Portland-Auburn Commuter Rail

[Patrick]

Portland to Auburn Commuter Train Gets 'Game Changer' Grant (Bangor Daily News)
http://bangordailynews.com/2012/08/...burn-rail-line-gets-game-changer-grant/print/

Reconnecting Portland and Auburn by Rail
http://portland.thephoenix.com/news/143148-reconnecting-portland-and-auburn-by-rail/#ixzz24KJbAwsT (Portland Phoenix)

New Hampshire's Refusal To Get On Board With Trains May Be Big Mistake
http://www.sunjournal.com/news/colu...y-be-big-mistake/1238255#.UDJTHulNSDE.twitter (Lewiston Sun Journal)

 

[Dr. StrangeHat]

There's an article today in the Forecaster regarding the potential for a commuter line connecting Auburn to Portland. The terminus in Portland would be at India Street, so I'm assuming this means the conversion of the narrow gauge rail around the East End to standard gauge, as well as the repair and re-opening of the Back Cove railroad trestle. If so, then I am all for this idea.

http://www.theforecaster.net/news/p...-auburn-passenger-rail-subject-meeting/144860

My question is this, though - why terminate this at the other end in Auburn? Just looking at Google Maps, there appears to be rail from this line that continues north, crossing the Androscoggin River into Downtown Lewiston just north of Rt. 202. Why not terminate this commuter line there? One would assume that gaining access to Lewiston residents that do not have cars to travel to the Auburn station would benefit this line.

 

[grittys457]

No more trains north please. All the money to put a stop in freeport is dumb beyond belief. It's a fifteen minute drive from portland. Who on earth would pay to ride it from Portland up there unless it was a one time novelty? That means all the ridership will come from Boston and that won't be enough to be worth it over time.

All the rail money should be spent on making Portland to Boston faster. It is not a viable option right now with that added time it takes. A roundtrip by car is between 3 to 3 1/2 hours. A one way trip on train is 2 1/2. They can get that down to two hours and make people think about it at least.

 

[Dr. StrangeHat]

No more trains north please. All the money to put a stop in freeport is dumb beyond belief. It's a fifteen minute drive from portland. Who on earth would pay to ride it from Portland up there unless it was a one time novelty? That means all the ridership will come from Boston and that won't be enough to be worth it over time.

I think their thought was to tap into tourists from Boston to Freeport and beyond (connecting to the Eastern Maine Railroad in Brunswick), rather than it being a commuter train for Portland. That said, I agree that the money spent on extending Amtrak to Freeport and Brunswick probably won't be worth it in the end. I also agree that speeding up the train from Boston to Portland would have been a better investment.

That said, I've always thought that extending the Downeaster along existing track north through Lewiston/Auburn, beyond to Bethel, north through the White Mountains and onward to Montreal would be a worthwhile extension. Currently you have to go to New York to get to Montreal by train and vice versa. Having a Boston to Montreal train would probably be a more than insignificant draw, especially for Canadian tourists coming to Maine.

I can picture them all spilling out of the train into OOB, already wearing their banana hammocks and smoking cigarettes.

 

[cneal]

The 2011 engineering study on the subject estimated that capital costs (not including an annual operating budget) for a Portland-Auburn commuter rail line would run to nine figures. Extending it to Montreal would cost nearly a full billion. See http://www.sunjournal.com/city/story/1000959

You could do a lot with that kind of money. Would it be better spent on a slow, little-used passenger line to the outskirts of Auburn, or would we rather spend it on upgrading the Portland-Boston line to 110 mile-per-hour high speed rail? Or on a fleet of luxury commuter buses radiating out from Portland to downtown Lewiston and also Sanford and Augusta and Windham and Biddeford/Saco and Bath?

In reality, though, Augusta doesn't have that kind of money. Washington doesn't really have that kind of money either, and given the choice, they're going to prioritize their scarce funds for rail lines in the 40 states that are more populous that our own, in order to connect cities that already have robust bus and rail services and ridership (places like California, Illinois, Florida, and NYC).

