Proponent pushes east-west highway Road system seen as economic catalyst

BANGOR – The proposed east-west highway will be good for the economy and the environment as well as for transportation.

That was the message that Andy Hamilton, local attorney and board member of the East-West Highway Association, broadcast Tuesday during a public discussion at the Bangor Public Library.

“Rural road systems are killers,” he said to a group of about a dozen people. “They’re killers to the human environment and killers to your putting growth where you want.”

The presentation was sponsored by the Eastern Maine Economic Development Strategy Committee, a group which aims to improve opportunities for sound development in Hancock, Knox, Penobscot, Piscataquis, Waldo and Washington counties.

A divided east-west highway will curb sprawl and allow Maine and Atlantic Canada to become a more integral part of the North American trade corridor, Hamilton said.

Another benefit of the highway would be to reduce traffic on the rural road systems – traffic the roads were never designed to carry.

“Rural roads were not designed, or maintained, for trucking,” he said.

Hamilton showed maps of the major North American Free Trade Agreement routes. Maine and the Maritimes were conspicuously blank on the maps, empty of the blue trade route lines that streaked other areas to the south and west.

“We’ve not been able to spot any high-priority corridors in the northeast,” he said.

It would be critical to Maine’s economic success to change the mentality of “border as barrier” to “border as gateway,” he contended.

“Senator Collins and others want to see trade move across the borders seamlessly,” he said. “We think that economic development is the starting and ending point for this discussion.”

Hamilton said that the state must diversify its economy in order to survive and can’t rely on environmental tourism alone.

“When labor’s as inexpensive as it is in the Far East, it’s no surprise that manufacturers are leaving Maine and heading elsewhere,” he said. “I think what we really need when all is said and done are connectors.”

He repeated that a good connector would be found in the east-west highway. The highway would tap into the economies of Quebec and New Brunswick.

“Then you have your regional economy,” he said.

The final talk in this series to inform the public on economic issues affecting eastern Maine will be held 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. May 24 at Eastern Maine Development Corp. board room in Bangor. The speaker will be Roger Merchant, a University of Maine Cooperative Extension educator and leader in Piscataquis County, who will present “Niche Tourism: An Economic Development Strategy.” His specialty is sustainable rural development and tourism.