Back in 1987, as a new reporter with this newspaper, I worked the easternmost edge of Washington County, a beat that included Calais, the region’s bustling little hub. An early assignment, perhaps just a month or so into the job, was to cover one of those wide-ranging public forums communities often hold to discuss the future.

The Calais public turned out in impressive number, with men, women and children lined up at the microphone to express deep affection and concern for their city and their future. While the many speakers raised a host of issues – the loss of manufacturing jobs, the potential of tourism, the challenges facing education and the like – all were united in agreement that something, by golly, had to be done once and for all about the third bridge.

In fact, that opinion was so universal that no one actually bothered to describe precisely what was wrong with the third bridge. A speaker merely had to make passing (and invariably snide) reference to it and all in the large and crowded conference room would nod knowingly. All except, of course, the new reporter in town who knew about two bridges across the St. Croix between Calais and St. Stephen, New Brunswick, but who was finding himself quite embarrassed to learn that in the city he was supposed to cover like a blanket there was a third, a vexing third to boot, of which he had not a clue.

After the meeting, I approached a city councilor I had previously identified as being especially kind and nonjudgmental and asked (by way of fishing for a hint on where I’d find it) what was the problem with the third bridge. The problem with the third bridge, she explained (her kind and nonjudgmental nature clearly tested) was that there wasn’t one. It had been talked about since Champlain passed though and got hung up in a Victoria Day traffic jam, but never built.

Now, a mere 14 years later, maybe it’s about to be built and the people of Calais and of all the surrounding towns are worried it actually will get built, but in the wrong place. The long-standing assumption was that a third bridge between Calais and St. Stephen – the sixth busiest crossing between the U.S. and Canada – would actually be between those two cities, providing large and modern Customs facilities to accommodate growing international trade, creating a vital link in a transcontinental trade route to keep the big trucks moving but out of the downtown areas and, at the same time, making the downtowns even more attractive for merchants, shoppers and tourists.

The bridge itself is but a small component of a larger project to create both a bypass for high-speed travel and a magnet for economic growth. If that is the goal, the perfect spot for this bridge is at the north end of Calais, on Route 1 at the industrial park. But because the rules governing these types of projects require the consideration of an alternative, transportation officials in Maine and New Brunswick are taking a long, hard look six miles up the road at Route 9 near Baileyville. This is the perfect spot if the goal is to kill Calais. Or, as the locals say, to turn an international gateway into a ghost town.

To see why, you only need to drive south on Route 1 from Calais for a few hours to that part of Maine where people generally aren’t worried about their towns shriveling up but about them getting too big. The destination is Topsham, home of my favorite large transportation project gone wrong, the Coastal Connector.

The Connector was designed to be a three-mile high-speed bypass around the enormous and ugly clog of strip development that had turned Route 1 through neighboring Brunswick into a still life of bumper-to-bumper motor vehicles. Yet, because of poor planning and inattention to detail, by the time the state-funded $44 million bypass opened in 1997, Topsham already had big ideas for strip development of its own, ideas so clearly formulated that town officials kicked and screamed to get the exit signs on I-95 reworded so it wasn’t called a bypass.

Today, what was supposed to be a 55 mph time-saver has five traffic lights, every kind of factory outlet, fast food joint and convenience store known to man, and, of course, bumper-to-bumper motor vehicles. It is nothing more than a newer version of what it was supposed to avoid.

Here’s the good part. The Coastal Connector has proven so effective at drawing traffic – and people — out of downtown Topsham that officials there now are worried about that ghost town thing and are planning to spend $2 million (most of it the state’s money) to revive Main Street. A lot of locals are plenty upset that the net result of all this paving, developing and bypassing essentially is a dying downtown.

They may have every right to be upset, but as Maine Transportation Commissioner John Melrose correctly pointed out recently, they have no reason to be surprised because, “development follows the traffic. This is what the town wanted to happen.”

Calais does not want that to happen and it’s not alone; the entire region depends upon the economic well-being of the community that provides the health care, educational and cultural opportunities, retail stores, services and jobs that keep eastern Washington County livable. The view that there’s more at stake than who gets the inevitable duty-free store/truck stop is so prevalent that, led by the famously diplomatic former state Sen. Harold Silverman, a coalition of leaders from throughout the area – including such staunch Baileyville boosters as former Rep. Tony Tammaro and current Rep. John Morrison – has come together to advocate for the Calais industrial park option. Anyone familiar with the usually, shall we say, colorful relations between Calais and Baileyville knows what a remarkable occurrence this is.

Incidentally, that 1987 meeting led Calais officials to begin pushing anew for a third bridge, persistence that resulted in the launching of the current study two years ago. State officials, especially at the Department of Transportation, have worked hard on this, they’ve made many trips to Calais to meet with locals, they will continue to do so and seem well on their way to making a decision by the end of the year. They’ll make the right decision if they’ll take a side trip through Topsham for a reminder of what happens when they make the wrong one.

Bruce Kyle is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.