transportation

After a harsh winter, Delawareans and out-of-state visitors are ready to relax at First State beaches, season-opening weekend parking revenue suggests.

While slightly lower than last year's Memorial Day weekend figures, beach town officials report strong collections from the holiday weekend.

"It was a rough winter; if they can afford it, they want to get away," Rehoboth City Manager Greg Ferrese said.

Flavio Amaya doesn't own a car, so the Washington resident must rely on the kindness of friends, or a rental, to get to Rehoboth Beach to soak up the rays.

Dior Toney does have wheels, but a few hours before he was supposed to drive out to Dewey for Memorial Day weekend, the hood flew straight up, sabotaging his holiday plans.

Now, Pat Avery possesses a car, and it works; however, she and her partner find that halfway through the return trip from Rehoboth, drowsiness sets in, forcing them to pull off the road for a catnap. The Fairfax couple would prefer to drive straight through, but their circadian rhythms say otherwise.

Every summer hundreds of bicyclists in the Rehoboth Beach area get free safety checks thanks to the efforts of Sussex Cyclists and their partners.

“We call it branding,” says Sussex Cyclists President Tony Pezone. “You can tell those who have stopped by checkpoints by the bright yellow reflective tape on their bikes.”

Many of those who stop are foreign students who are working in the resort area for the summer. Although some have bikes in good working order, many pull into the checkpoints missing brakes, with flat tires, no lights, no reflectors, bent frames, and loose seats and handlebars.

Rehoboth Beach has joined a growing list of Delaware resort towns to increase parking rates for the upcoming summer.

Rates on 275 meters throughout the city will increase by a quarter an hour this summer, changing from $1 to $1.25, city manager Gregory Ferrese said. The move is expected to bring in more than $20,000 in additional revenue, according to budget documents. The meters are generally coin-operated and located on sidestreets.

A collaborative effort between Sussex Cyclists and state transportation officials is helping to save the lives of those who cycle along the Route 1 corridor.

For the past three years, under the hot sun, giving up Saturday mornings and even at night, volunteers, including those from Sussex Cyclists, and Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) staff have manned bicycle safety checkpoints.

Marie Kilpatrick found Fourth of July holiday business a tad less sweet this year at the sugary center of Delaware's vacation universe.

"In past years, it would be very hard to find a parking space in Rehoboth Beach. This year, you can," said Kilpatrick, a longtime manager at the landmark Dolle's Candyland shop at the boardwalk and Rehoboth Avenue.

"I think it's because of gasoline. People are staying closer to home. We still have lines in the store, but if people buy something, where they maybe would buy a pound of chocolate before, they're buying half a pound, or pieces. People are being very careful."

State transportation officials made it official this morning: The Del. 1 expansion project is done.

But here’s the fine print: the little detail work like painting lines on some travel lanes, wrapping up paving on side roads and planting sod really won’t be finished until Friday.

Even as the project completion was being announced, the turn lane off the highway onto Freeman Highway, the main access road for the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, was closed for paving.

As more gas stations throughout Delaware crept toward the dreaded $4 a gallon figure, fewer travelers took to the roads over the Memorial Day weekend.

The state's busiest highways -- Del. 1 and I-95 -- both showed a large dropoff in the number of cars passing through toll plazas, according to numbers released Wednesday by the state Department of Transportation.

Memorial Day weekend traffic on Del. 1 was down 10 percent, or 65,000 vehicles, from last year. The state collected the figures from the two toll plazas on Del. 1 from Thursday to Tuesday.

Everything was in place to kick off a summer of discontent.

Ever-rising gasoline prices. Grim economic news. Global environmental worries. Election year partisan wrangling.

None of it intruded at Rehoboth Beach early Saturday, though, as Miles, Lexi and Riley Keogh of Alexandria, Va., opened Memorial Day weekend playing tag with a gentle surf.

"We came over early, so we missed a lot of the traffic," Miles said during a break in the action on the city's storm-battered but recovering beach. "It wasn't the worst we've ever been in. I'd say it's probably in the top third. Gas prices aren't great, but they're not that horrible."

Construction crews are dwindling, the smell of fresh asphalt is in the air and the morning commute gets a little bit smoother each day.

But motorists aren't the only ones happy to have the sound of jackhammers cease and see the hundreds of orange traffic cones disappear.

For business owners along Route 1 in the Lewes-Rehoboth Beach area -- many of whom have seen a drop in customers since the construction crews moved in fall of 2006 -- the end can't come soon enough.