TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Front Street Temporarily closed

Attention!!
The Police Force of Sint Maarten would like to inform
residents and visitors of Sit Maarten that Frontstreet will be temporarily closed on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024, in connection with the arrival of 5 cruise ships to our beautiful island. This influx of visitors will understandably lead to increased traffic congestion. We kindly ask all drivers to plan their routes accordingly and to exercise patience during this time. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated as we work to ensure the safety and smooth flow of traffic. Thank you for your understanding

And that's why we're not going to P'Burg tomorrow. Thanks for the heads up.

We actually are probably going today as in the past, other than Front St. being closed, it is not that big of a deal. I know Mullet Bay and Maho will be a zoo again today. The number of ships had a much bigger impact many years ago but recently, not so much. Just ask some of the merchants.

We are not going into town but we also have found the big cruise ship days usually give you uncrowded Front Street because people on island avoid it and the cruisers don't spend their time in town. We avoid the touristy spots and the traffic heading back to town later in the day.

I like to people watch on the Boardwalk on cruise ship days.

Same here.

Herald artical.
LINK
I just wonder if they will keep doing this when that many ships are in port.

I hope SSB web cam is operational then, I'd love to see the chaos

This really isn’t anything totally new. A few years ago we experienced the same Front Street closures and were told by several merchants it was done to accommodate the large number of cruise ship passengers.

And on another note, pictures were posted in the last week or so of a relatively sparsely peopled Front Street on a heavy cruise ship day. It was suggested that more and more the cruisers limit their purchasing to the ship and in the various port facilities as opposed to shopping the street.

To update on this situation. We left Atrium at 9:00 and breezed into town with almost no congestion and we were at Chesterfield's by 9:30. I had a nice breakfast and started to head to town. Charlie had a knee problem and since you could not drive on Front St., we were kind of stuck as he could not walk. I noticed a couple of golf carts and tried to get him a ride. No such luck but the office at Bobby's Marina had a wheelchair type seat-thing I was told we could use. It worked out great and we got into town.

Lots of foot traffic but many stores had little or no business. The boardwalk was 4-5 rows deep with loungers and many of the boardwalk businesses had a good crowd. I felt bad for many of the merchants as they were not at all busy. French Touch on Olde St. was packed also. We plan on breakfast or lunch there next week.

We left to head back about 2:30 and made it with no stoppages or congestion. Honestly, it was one of the smoothest trips in and back out of town I have experienced on a long time.

The moral of the story is don't let the number of ships in port deter you from going to town. It would have been nice in our situation to have had Front St. open but it all worked out. It was extremely smooth for us.

Glad you were able to get Charlie into town. Sorry, what did you mean to say about French Touch?

I edited my post. Just saying they were very busy. The owner is the former owner of Antoine's on Front St.

Great that it all worked out for you and good that Chesterfields had that for you to use. Class act on their part.

They were closing front street back in 2011 or earlier because of cruise ship traffic, nothing new.

We came back from Orient through PBurg to head to Cupecoy, least amount of traffic going the direction we were going that I remember, hardly slowed down. That was about 430pm. Stopped at Huppel for a quick cocktail and to say hi, then continued about 5 to 5:30 ish and the traffic heading towards the hill was backed up to about where Lal's is so not as bad as we have seen in the past.

Service and food were good at Orange Fever, nice breeze, pleasant day. Pizza and burgers were good, not great but good. Was not a fan of the Calamari Rings, if you had given them to me and not told me what they were I would have thought they were onion rings lacking flavor. I guess at least not chewy.

It was actually Bobby's Marina that helped out but Chesterfield's might have been an option also.

As Todd said, some traffic later but for the hype about the number of ships, it was a non-issue.

I also remember Front St. being closed many times in the past over the years. However, it did not stop some people from parking in the sidewalks up and down Front. St.

JD--So people were parked on the sidewalks yesterday?

Yes.

I thought they were supposed to be cracking down on that. Guess not.

So much for enforcement.