CALAIS – The state has stepped on the gas to speed plans for construction of a $100 million bridge and connector roads for the Calais area and St. Stephen, New Brunswick.

The new target date for completion is fall 2006, state Transportation Commissioner David Cole said Monday. The previous target was 2009.

The bridge is planned near the city’s industrial park. Two other bridges, in downtown and in the city’s Milltown neighborhood, are already heavily used.

For months, area leaders have pushed the state – as well as federal governments on both sides of the border – to put the project’s construction on a fast track. Officials on the Maine side have pegged the U.S. share at $40 million. When improvements on both sides of the border, including proposed connector roads, are added, the total is closer to $100 million combined.

The United States and Canada are splitting the cost of the bridge. The U.S. government will pick up 80 percent of the cost, while the state will be responsible for the rest of the U.S. share.

Cole spoke during a gathering of area business leaders involved in cross-border trade and plans for the new bridge. The group and others have been prodding government leaders to speed the construction.

“I don’t have a lot of customers from St. Stephen, but anything that adversely affects business in Calais adversely affects me,” said Ian Pratt, who owns a car dealership on the River Road in Calais. “A lot of times people in this area lose sight … that we are all in this together.”

Monday’s gathering involved leaders from both sides of the St. Croix River. Two members of Canada’s Parliament, Elsie Wayne of Saint John, New Brunswick, and Greg Thompson of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, were on hand, as were representatives of Maine’s congressional delegation and the mayors of Calais and St. Stephen.

To date, the biggest holdup for bridge planners has been getting promises of funding from the U.S. and Canadian governments.

In order to make 2006 a realistic timeline, Wayne said, the two federal governments “have to make this a priority. They really and truly do.” Wayne said she believes the 2006 target date is realistic.

“It does come down to dollars and the federal government participation on both sides of the border on the project,” Thompson said. “We are pretty confident that they will be there as participants.”

Earlier this year, New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord promised that if he were re-elected he would guarantee an estimated $49 million (Canadian) in provincial funding matched by Canadian federal funds for that country’s half of the bridge as well as highways leading to and from it. He was re-elected, and New Brunswick officials said Monday that was a firm commitment.

Meanwhile, U.S. planners are looking to the federal government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, to pick up the $35 million tab to build a new customs operation on the Calais side of the bridge.

“We are working with these [GSA] folks,” said Kevin Rousseau, a planning specialist with the state Transportation Department, “and the congressional delegation has been working very closely with us to get the GSA design funding in this upcoming federal budget. That is the key.”

He said the design package would cost around $2.2 million.

As Cole pointed out: “Obviously, it doesn’t make sense for us to build a bridge until there is a border crossing to service that bridge.”