The prospect of a passenger rail link to Lewiston-Auburn is the kind of economic game changer this community doesn’t often see.
The current state budget includes $400,000 toward the cost of a feasibility study and implementation plan for a passenger rail link between Lewiston-Auburn and the Amtrak Downeaster in Portland. The Downeaster runs five trips a day from Portland to Boston and two to Brunswick.
Under the authorizing legislation, LD 323, the state’s appropriation is contingent upon each city chipping in $50,000 toward the total study cost of $500,000. The study is a prerequisite for securing federal and private funding for a station and track upgrades. If implemented, the link could be the first step in a passenger rail line running from Portland through the Twin Cities to Montreal.
Lewiston’s City Council, with the enthusiastic support of Mayor Robert MacDonald, authorized that city’s contribution in a 5-2 vote on September 15.
The Auburn Council is due to vote on October 5.
While some public-private economic development ideas are expensive, risky and controversial, approval of Auburn’s relatively modest contribution towards this rail study should be a no-brainer.
For the sake of comparison, the Auburn City Council authorized $50,000 to purchase a derelict property on Main Street for demolition at its last meeting on September 21.
One of the keys to economic development is connectivity. That’s not a new idea which originated with the global economy. It’s a very old one.
Roads, rivers and sea routes have facilitated the movement of materials, goods and people for millennia, and, in the more recent past, canals, rail lines, highways and air routes have played the same role. These pathways of commerce have invariably led to robust prosperity, population growth and urbanization along their axes.
The Via Maris (“Way of the Sea”), for instance, was an ancient trade road that linked ancient Egypt with the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Syria and Iraq) starting in the Bronze Age (about 3300 to 1200 B.C.). The Silk Route, approximately 4,000 miles long, connected ancient China with Arabia, Europe and the Horn of Africa starting about 100 B.C.
Early inland commerce in the U.S. was greatly benefited by one of the country’s first federal public works projects, the Cumberland Road, built between 1811 and 1824, which covered over 600 miles and connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers. The Erie Canal, 363 miles long and built between 1817 and 1825, linked New York City and the Hudson River with the Great Lakes and permitted the development of America’s then northwestern frontier. In process, it also made N.Y.C. into the nation’s largest and most prosperous urban center.
The Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1869, opened the way to large-scale settlement of the Great Plains and Far West and tied together the continental U.S. Whole new cities grew up along the Transcontinental and later cross-country rail lines, while many communities located off these routes shriveled.
In 1847, the same year that Benjamin Bates first came to inspect Lewiston as a potential site for a planned industrial city, a five-mile rail spur was completed that connected Lewiston to the new Atlantic and Lawrence line being built from Portland to Montreal. The existence of this railroad link undoubtedly entered into Bates’ decision to go forward with the bold entrepreneurial venture that ultimately changed the face of Lewiston and made it into a powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution.
It’s hard to know without a study how much the proposed rail link would economically benefit Lewiston-Auburn. However, the experience of a similar community in York County is instructive. At a pro-railroad rally at the Hilton Garden Inn in Auburn on September 24, Saco development director Peter Morelli told attendees that the creation of the Saco passenger rail station in 2009 had not only grown that city’s downtown but attracted nearly $200 million in private investment to Biddeford-Saco, a number expected to increase $1 billion by 2030.
An L-A rail link could become part of a larger project combining different modes of transportation. According to the 2014 Draft Maine State Rail Plan, “The Portland to Lewiston/Auburn route is part of the federally designated Northern New England High Speed Rail Corridor. Rail planning in this corridor has included the design and permitting of a new intermodal facility at the Lewiston/Auburn airport, which would improve connections for auto, bus, rail and air travelers, and would serve commuters working in the Portland region.”
Whether a Portland/L-A train stops at the Lewiston-Auburn Airport, a station in downtown Lewiston or Auburn, or at another other point along existing track or railroad rights-of-way, however, is far less important than that it stops somewhere in the Twin Cities.
An inland passenger rail route through the population centers of Lewiston and Auburn always made more sense than a costal route from Portland to Brunswick, which has a third of L-A’s population. Nonetheless, through aggressive lobbying and planning Brunswick got its rail link first, with funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2010 and service commencing in 2012.
Fortunately a determined push by Lewiston Rep. Jared Golden and other members of the Lewiston-Auburn delegation moved LD 323 through the Legislature in 2015 and overrode Gov. LePage’s veto.
Now it’s the turn of Auburn’s City Council to do the right thing. The same rail link which put Lewiston and Auburn on the map in the 1840s can do it again in the early 21st century.
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