Route 1 widening provokes growing resistance

WARREN – While state Department of Transportation officials prepare to put out to bid the first phase of the project to widen U.S. Route 1, opponents are promising to accelerate resistance to the project.

“We see this as a regional issue,” Steve Burke of the Route 1 Advocacy Group said Thursday, “not just a not-in-my-front-yard group of Warren residents.”

According to Burke, the opposition has grown from a local issue to one that has a coalition of regional organizations resisting the state’s plans for coastal Route 1.

DOT will seek bids on the first phase of the widening, which spans Route 1 from Route 90 to Sandy Shores Road, in late May or early June, DOT assistant highway design engineer Brad Foley said Friday.

The estimated cost of Phase I is $3.2 million for a 1.6-mile stretch, which includes construction, right of way, design work and construction inspection expenses, he said.

The long-range plan involves four phases, which eventually will enlarge Route 1 from Route 90 in Warren to the Thomaston-Rockland line. The two final phases are not expected to be funded until 2004-05, Foley said. The second phase will likely be funded next year, he said.

Phase I construction is expected to begin in June or July, Foley said, and will continue into next year. The state plans to keep at least one lane open at all times, two lanes when possible. Traffic will likely be directed to Route 90 as an alternate travel route, he said.

Members of the coalition have asked the state to compromise in the design specifications for the project or to delay the construction for three years, until the state learns how road improvements in Camden fare.

According to Paul Cartwright, chairman of Friends of Midcoast Maine and a member of the coalition, the state is implementing 11-foot travel lanes and 6-foot shoulders along Route 1 in Camden because of curbing.

The Warren-through-Thomaston improvements call for 12-foot travel lanes and 8-foot shoulders.

Cartwright wondered why the Warren-Thomaston dimensions couldn’t be scaled down. “My point is, they have deviated,” he said, referring to the Federal Highway Administration’s standards.

On March 21, Cartwright, who also is a Camden selectman, wrote to DOT Commissioner John Melrose, seeking concessions on the project or a delay. The commissioner responded in an April 8 letter stating that waiting three more years “will likely mark the restart of the same discussion we are engaged in right now, and further delay the long-overdue improvement of this highway surface. Furthermore, I believe the approach we are prepared to take, if in place, could enlighten future dialogue on treatments elsewhere on Route 1.”

Melrose wrote that the option of having 8-foot shoulders containing 4 feet of pavement and 4 feet of grassed area is being considered, but that the state could not agree on narrower travel lanes, a continuous 66-foot right of way, a lower speed limit or the group’s landscaping suggestions.

“If we cannot garner your support for these counterproposals, we will be compelled to return to the 8-foot paved shoulders advocated by the town and preferred by [Federal Highway Administration],” the commissioner wrote.

“DOT is supposed to serve the people,” Cartwright said, pointing to the 1,000-signature petition and the multitude of groups opposed to the widening. “And, what you get is the deaf ear,” he added.

Both Cartwright and Burke referred to the commissioner’s comment as “sort of a veiled threat.”

“Eight-foot shoulders definitely,” Foley said Friday, when asked what the state decided. “How they are made up is still in discussion.”