Finding creative ways to decrease traffic congestion in downtown Jim Thorpe has become an annual tradition leading up to the town’s popular Fall Foliage Festival.

During a borough workshop last week, Mayor Michael Sofranko sought to clear up any confusion about perceived plans for road closures on the first three October weekends.

“I’ve seen a lot of messages about Facebook posts related to fall foliage,” Sofranko said. “I want everyone to be aware that the people who make the final decisions are the ones at this table. Everyone has the right to voice their opinion and ask questions, but one thing I want to be clear on is that Hazard Square will not be closed. It is a safety concern, and I won’t recommend it and neither will our chief of police.”

An original proposal, Sofranko added, is to use that area as a bus drop off similar to how it is used during the Carbon County St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Some of the confusion, he added, came from a social media poll that “led some people to think some decisions had already been made.”

Jennifer Christman, Jim Thorpe Tourism Agency president, said the poll was posted in a private Facebook group created for JTTA members.

The poll, she said, was an effort to generate feedback and ideas from the membership.

“We’ve already posted that the case is closed concerning that,” Christman said. “We did actually get some interesting input and things to consider in general for the future with the festival.”

Race Street is another highly discussed area, Sofranko said, when it comes to the festival. Suggestions have included closing it and banning parking to accommodate for vendors on that road, but Sofranko said that isn’t in the cards either.

“Posting it for local traffic only is a likelihood, but closing down that road would be a detriment to our emergency services,” he said. “In many cases, that is the only access to the back of some of those buildings. We’ll work to make sure people can walk freely and that type of thing, but it won’t be closed down.”

JTTA’s partnership with Carbon County in recent years has proved successful through shuttling visitors from the Mauch Chunk Lake parking lot into the downtown area. Parking at the lake typically costs $15 or $20 per vehicle depending on whether the spot is in the general admission or VIP-guaranteed area.

Christman and Michael Rivkin, JTTA vice-president, said the organization hopes to strike similar deals with large groups on the east side of town such as the Jim Thorpe Area School District.

“Right now, the assumption is that a lot of that traffic coming from the east side are going over and getting the early bird spots in the county lot,” Rivkin said.

The county lot, however, often fills up well before noon and the borough has received complaints in the past from residents on First through Fifth streets on the east side and the first several blocks of “the Heights” that parking is unavailable near their homes on festival or high traffic weekends.

“I think it would be beneficial to also bus people in from somewhere on the east side, and maybe that is the school district parking lot, to keep the congestion out of the downtown business district,” council President Greg Strubinger said.

The Jim Thorpe Fall Foliage Festival runs Oct. 6-7, 13-14, and 20-21. For more information, visit https://www.jimthorpe.org/fall.