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Humboldt Field Research Institute

Posted September 26, 2000

UMaine Team to Evaluate Experimental Intelligent Transportation System in Acadia

A problem that threatens many of the nation's national parks has come under the scrutiny of students and faculty in the Parks, Recreation and Tourism Program (PRT). Bumper-to-bumper traffic, congested parking lots and pollution from cars and trucks affects parks from Acadia to Yosemite, but a solution may be in sight.

A UMaine team led by John Daigle, assistant professor of PRT, will help to evaluate a field test of an experimental Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) that is designed to address traffic problems at Acadia. Planners from the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of Transportation recently selected Acadia as the only park to test a system that uses electronic sensors, two-way communications and geographic information system technologies to reduce traffic problems.

The project is one of several ongoing research efforts in the PRT program which has doubled undergraduate enrollment in the last few years. A total of 80 students are pursuing the undergraduate major this fall. Daigle and Will LaPage also advise six master's and Ph.D. students.

In 1999, Daigle and Raleigh Ehrlenbach of Trenton, a master's student, evaluated user satisfaction with the new Island Explorer bus service on Mt. Desert Island. That service has been expanded with nine new buses this summer and will be augmented with signs that use real time data to alert riders to bus arrival times at popular destinations. When complete next summer, the new ITS system will provide the public and park staff with information about bus ridership, congestion in parking lots and the number of vehicles entering and exiting the park. Travel information will also be available over the Internet for people planning trips to Acadia. Public safety will also be improved by automatically providing dispatchers with information about the location of park rangers.

Daigle will work with two graduate students, Mark Edwards of Bangor and Rea Brennan of Carbondale, Illinois, as well as undergraduates to measure visitor satisfaction with the transportation improvements. They will survey Island Explorer riders as well as people at the park visitor center and stakeholders such as local businesses, Down East Transportation staff and Acadia National Park staff.

The evaluation process began last May with a meeting among municipal representatives, park officials, U.S. DOT, Friends of Acadia, Down East Transportation and the evaluators. The Battelle Memorial Institute, a research think-tank headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, will coordinate the evaluation.

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