Bar Harbor council wants to slash 87% of 2022 cruise ship visitation
FILE PHOTO / LAURIE SCHREIBER
The Bar Harbor Town Council is looking to reduce the community impact of cruise ship visits, with an eye on 2022 and beyond.
In a first go-round to reduce the community impact of cruise ship visits, the Bar Harbor Town Council has proposed a mix of limitations that could drastically reduce the number of visitors in the 2022 season.
The council’s proposal, which includes reductions in the maximum ship size, season length and the number of monthly port calls, is now in the hands of the town’s Cruise Ship Committee to consider.
The proposal came in response to a community survey conducted earlier this year, which revealed many Bar Harbor residents and business owners favor scaling back the number of cruise ship visits.
Some survey participants called for a permanent ban, although others said the ships are important to the local economy.
Bar Harbor is Maine’s largest cruise-ship port of call, and in 2019 booked 176 cruise ships with a capacity of 272,578 passengers.
For 2022, 174 ships carrying 292,212 passengers are so far booked for port visits.
In a workshop held last month, the council voted to set the 2022 cruise ship season from May 1 to Oct. 31, a move that would eliminate visits already scheduled in April and November.
For May through October, the council voted to recommend to limit visits to ships of certain sizes and to limit the number of days per month that ships could visit.
For example, in July, the passenger cap would be 1,000 and number of days would be 10, for a total of 10,000 passengers for the month.
That compares with July’s actual schedule which, among its 14 bookings to date, has eight visits from ships that have passenger capacities ranging from 1,432 to 3,110.
The recommendations, which could cut the number of visitors by 87%, also include a definition of a small cruise ship as having 200 passengers or fewer; those ships would not be included in the calculations.
At the council’s meeting last month, members said the recommendations were not ironclad. However, they said, the Cruise Ship Committee should take them seriously as an attempt to get the numbers down, but also with an eye toward having the least impact possible to local businesses.
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Cruise ships are not the problem, so much as the numbers of private vehicles, clogging the streets. I would reduce the number of vehicles allowed on the island by creating an incentive for tourists to take the bus. The incentive would consist of a large admittance fee charged to visitors in their private vehicles.
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