North-south highway costs outweigh benefits

The North-South Highway Project calls for a 100-mile, four-lane highway, complete with new bridges, from Houlton to Madawaska. Long in the works, this project is overdue for a full reckoning. Its backers, who include U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and state Rep. Jeremy Fischer, D-Presque Isle, have successfully kept the project away from the sunshine of complete, accurate and relevant public information.

Supporters tout this project as a primary solution for Aroostook County’s declining population, high unemployment and depressed economy. Those who lose to the highway cannot fault such efforts. On the surface it’s a pretty goal: connect the “two” Maines, transform the Valley, Caribou and Presque Isle into “destinations” and speed travel time, and northward will flow business, industry, and young professionals with bright children who will stay in The County. Beneath the surface it’s not so pretty.

The Maine Department of Transportation retained Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. of Watertown, Mass., to study the project. In 2006, after dumping more than 4 million in taxpayer dollars into VHB’s pockets, DOT and the Federal Highway Administration issued the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Aroostook County Transportation Study. This explains in detail a “Proposed Action” to construct three segments of the North-South Highway. It predicts local and county outcomes during and after construction, out to the year 2030.

Fragmenting the project is making “footprints,” says Ray Faucher of the DOT. At the same time, Faucher has admitted in public meetings that the entire Houlton-to-Madawaska highway remains fiction, a matter highly in doubt. The “footprints” will connect only with existing roads.

One “footprint” is the 10-mile-long Presque Isle Bypass. Close examination of the bypass reveals startling facts. The “moderate economic effects” of construction leave “relatively small effects thereafter.” By 2030, as a result of the bypass, Aroostook could expect 26 new jobs, and, although there would not be “a substantial increase in area businesses,” it does promise “three gas stations and two fast-food outlets.” Population would increase by “75 persons” but there would be “negligible residential growth effects.” Furthermore, the bypass “does not greatly improve Aroostook County connections with the rest of Maine, other states or Canada.”

This footprint squashes more life than it generates. It spreads tar over 300 acres of prime farmland, and renders land on either side unusable. It takes out homes, wetlands, snowmobile and ATV trails. The Presque Isle Bypass Economic Impact Study by RKG Associates, Inc., of Durham, N.H., determined that the bypass “would only have modest impacts on business activity in and around the city’s downtown,” and that businesses “negatively affected by the bypass should not lose more than 10 percent of their existing business activity.” A 10 percent loss for some means an employee loses a job, or the business itself has to close.

Economic development is the strongest argument for this project. The Regional Economic Models, Inc. of Amherst, Mass., used by VHB and DOT, predicts (in 2003 dollars) by 2035 the $120.8 million cost of the bypass will produce a combined personal income gain of $3.79 million for all Presque Isle residents. REMI treats tax expenditures as cost-free, but would a prudent person invest $120 to gain $4? The price of asphalt has more than doubled since REMI made its projections. How great has the deficit become? Is this “development?”

The notion that any road building is good for the economy is wrong. Costs of losses are not factored into the conversation. Homes, farms, wetlands, businesses, livelihoods, human beings, will be lost and displaced. These can be measured, counted, identified. Such losses are deliberately left out. One man or one company might enjoy windfall profits from construction, but what of the uncounted, taxpaying families, farms, businesses who will be crushed? Who or what will replace them? The north-south highway plan has become fiscal and social madness.

DOT is so far in the hole, it can’t even see the rim, yet this mess continues – to the detriment of residents and taxpayers the length of Maine, and at the expense of national taxpayers whose dollars pay for federal highway projects. People ought to know the current state of the north-south highway project. If the whole 100-mile highway is ever completed, it will save 20 minutes travel time from Madawaska to Bangor, on a good day.

No-build remains an option.

Pamela Sweetser of Presque Isle is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Maine.