Highways, revisited

Whenever Gov. Angus King was asked to support an east-west highway across Maine a couple of years ago, and sometimes when he wasn’t asked, he told an anecdote about how the state of Washington was like Maine turned on its side. Its largest city, Seattle, on the West Coast, had most of the jobs, wealth and sprawl problems; eastern Washington was poorer, more rural and eager to point out the difference to Washington lawmakers. Gov. King would then pause before delivering his punch line: And do you know what those folks in eastern Washington want? A north-south highway!

There was never much point to the anecdote, but audiences would nod and chuckle as if some commonsense wisdom were being imparted, and the governor seemed ready to argue down the first person to suggest that Maine was alone in its economic disparities, in case anyone was suggesting it was.

No one was, but in the event backers of the Maine highway ever grow less discouraged and start talking about the issue again, the governor can be ready with a second chapter to the Washington anecdote. While Maine fretted that maybe not enough people would want to use a safe, fast, efficient highway across northern New England, a highway connected in Canada by other safe, fast, efficient highways to a major port in the east and Montreal in the west, Washington decided to build its north-south highway and to get the federal government to pay for most of it.

The list of Congressional High Priority Corridors includes 43 routes that crisscross the country everywhere but New England and Florida. Washington’s corridor – No. 19 on the list – runs from the Canadian border through Spokane, then continues down through Oregon, California and ends at Reno, Nev. The cost of the project in Washington is estimated at $1 billion, about the cost of the Maine project, with the federal government responsible for up to 86 percent of the funding and the state of Washington responsible for about $7 million a year for 20 years.

North of Spokane, the current highway would look familiar to travelers across Routes 9 and 2 in Maine: two-lane undivided road, with eight-foot shoulders. According to the Washington State Department of Transportation, the long-term plan for that 140-mile stretch is to upgrade it to a four-lane, limited access highway. A five-mile section has been approved for construction; another is in the planning stage. And the corridor will be a lot more than a divided highway, according to a Washington State Department of Transportation newsletter. It will include “other transportation opportunities such as a bicycle and pedestrian trail system, high capacity transit and a coordinated system of park-and-ride lots.”

East-west highway supporters weren’t looking for anything that fancy. They wanted a logical highway connection across this part of the country and understood that because of the North American Free Trade Agreement and new highway programs that the federal government would largely fund it. The state’s role was to show enthusiasm, make its needs known in Washington, D.C., and commit a couple of million dollars a year to the project. The governor instead offered a compromise proposal that provided something more than a back road and less than a highway or the economic benefits of a highway, and said that was the best Maine could do.

One of the interesting things about Washington, besides its startling similarity to Maine, is its attitude toward building decent transportation systems. Just last week, Gov. Gary Locke seemed nearly joyous in announcing a $51 million corridor to separate vehicle and rail traffic, saying, “This new arterial serves an important industrial valley that is home to 71,000 jobs. This corridor will help ensure that those jobs remain here and more are created.”

His interest is shared. Gov. Locke is supporting a six-year, $6 billion state transportation package called “Get Washington Moving Again,” based on the work of a blue-ribbon panel there that recently completed a two-year review of the state’s transportation demands. Their ideas are bold, but their guiding thoughts are most telling: “Business as usual no longer works. We must respond aggressively and innovatively to growth and transportation demands.” And, “The public deserves a specific set of investments that will achieve the goals for an efficient and effective transportation system.”

Certainly, it is difficult to work all of this into a snappy anecdote. But there would be nothing wrong with sticking to the previous story, pointing out that Maine and Washington share many traits – only their orientations are different.