Vehicle crashes are increasing in Presque Isle, putting the small city in league with some high-traffic coastal tourist communities, according to a new report.
Presque Isle has seen a 34 percent increase in crashes between 2012 and 2016, according to a city report based on data from the Maine Department of Transportation and Maine State Police.
The report, highlighted for discussion at the July 5 Presque Isle City Council meeting, found that Presque Isle ranks 36th statewide in the number of vehicle crashes.
“What is troubling about the data is the fact that the amount of crashes puts us in a grouping of tourist destinations along the coast,” said Presque Isle City Manager Martin Puckett in the report. “These other police departments have much higher traffic counts than Presque Isle.”
The Presque Isle Police Department responded to an average of 335 crashes per year during 2013-2015, and 327 crashes in 2016, according to the report.
Those numbers exceed crash totals in coastal and southern communities with comparable or larger populations such as Falmouth, Kennebunk, Wells and York. The counts also are higher than in Aroostook County’s second-largest municipality, Caribou, where police responded to an average of 247 crashes per year between 2013 and 2015.
In an interview, Puckett also compared Presque Isle’s traffic crashes with Ellsworth, which ranked 31st in crashes. Ellsworth saw 25 percent more crashes than Presque Isle over the three year average, but also has a much higher volume of traffic as the gateway to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park.
Puckett said the release of the report is meant to start a conversation in the community about traffic safety.
It also comes as the city has received three requests this summer to remove some of the centerline traffic barriers on Main Street in order to allow left-hand turns onto northbound Route 1-Main Street from the busy downtown public parking lot. Left-hand turns from the parking lot are prohibited year-round.
Those barriers, known as pylons, have been set up each summer since 2012 on a small stretch of Main Street in the heart of downtown to help calm traffic on the four-lane Main Street, which transitions from the downtown to the city’s busy retail corridor on North Main Street.
“The pylons on Main Street were a low cost solution to address the crashes in the area,” Puckett said.
Both ends of Main Street are among the three highest-crash sites identified in the report, including two sections on North Maine where the four lanes include a fifth middle turning lane.
Many of the crashes in both sections of Main Street were associated with failures to yield or stay in the lane and following too close, according to the report.
Puckett said he has asked MDOT to offer some hypotheses to explain Presque Isle’s high crash rate, and added that he has at least one idea for reducing it.
“I think reducing the multiple left-hand turns across four lanes of traffic would help abate some of the crashes,” he said.
