LEWISTON — Saturday’s parade by the Northeast Shrine Association will detour five Citylink bus routes for much of the day.
The Main Street, Lisbon Street, Sabattus Street and College Street bus routes will end hourly runs at the intersection of Bates and College streets downtown beginning at 1 p.m. Saturday. Those routes normally converge at the Oak Street bus station, which is in the middle of the parade route.
“We’ll do route changes from 1 p.m. until the end of the day,” Marsha Bennett, transit coordinator for Citylink, said. “The last bus goes out at 4:15 p.m. and the parade should be finished by then. But that 4:15 p.m. bus will still be at the alternate location.”
All four of those routes will also run hourly, she said. The Main Street and Sabattus Street routes normally run every two hours.
The parade also will interrupt Citylink’s New Auburn route, since the bus on that line usually ends at the Oak Street station.
“New Auburn would have to detour around South Avenue in Lewiston and then up Lincoln Street and that doesn’t make sense,” Bennett said. “So, it will just stay in New Auburn for the afternoon.”
Since it’s staying in Auburn, that route will have service every half hour during the parade, not the usual two-hour headways, she said.
The parade is scheduled to start at 2 p.m. at the city’s Public Works Yard on Adams Avenue. It’s part of the Northeast Shrine Association’s Fall Field Days, which run through Saturday. Events include the opening ceremony at 6 p.m. Thursday in Simard-Payne Memorial Park, clown and minicar competitions Saturday morning at the Auburn Mall and the parade in downtown Lewiston. The parade is expected to draw 2,000 participating Shriners and at least that many spectators.
The parade goes down Canal Street, up Main Street to Sabattus Street and turns back toward the downtown at College Street, ending at the municipal parking lot on Park Street.
The city will shut down parking on most downtown streets east of Canal Street at 8 a.m. Saturday, closing them to traffic at 1 p.m. That includes the lengths of Lisbon and Park streets and all of the tree-named streets between Canal and Bates streets. Streets west of the parade route will be open to local traffic only until the parade wraps up at about 4 p.m.
Traffic will be routed around the parade and the downtown, along Lincoln Street, through Auburn and across the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge.
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