Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Basically, there are few options for travel in Maine other than by car.
Buses do serve major metropolitan areas and in season run along Coastal
Route 1 and down to Bar Harbor.
Rail service from Boston to Portland is slated to begin in the fall of 2000.
Commercial air service is outlined a little later.
Car Travel
The best approach when traveling by car is to get as close to your destina-
tion as possible via feeder routes and then home in. Because Maine has so
few main roads, choosing which one to take is seldom a difficult decision.
While many visitors arrive with a romantic notion of taking a day to drive
up the coast on old US 1, traffic, stop lights, and slow-moving recre-
ational vehicles soon turn that dream into a nightmare. You cannot get
up US 1 from Kittery to Bar Harbor in a single day. Instead, you may
want to consider just including a piece of it in your itinerary.
Main Roads
The most basic feeder route is
Interstate 95
from Kittery to Houlton.
The lower section is the
Maine Turnpike
, a toll road, which branches in
Portland. To shift to I95, and its connections with locations such as
Freeport (L.L. Bean) and Coastal Route 1, take Exit 9 just north of Port-
land.
Interstate 295
is the highway through Portland that eventually
becomes I-95 north of the city. You can get on 295 in South Portland at
Exit 6A, but it carries much local traffic and really doesn't save any time.
The Maine Turnpike continues north from Portland and slightly west
through Lew- iston. In this section it carries the route designation 495.
Interstate 95 and the Turnpike rejoin just south of Augusta where tolls
end. The divided highway then continues on through Waterville, Bangor,
Old Town, Lincoln and Medway on its way north. The divided highway
ends in Houlton.
Key feeder roads maintained by the state include
Route 302
, which runs
northwest from Portland toward the White Mountains, and
Route 26
,
which, when accessed in Gray, makes for a scenic direct route to the
Sunday River, Bethel area.
