lots: 8C and Lot 9. Bullen said that over time the designated parking lots became storage areas but these lots will be reclaimed for parking by the start of the next ski season. Additionally, said Bullen, “200+ parking spaces within the resort, [that] will aid in the flow of traffic during our peak periods and reduce – or perhaps alleviate – the need for parking outside the main area of the resort.”
Baker had a few ideas to alleviate traffic. One is an on ramp from Sunday River Road onto Route 2, by the Sunday River Brew Pub. “it [the traffic] is not going to be something that resolves itself in the short term. But the longer we wait the worse it gets …,” he said.
“Myself and many other town residents will tell you… [If it is a] Saturday morning in January, I don’t leave the house,” said Baker, a Sunday River Road resident. “The further you go into the valley the more of an inconvenience or an impact it becomes to people living there.” He stressed how large the population is on winter weekends, “SR Valley is much bigger than 344 people in the Town of Newry,” he said.
He feels the risk of fire or another emergency makes the effort to resolve the situation worthwhile.
On May 2, Town Administrator Loretta Powers and the Newry select board discussed the road study at a select board meeting. The town plans to split the cost of the traffic study with Sunday River.
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