Bypass effects

The people of Calais have good reason to be terribly discouraged that the new international border crossing they have long sought may be headed eight miles out of town, leaving them bypassed off the beaten path. They also have good reason to be utterly perplexed by a new study suggesting they won’t be hurt by this.

The study was commissioned by the Maine Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, conducted by the Pennsylvania consulting firm of Gannett Fleming and reviewed and presented to the public Tuesday by University of Southern Maine economist Dr. Charles Colgan. It essentially is a compilation of research on bypass effects done by the departments of transportation in Wisconsin, Kansas, Iowa and Washington and the overall finding is that the majority of communities getting bypasses actually thrive.

The fundamental flaw here is not in the overall finding but in the application of a generality to this specific case. The study may be good material to present to students pursuing degrees in civil engineering or urban planning; the issue to struggling Calais is hardly academic.

The most obvious difference between the general and the specific is that most bypasses are built in communities that are prospering to such a degree that they need relief from the congestion and room to grow. Calais, unfortunately, does not fall into that category.

The research from those other states indicate that the communities most likely to be hurt by a bypasses are rural, isolated places that rely substantially upon tourist traffic. That’s Calais’ category. Further, although the potential a bypass creates for new development is undeniable, there is no differentiation made between bypasses that still are within the affected community’s boundaries – thus allowing them to capture the new tax base – and communities, like Calais, that would see the taxes go elsewhere. And while the problem of sprawl is mentioned, the cost of providing public services to the newly developed bypass area is not calculated into the cost benefit analysis. Neither, of course, are the public costs borne by state and federal taxpayers when declining communities are no longer able to support themselves.

It is one thing for the study to be misapplied, it is quite another for it to contain glaring and uncorrected errors. In the demographic section, Calais is described as an industrial city. For the record, Calais’ industry is the Georgia Pacific mill in Baileyville, 10 miles away – the new leading bypass contender, at Route 9 in Baileyville, would leave Calais little more than a bedroom community with terribly high property taxes..

Worse, that section describes Calais’ population as “stable.” According to Census 2000, the city lost 13.6 of its population in the last decade and was one of the hardest hit in the state in the loss of young adults, the potential parents of a next generation that won’t be there. That is hardly stable; describing Calais as such betrays the unfamiliarity those who conducted and reviewed the study have with the city whose fate they would decide.

This misrepresentation of Calais could have dire consequences. Recall the finding that prosperous communities usually are not hurt by bypasses and consider that federal officials with no knowledge of Calais beyond what they read in consultant’s reports will have considerable say in the placement of the crossing. It is not hard to imagine well-meaning federal officials making the wrong decision because they have been tragically misled to believe that Calais is precisely the type of community that won’t be harmed.

Dr. Colgan does allow that Calais may be hurt somewhat, but adds that the negative bypass effects could be overcome in with time. Again, the lack of familiarity at work. Anyone who knows Calais knows that time is something Calais does not have.