transportation

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.

Mid-Atlantic resorts are hoping gas prices spiraling toward $4 a gallon and a cooling economy won't keep vacationers at home this summer -- but they're bracing for shorter stays and less spending on restaurants and entertainment while people holiday.

"People are staying less time,'' said innkeeper Vicki Barrett, who runs a six-room bed and breakfast in Ocean City. "They're not staying for five days or seven days -- they're staying for two days or three days.''

Anyone spending the day this summer in Rehoboth Beach will not have to fish eight quarters from their pockets to pay for an hour of parking in the city's most sought after spaces.

After vocal opposition from property and business owners about a proposal to double the rate for some parking meters - taking them from $1 an hour to $2 - city officials have opted for compromise.

The new meter rate structure, which takes effect the Friday before Memorial Day, creates three parking tiers among prime spaces -- those on Rehoboth Avenue and the ocean blocks -- costing $1.50 an hour.

For the second consecutive year, city officials are looking to take more quarters out of tourists' pockets as a way of adding to Rehoboth Beach's revenue stream and managing downtown parking.

As part of preparing this year's budget, the mayor and city officials are considering doubling the current parking rate from $1 to $2 per hour. Also being considered are rate increases for parking permits and extending the paid-parking season an additional two weeks into the fall.

Visitors to Rehoboth Beach who want to park near the beach will have a new option this summer: credit cards.

The second draft of the 2008-09 city budget also calls for a 19 percent increase in refuse rates and a 50 percent increase for seasonal parking permits.

The city is planning to use a credit card system on all the Reino parking meters on the first two blocks of Rehoboth Avenue. The city also proposes to raise parking meter rates from $1 an hour to $2 an hour. The increase would bring the city around $415,000 in projected revenue, which the commissioners agreed to put into a capital improvement pool that would help fund various projects such as Boardwalk refurbishment, the city municipal complex and wastewater disposal.

Many people are convinced John G. Griffith would be alive today if something as simple as rumble strips were in place along the Route 1 corridor in coastal Sussex.

Griffith, 44, of Timonium, Md., was killed early last July 28, as he worked on his bicycle off the shoulder near the Indian River Inlet bridge. Police said the driver apparently fell asleep, drifted onto the shoulder and hit Griffith, director of Johns Hopkins Fibroid Center for the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics. He died at the scene.