Though it isn’t the catchiest around, the new name for the East-West Highway Association — now the Maine Coalition for Increased Jobs and Safety — ably describes its goals. Another name for the group could have been The Coalition to Connect Maine to the World.

Whatever it is called, this statewide coalition has distinguished itself through its persistence and commitment to pumping life into a state that, in many places, is dying. During the last year, the coalition has gone from a general theory about a highway to a targeted study of its benefits, from an approximate sense of where such a highway might be sited to a specific map, placing a highway from Calais through Bangor, forking at Skowhegan and connecting beyond Maine at Coburn Gore and Bethel. It has tapped into nationwide expertise, solicited local opinion, pledged to work with enviromentalists and all but begged the King administration to get involved.

And that, given the size of this project, is only the beginning. But given its importance to the state, there is no other choice. The idea of such a highway has come up many times before and has run out of steam for the same reason a lot of good ideas run out of steam — they require large-scale, long-range thinking and an extended commitment from those involved.

The state is studying the proposal, with the results expected to come out sometime this summer. Studies are useful exercises and can help shape a project to increase its chance of success. But assuming the study does not conclude that roads aren’t necessary, Gov. King, who says he supports the idea of an east-west highway in concept, needs to become more enthusiastic. The locals have done more than their share of work; Maine’s congressional delegation has been supportive. But without state-level support, the highway project will remain perpetually in the almost stage — while jobs followed by young people followed by organized towns themselves depart.

As with the needed expansion of Interstate 95 to the north, the largest opponent to the east-west highway, however, is not a circumspect governor, but fear. Fear that the project will require hard work, that some people might object, that the payback might not be immediate. But if leadership means taking such risks, consider the risks the absence of leadership would provide. A lack of action on improving infrastructure forces Maine to rely even more heavily on what it already has. The polite word for many of Maine’s labor-intensive industries — apparel, shoes, textiles — is that they are mature. In truth, they were mature when bell bottoms and platform shoes had their first unfortunate coming out 25 years ago. Now they are well on their way to retirement — as laid off workers statewide are finding out.

A lack of action on the winding path across Maine is akin to the state deciding to remove lanes on I-95 and turn the interstate into a two-lane road to Boston. Think the manufacturing, tourism and the natural-resource industries would suffer? And imagine if the reason given for taking up the highway was that those I-95 lanes were expensive to repair and removing them would allow the state to maintain other roads.

Sounds silly, but that’s the argument used against the east-west highway, which has its own Boston in Montreal — same approximate population, same approximate distance from Bangor. And this argument has been used even before the source of funding for the plan has been identified.

But as those who attended a regional forum in Bangor this week on the east-west highway learned, most of the news about the highway is positive. An efficient road system would be a boon to serving industries that wanted to be near the growing port of Halifax; light manufacturing and high-tech industries would find both a willing workforce in Maine and access to markets beyond with such a highway; Maine would become the hub of a regional transportation system rather than the end of the current North-South line.

Construction of an east-west highway remains years away. More than sand and gravel, a construction plan or even the money to build it, the project needs the support of state officials. If they put in even half the effort expended by the Maine Coalition for Increased Jobs and Safety, the highway will be a certain success.