Miles the Moose, D Claude Lobster farewell visitors to Maine as they crawl home south

Labor weekend visitors to Maine from the south make this the busiest, and slowest, time of the year on the Maine Turnpike, and staff continued a now ten year old tradition of staging a "farewell, please come again" with figures costumed as Miles the Moose, and D Claude Lobster walking the toll lanes at the York toll plaza.

Miles and D Claude handed motorists a calender with prints of Maine scenes and a listing Maine events of possible attraction to visitors designed and produced by the state office of tourism. This year's calender headlined an open lighthouse day, Sept 12 when most of the state's lighthouses will be open for visitors.

York toll plaza which sits across the mainline a few miles north of the New Hampshire border got about the same traffic as last year - about 250k - through the three days. June traffic was down 4.9% on the same month last year, but July was up 4.3% and August down about 1%.

Traffic backups were reported for about 20 miles, 32km. The major source of the congestion was the Piscataqua River bridge at the state line, AP reports. They say there was slow traffic from Wells ME through the toll plaza all the way to the river.

New Hampshire Turnpike to the south has 4 lanes each direction, while the bridge and the Maine Turnpike have three lanes. Both turnpikes are I-95, the interstate that runs up the east coast from Miami to the Canadian border in New Brunswick.

COMMENT: Miles needs an antler rehab.

TOLLROADSnews 2009-09-07