CARRABASSETT VALLEY – State transportation officials were quickly distancing themselves Thursday from an earlier proposal to detour summer traffic 84 miles in order to fix a bridge near the Sugarloaf/USA Access Road.
The Maine Department of Transportation will hold a public hearing next Wednesday to talk about the construction project, which has mystified and angered area residents and business owners along Route 27, the main road that cuts through the western mountains and ends at the Canadian border.
“They just think we fall off the map after the ski season ends, but that’s not the way it is at all,” Carrabassett Valley selectman and business owner Lloyd Cuttler said Thursday.
Cuttler noted that Route 27 carries important traffic, including Canadian tourists on their way to the Maine coast, Canadian pulp trucks that supply Maine mills, and golfers who play on the award-winning Sugarloaf golf course – not to mention soccer moms and people heading to Kingfield and Farmington for groceries and medical appointments.
“In my mind, it doesn’t even pass the straight-faced test,” said Cuttler, who owns Gepetto’s restaurant on the mountain.
Emergency personnel, meanwhile, have voiced some of the loudest opposition, Cuttler said.
For Cuttler, the DOT’s plan to detour traffic at the Hackett Brook Bridge would force him to drive 84 miles to get to his business four miles from his home.
Cuttler said he was gratified the state had agreed to reconsider its plans, especially since the DOT gave residents’ early concerns short shrift.
“I think (DOT) has grasped the situation a lot better than they did when someone looked at the map and said, let’s close the road,'” Cuttler said.
The state had originally planned to repave Route 27 and realign a sharp bend in the road known as “Oh my gosh curve,” the site of many truck rollovers and fatal accidents over the years.
The corner’s name comes from motorists’ reaction to seeing Sugarloaf Mountain for the first time as they round the curve, he said.
Bob Watson, assistant program manager for DOT’s Regional Highway Program, said Thursday that DOT engineers were trying to limit traffic disruption by closing the road for two days rather than closing only one lane for up to three weeks.
The state won’t make any final decision on the project until after hearing from the public next week, he said.
The hearing is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the Carrabassett Valley Touring Center.
Watson said DOT officials, in suggesting the road closure, thought that while there would be some “pain” by residents and motorists, “we would disrupt traffic for the shortest amount of time.”
DOT engineer Mark Hume said Wednesday that while inspecting the area where pavement was slated to be overlain, department engineers noticed that the small bridge over Hackett Brook “looked rusted out” and was in need of replacement. The department hopes to complete the replacement “at the same time” as the overlay project. “We don’t want to overlay pavement there this summer and then have to go back and replace the bridge in two years,” he said.
“The detour is quite long,” admitted Hume, who explained that commuters would have to be rerouted about 80 miles along Routes 142, 16 and 4 through Rangeley, Phillips and Salem, to get back to Route 27.
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