CARRABASSETT VALLEY – A group of New England governors plans to lobby the congressional delegations of each of the region’s six states on a proposed east-west highway system.

Maine Transportation Commissioner John Melrose hopes to have a road package with New England-wide congressional support for consideration in the federal government’s 2003 fiscal year. Maine has been receiving federal funding to study the east-west highway for several years, and is slated to receive $5 million in this year’s transportation appropriations bill.

Melrose and others envision an east-west alternative to Maine’s existing highways, which mostly run parallel to the coast and offer few speedy routes to Canada. His comments came during a recent daylong transportation conference at the Sugarloaf/USA resort.

The hope is to add improvements and upgrade highways to create a high-quality arterial system across Maine.

A 1999 study by the Maine Department of Transportation and the State Planning Office found upgrades to the existing traffic corridors would make more sense than building a four-lane highway.

From Calais, the project would head west along Route 9 to the Bangor-Brewer area. It then would follow Interstate 95 south for a few miles, branch off at Newport and go through Skowhegan.

From there, motorists could continue on Route 2 to New Hampshire or head northwest to Canada on Routes 16 and 27.

Officials hope the east-west highway will bring changes to Maine’s midsection, which includes some of the state’s poorest areas. Unemployment in the area is higher than that of southern Maine.

The state now is working on the environmental assessments for several aspects of the project, according to Carl Croce, director of the transportation department’s bureau of planning. They include a new bridge in Skowhegan, a connector road from Interstate 395 and Route 9 in the Brewer-Eddington area and a border crossing in Calais.

The first two projects, and perhaps the third, would be built large enough to handle four lanes of traffic.