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CALAIS – Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection came under harsh criticism for traffic delays at the border that sometimes lasted as long as two hours.
But this summer is different.
The agency has beefed up its port of entry staff at the two crossings in Calais – the Ferry Point crossing that connects Calais with St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and the Milltown crossing near the city’s industrial park – and traffic is moving quicker.
“Our wait times are a lot better than we experienced last year,” said Keith Fleming, area port director for the state of Maine, who is based in Portland. “The managers there at the port in Calais – and we are trying to do this across the state – [are trying] to get a handle on the wait times on the traffic before it gets out of hand.”
A third state-of-the-art crossing, a project of state and federal government, is under construction near the industrial park and has resulted in some traffic delays on Routes 1 and 9.
Fleming said a review of the numbers from last year compared with this year revealed little change in the traffic count at the U.S.-Canada borders.
“We don’t see where the numbers are down,” he said. “They look fairly consistent in general.”
Fleming noted the numbers did not differentiate between tourist and local traffic.
While the federal government wasn’t noticing any appreciable difference, the number counts at the Tourist Information Centers in Calais and Houlton were down somewhat in June.
Callie Marsh of the Maine Office of Tourism last week compared last year’s January through June figures with this year.
In January, Calais did not show any change in numbers while Houlton reported a 19 percent increase in traffic. In February, Calais was up 11 percent while Houlton was up 14 percent, probably due to winter sports in those areas, according to Marsh.
In March, Calais was up 9 percent, while Houlton was up 7 percent, and in April, Calais was up 11 percent while Houlton was up just 3 percent.
In May, gasoline hit $4 a gallon in Calais and across the state. In that month, Calais reported a 4 percent increase in traffic compared with last year, while Houlton experienced only a 1 percent increase.
In June, the number of people visiting the Tourist Information Centers was down 2 percent in Calais and 1 percent in Houlton.
Right now the cost for a gallon of regular gas in Calais is around $4.27.
But while the federal government has taken action to sidestep any problems, area residents wonder if traffic is down because tourists fed up with gasoline at more than $4 a gallon are staying home.
City Manager Diane Barnes said Monday that she believes the high cost of gasoline is having an impact on tourism.
“I think people now are making the hard choices: Do we go on vacation and spend the gas, or do we stay home and save the money and put it toward heating fuel in the wintertime?
“It’s a hard choice, and I think they are going with the latter,” she said. “They are going to save their money for this coming winter because nobody knows how high gas prices are going to go at this point.”
bdncalais@verizon.net
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