Getting to east-west

Advocates of an east-west highway are bitterly disappointed at the conclusion reached by consultants in their final report this week that modern transportation will not significantly help Northern Maine prosper. All Mainers should be utterly baffled that this considerable expense of time and money produced a document so flawed.

The fundamental flaw is that a project intended to revive the region’s declining economy was not done with a full exploration the potential economic benefits. The impact on tourism was calculated, as was the potential expansion of existing businesses, but these are of little interest to a region that is not tourism-oriented and that is watching many of its existing businesses wither and die. What Northern Maine is interested in — attracting new businesses — was not addressed at all.

If modern transportation connecting an isolated region full of hard-working people to the rest of the continent cannot attract new businesses, the consultants should have gone one step further and declared that the laws of economic development that apply elsewhere do not apply to Northern Maine, the ultimate expression of the Two Maines Syndrome. And if the $250,000 spent on the economic-impact study was not enough to do the job properly, the consultants should simply have said so and offered no conclusion.

Perhaps it was too difficult and beyond the scope lawmakers prescribed for this study to estimate what new businesses might be attracted, but it certainly wouldn’t have been hard to determine the extent to which the all-too-common job losses could have been prevented. Or to tally up the lost opportunities, the jobs that would have come to Northern Maine if it had modern transportation.

One such lost opportunity was Neoplan. The German maker of busses — motor coaches, airport busses and the like — took a serious look at the Bangor region just two years ago as a site for a manufacturing facility. The region seemed ideally suited to serve Neoplan’s major markets of New York City, Montreal, Toronto and, through the port of Halifax, Europe. Ideal until Neoplan saw the east-west roads it would be using to deliver its $300,000 vehicles. Just that one case cost the region 300 jobs, good-paying jobs for welders, electricians, mechanics. Surely the King administration, which is in constant contact with business relocators, could have provided the consultants with many more similar stories of what might have been.

Other flaws abound. The importance of NAFTA-era trade with the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario is touted everywhere else as paramount. Here, it is lowballed. The need to combine cargo ports with modern transportation was not worth mention. Nor were the economies of the Midwest and the rest of New England. There is no evidence that a genuine transportation economist — the kind who work at the Federal Highway Administration and who have developed solid, widely accepted economic models — came within 100 miles of this study. The cost-per-job figure is grossly inflated by not factoring out the federal share of an interstate highway and by amortizing construction costs over an artificially short time. Safety, one of the primary selling points of divided highways, such as the turnpike, is an issue ignored. The list goes on.

Next steps

After the release of this report, Transportation Commissioner John Melrose said the recommendation for upgrading existing two-lane roads should not be seen as defeat — a four-lane divided highway could evolve from those improvements. It’s a good point.

But it’s one that only goes so far. Some upgrades, such as shoulders and passing lanes, are needed and would be welcome anywhere. Others, such as bypasses, are acceptable only in the proper context. The business communities in, say, Calais or Skowhegan would object, and with good reason, to a bypass if it was merely plugged in to exisiting roads and did nothing more than divert travelers away from their businesses. Bypasses as part of a modern transportation system would be quite a different story. Same for connecting Route 9 and I-395 — the environmental issues are substantial and the modest additional convenience of the connection may not be worth the impact. Extend I-395 as part of a true highway and the benefit side of the cost/benefit analysis goes up considerably. Upgrades to exisiting roads are important, but they must not preclude development of a modern highway. Or be seen as a substitute.

Members of the Maine congressional delegation, clearly displeased with the way the study was conducted, already are talking about bringing in the Federal Highway Administration to review the project. The FHA economists would be a welcome voice in the debate.

Gov. King will be host to the New England governors and eastern Canada premiers at an annual conference this week. Transportation is not on the agenda, but there surely will be time for at least an informal discussion. The lack of efficient east-west transportation is a regional problem and needs a regional solution.

The Legislature should view this study as merely the start of the information-gathering process and absolutely reject its conclusion. Or else explain why a modern transportation project in northern Maine is evaluated at standard that even the turnpike would not meet. What was released last week may have been the final report by these consulants on the east-west highway, but it cannot be the final word.