Transportation bond must include roads

Your Feb. 11 editorial about Gov. Baldacci’s proposed bond package includes the statement, “There should be no debate over the $38 million allocated for transportation projects.”

Actually, there should be a debate. Few people outside the State House seem to have noticed that the proposed transportation bond is nearly 45 percent smaller than each of its biennial predecessors in 1999, 2001 and 2003, spanning two governors and three legislatures. Each of those three bond issues raised about $65 million.

As Maine drivers are all too well aware, many state highways have begun their annual disintegration into rubble-strewn, axle-breaking, tire-eating snares. And that, of course, is just the beginning. Once spring breakup occurs, fully one-quarter of all state-owned roads – more than 2,000 miles – will be subject to posting, shutting down commercial traffic on dozens of important routes.

We joke about the bad condition of Maine roads, but it is truly no joking matter. No economy can grow sustainably if its infrastructure is substandard and inadequate, and that description is sadly all too accurate for much of Maine’s highway system.

The effort made in building the system years ago has not been matched by maintaining it. Seventy years after we set out to build a first-class road system, almost half the state highway system has still not been improved to modern standards. The backlog of road maintenance and construction projects has been growing, not shrinking. It threatens the economic development that is the lifeblood of any state, particularly its rural areas, where far too often you can hardly, “get there from here.”

This is why the transportation bond issue that the Transportation Committee and the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee will hear in a joint meeting this week is so important. The biennial transportation package has become a vital source of revenue to match federal funding, to take on major bridge projects, and to ensure that the promise of decent roads for Mainers and their visitors is not an empty one.

I know that the administration thought long and hard about this proposal. I personally appreciate the funding for the state ferry system, which provides the virtual highway system for many island communities. The Industrial Rail Access program is also critical, and funding for it is increased in this bond.

But there is nothing at all in this bond for roads and highways. Let me repeat that: nothing. And to that I must take strong exception. Roads are vital in my district, as they are all over Maine. Not funding roads in a transportation bond is like failing to include classroom teaching in a school budget.

When I bump along Route 3 from Ellsworth to Mount Desert Island, I am riding over an old concrete roadbed laid down in 1930s. As the gateway to the most important tourist area in Maine, Route 3’s condition sends an unmistakable message, and it’s not one that impresses our millions of visitors. In Ellsworth, summer traffic is choked as the major east-west road, Route 1, and the major north-south road, Route 3, cross and become hopelessly entangled. We can multiply those examples all across the state.

As Senate chair of the Transportation Committee, I have to look to the needs of the entire state, and those needs simply aren’t met by this proposal. The money isn’t in the regular transportation budget, either. Highway Fund revenues are growing less than inflation, and construction prices are growing much faster. The dollars missing from the

bond will not be found anywhere else.

How much is missing? Over the last 22 years, Maine voters have considered and strongly approved all 12 transportation bond issues put to them. Those bond issues averaged 44 percent of the total packages which they were a part. The current transportation bond proposal is just 19 percent of the overall package.

If the bond remains unchanged, miles funded in the state arterial highway program – the most important and heavily traveled routes – will decline by 30-40 percent. Collector roads, pavement preservation and paving will decline by at least 15 percent.

Coastal Maine found out what happened when a major link, the Waldo-Hancock Bridge, had to be closed to truck traffic. On a smaller scale, this bond will create the same result on roads all over the state.

I support research and development funding, as proposed in the governor’s economic bond plan. Maine, particularly eastern Maine, has benefited from hundreds of good jobs at The Jackson Laboratory and other research centers thanks to state support. R&D investment is an important key to Maine’s future prosperity.

But economic development is all about balance, and transportation projects hold the promise of future growth while providing high-paying jobs right now. Most of the jobs created by the $197 million bond package come right from the $38 million transportation bond – 1,600 jobs. Imagine what we could do if the transportation bond was funded at anything close to $65 million.

Perhaps we can’t invest enough this year to begin catching up on a huge infrastructure deficit, to bring good roads to all parts of the state. But we at least shouldn’t be falling farther behind, which will happen if the bond stays at $38 million.

For the good of this state, and each of the communities that depends on good roads to link them to the outside world, we can, and we must, do better.

Dennis Damon, of Trenton, represents District 28 (Hancock County) in the Maine Senate and is Senate chair of the Transportation Committee.