Let the train take the strain

After waiting years for a limited-access, four-lane highway, the people of northern Maine are left disappointed once again. Plans for a North-South Highway from Houlton to The Valley have been postponed except for two small segments: the Presque Isle Bypass and Route 161.

With the price of diesel skyrocketing and with the costs of oil-based road building materials soaring, the reason given is not as facetious as it might seem. And it’s not just the cost of plowing and maintaining that puts this highway ever more out of reach – just getting it built in the first place would cost a fortune.

But before the Maine Department of Transportation writes off Aroostook County for much-needed improvements to it’s transportation systems, I urge DOT Commissioner David Cole, Gov. John Baldacci, our congressional delegation and the leaders of Aroostook County to consider giving us a modern railway system if they will not or cannot give us a decent highway system.

A railway system would give us all the benefits and more of a North-South Highway at a fraction of the price. An efficient, new railway system would provide cheap, easy transport of our produce from The County – it could be used to transport potatoes, potato products, lumber and paper.

Rail would be a draw for our burgeoning tourism industry. The trip here could be as much fun as the stay. Tourists either could put their cars and/or snowmobiles aboard the train in Bangor for use when they get here, or rent fuel-efficient cars or snow sleds when they arrive. Folks in Europe put their cars aboard trains so it is not as far-fetched as it sounds.

And before the snowmobile enthusiasts and four wheeler lovers form a lynch mob for my suggesting converting some of their much loved trails back into railway lines, there surely could be enough trails left in each community to continue these recreational opportunities.

In any case, long snowmobile and four-wheeler excursions will be trimmed back once gas hits $8 a gallon, which it is today in Britain. I was just speaking with a friend there who said he doesn’t have much sympathy with our whining over gas prices of more than $3 a gallon when in Britain they are paying more than $8. But when I reminded him that we live in a huge country – Maine is two-thirds the size of England, and that we have no mass transport system, he admitted that these high gas prices are a hardship.

Rail has so many advantages over highway travel. Even the railway ties made to build the railway are wood – a renewable resource produced right here in Maine – unlike tar made from imported oil products.

Rail provides many stable, well-paid jobs. There are drivers, conductors, ticket collectors, mechanics, cooks and wait staff for the dining cars, cleaners, shunters and maintenance crews to name a few.

Rail is fast and efficient. It’s four hundred miles from Paris to London yet even with a twenty-eight mile, underwater tunnel in between, the trip can be made in three hours. Imagine traveling from Presque Isle to Augusta in two hours (the politicians should love that idea!) or to Portland in two and a half hours.

Rail is much kinder to the environment. It takes less energy to build and maintain and a fraction to travel on compared with cars and trucks. Rail would help reduce the greenhouse effect.

This is not a pipe dream. This is how people in other industrialized countries live, including Canada, and this is how we should expect to live. Once we did have the benefits of rail in Aroostook County. My mother-in-law and her sister remember hopping aboard the Bangor and Aroostook Railway in New Sweden and traveling all the way to Boston.

We have witnessed how much passenger travel has picked up on the Downeaster train from Portland to Boston. This success story should be repeated – especially in a county like ours with such long driving distances.

A few years ago, Sen. John Martin of Eagle Lake, introduced LD 599, requiring the commissioner of economic and community development to ensure that the potential use of rail is considered whenever economic development projects are planned.

Economic development was the only reason sited for the North-South Highway by MDOT Project Manager Ray Faucher. Martin’s legislation was passed in 2003, and although MDOT has been studying the North-South Highway for 10 years (to the tune of $12 million), I urge our leaders to show courage, vision and common sense in providing Aroostook County with the 21st century transportation system it needs and deserves by studying the rail option. To borrow a British Rail advertising slogan “Let the train take the strain.”

Brenda Nasberg Jepson, who lives at Madawaska Lake, is a documentary filmmaker who started her film career producing training films for British Rail in London.