I'm skeptical of the meeting described in the Forecaster article. I've been to one of their meetings before — it's generally 4-5 people, total train obsessives, who have little to no grip on the state's fiscal reality. Like watching people play Dungeons and Dragons with fantasy railroad maps instead of a 12-sided die.

Bus service to Lewiston/Auburn is more feasible financially and would attract more riders with more flexible routes into the downtown areas; unfortunately, these same train nuts trying to raise $200 million for an Auburn railroad also lobbied *against* commuter bus service in the Legislature when a bill was introduced two years ago.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

The 2011 engineering study on the subject estimated that capital costs (not including an annual operating budget) for a Portland-Auburn commuter rail line would run to nine figures. Extending it to Montreal would cost nearly a full billion. See http://www.sunjournal.com/city/story/1000959

You could do a lot with that kind of money. Would it be better spent on a slow, little-used passenger line to the outskirts of Auburn, or would we rather spend it on upgrading the Portland-Boston line to 110 mile-per-hour high speed rail? Or on a fleet of luxury commuter buses radiating out from Portland to downtown Lewiston and also Sanford and Augusta and Windham and Biddeford/Saco and Bath?

In reality, though, Augusta doesn't have that kind of money. Washington doesn't really have that kind of money either, and given the choice, they're going to prioritize their scarce funds for rail lines in the 40 states that are more populous that our own, in order to connect cities that already have robust bus and rail services and ridership (places like California, Illinois, Florida, and NYC).

I'm skeptical of the meeting described in the Forecaster article. I've been to one of their meetings before — it's generally 4-5 people, total train obsessives, who have little to no grip on the state's fiscal reality. Like watching people play Dungeons and Dragons with fantasy railroad maps instead of a 12-sided die.

Bus service to Lewiston/Auburn is more feasible financially and would attract more riders with more flexible routes into the downtown areas; unfortunately, these same train nuts trying to raise $200 million for an Auburn railroad also lobbied *against* commuter bus service in the Legislature when a bill was introduced two years ago.

"Luxury commuter bus" service is an oxymoron, first of all. There's no such thing as a 'luxury' commuter bus. There are luxury buses, like Greyhound - which is a case in point example as to why luxury bus services are on the decline. And then there are cheap, nebulously-legal-at-best cut-budget bus operations like Megabus and Fung Wah. I bet your commuter bus would operate more like the second.

Unfortunately, acquiescing to the bus compromise has a funny way of causing rail expansion plans to evaporate. Those "train nuts" you so disparage did the right thing in lobbying against the bus.

Montreal has a pretty robust rail and bus service, and the economic benefits (particularly in the tourism/travel sectors) to connecting Boston, Portland and Montreal are immense. You missed the point of the article entirely - yes, it's going to cost a lot more. It's going to provide a much, much, much larger return on investment as well.

I'll give you that there should be an investment into bulking up top speeds and headways on the line between Boston and Portland. We're completely capable of having 125 MPH on that line. That investment shouldn't come at the expense of extending the line.

 

[Dr. StrangeHat]

Does anyone know if it would be more expensive to build an entirely new set of tracks from Porland to Montreal for a high-speed "bullet" train or to build an elevated set of tracks above the current freight lines running from Portland to Montreal?

Obviously these are "pie in the sky" ideas that are less likely than me winning the lottery, but I'm just curious if anyone out there is in the rail industry and knows the rough costs.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Does anyone know if it would be more expensive to build an entirely new set of tracks from Porland to Montreal for a high-speed "bullet" train or to build an elevated set of tracks above the current freight lines running from Portland to Montreal?

Obviously these are "pie in the sky" ideas that are less likely than me winning the lottery, but I'm just curious if anyone out there is in the rail industry and knows the rough costs.

To get anything resembling acceptable "bullet" speeds: billions. Terrain alone--hills and all the lakes it would have to dip and dive around--makes anything you build there is going to be too curvy to sustain triple-digit speeds. The amount of earth-moving required to get straightish track at acceptable climbing grades for RR equipment is simply too much work for even the most wildly optimistic traffic levels. Same reason there isn't an east-west Interstate highway across rural Northern New England.


