Transportation planning examined at DOT forum

ORONO – Maine transportation leaders are looking toward the future and are trying to determine what the state’s transportation system will look like 20 years down the road.

They’re also discussing funding, and how to increase it for future strategic goals, along with maintaining the current system’s needs.

“We’re a cul de sac,” Sandy Blitz, executive director of Bangor’s East-West Highway Association, said Wednesday. “We’re just not connected.”

Blitz was the guest speaker Wednesday in Orono at the last of seven regional transportation forums to obtain public input for Maine Department of Transportation’s long-range transportation plan, “Connecting Maine: Planning our Transportation Future.”

Approximately 400 people statewide participated in the forums.

Transportation Commissioner David Cole asked for a 20-year integrated, multimodal plan during 2004 that would address Maine’s many transportation systems and he stressed community input in the planning process.

Funding is the biggest issue the DOT will face in the next 20 years, Cole said.

“There isn’t going to be enough money to do the ‘got to do’ [projects], no less the ‘want to do’ [projects],” he said.

To address the funding component, Carl Croce, director of the DOT’s Bureau of Planning, first gave an overview of the challenges the department faces, including aging infrastructure, growing demand, and decreases in motor fuel tax revenue.

Nearly 69 percent of the state highway budget comes from fuel taxes, but inflation, fuel-efficient vehicles and alternative fuels are causing the funding to slowly drop, he said.

“People are reducing their consumption and there is concern,” Carol Woodcock, a regional representative from U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, said during one of the breakout sessions.

City and town leaders, state legislators, business people and others attended the daylong workshop sponsored by the DOT, the Maine Turnpike Authority, and regional planning organizations.

The group of 50 or so discussed and brainstormed on acceptable funding alternatives, future needs, land use, and economic development.

The possibility of adding tolls was considered but the sentiment from residents is: “It’s a great idea, if it’s not in my back yard,” said Conrad Welzel, manager of Government and Community Services for the Maine Turnpike Authority.

Augusta’s third bridge, the Waldo-Hancock Bridge, and the Sagadahoc Bridge all are projects that were eligible to use tolls as funding, if it was part of the planning process, Welzel said, adding, “It’s too late now.”

The consensus of the Orono forum was to keep the fuel tax and add another funding component to supplement it.

“The solution is not obvious and it’s not easy,” Croce said. “It requires a multifaceted solution.”

Maintaining the roads and bridges already in place and adding strategic improvements over the next 20 years is expected to cost nearly $20 billion, Dale Doughty, assistant director of the DOT’s Bureau of Planning, said Wednesday.

“For every dollar we fund, there is $2 in needs,” he said.

The east-west highway, from Calais to Watertown, N.Y., has been discussed for years and really is a project to increase economic diversity in the entire region, Blitz said.

“This high priority corridor connects Halifax, [Nova Scotia,] to Montreal and Toronto and puts Maine right in the middle,” he said. “If we don’t connect, we will be bypassed.”