The don't really need to go all-new anyway. The St. Lawrence & Atlantic mainline (http://www.gwrr.com/operations/railroads/north_america/st_lawrence_atlantic_railroad.be) is the one they'd use. Straightest existing route and connects to the existing VIA Rail intercity line east of Montreal, second-busiest thru freight line in Maine so gets good traffic utilization, well-maintained, and has very passenger-friendly owners. At full spec, it could do 80 MPH which for this highway-less region would be very competitive if not outright preferable to any other mode. Right now it's good-quality 40 MPH passenger on the privately-owned track...the state-owned portion closer to Portland is crud, though. Might even have some straightaways already up to 60 MPH track class. You could, without a lot of money, bump the whole line end-to-end to the 60 MPH max speed for unsignaled track for not a lot of money and get it on par with the 60 MPH-upgraded north-of-White River Jct. part of the Vermonter. Signals, PTC, and 80 MPH are a follow-on huge expense...but the starter costs for getting usefully well-patronized limited service are not bad. And would return investment on the freight side because SL&A is a key intermodal route and the owners want to be more competitive with Pan Am. I don't know if the ridership numbers justify it...I tend to doubt it, but honestly haven't been following it that close. If Maine did unite behind it and say, "Yes...this is absolutely worth it" it is low-hanging fruit that they probably could finance the 60 MPH service themselves if they were committed enough and had reciprocal support from Quebec Province. The line passes through very thin slices of extreme northern NH and VT, but since it's private track a grant to the freight carrier can float those upgrades without need to engage those states (much the same way as the Vermonter and Downeaster were upgraded in NH sans Concord's cooperation by giving the money straight to NECR and Pan Am instead of the state).


It's the Obama Admin. HSR map where this is flagged as a "long-range high speed corridor" that's a laugher. Nothing's ever going dictionary-definition high speed between Portland and Montreal. The engineering cost-benefit diminishing returns are too big a waste; that's energy much better expended fixing bottlenecks on the core HSR network. 60-80 MPH regional rail...yes, that is an achievable goal because the existing infrastructure isn't in bad shape. 80 MPH diesels are quicker than you think when they run express through the wilderness and waste little time on acceleration/deceleration around intermediate stations.

 

[Commuting Boston Student]

It's the Obama Admin. HSR map where this is flagged as a "long-range high speed corridor" that's a laugher. Nothing's ever going dictionary-definition high speed between Portland and Montreal. The engineering cost-benefit diminishing returns are too big a waste; that's energy much better expended fixing bottlenecks on the core HSR network. 60-80 MPH regional rail...yes, that is an achievable goal because the existing infrastructure isn't in bad shape. 80 MPH diesels are quicker than you think when they run express through the wilderness and waste little time on acceleration/deceleration around intermediate stations.

Except it isn't? The designated HSR corridors are Boston - Montreal and Boston - Portland/Auburn.

 

[Matthew]

That map shows SF-Monterey-SLO-LA high speed rail, but not Austin-Houston. Fun times.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Except it isn't? The designated HSR corridors are Boston - Montreal and Boston - Portland/Auburn.

This one:

http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/portals/20/docs/NewEngland_HSR_Vision.pdf

It's beyond the scope of the core national network, but did get included in the New England Vision statement that all 6 New England states ratified so it could qualify for long-range study money as a possible extension of the Portland-Auburn HSR corridor.

That doesn't mean it's a legitimate target for money. I mean, look, South Coast FAIL is on the map floating like a turd in the punchbowl and the Feds can't make it any clearer to MA how less-than-zero their interest is in funding it. Hell, the detail maps of Southern New England even include the Connecticut busway...that's how much the New England Vision is whored out to the individual governors' and legislatures' pet projects. But all 6 governors sign off on this, so all 6 governors get to pimp their pork on-the-federal-record whether it's relevant to HSR or not. The AUB-MTL corridor is Maine's flight of fancy contribution to the map.

 

[FrankLloydMike]

"Luxury commuter bus" service is an oxymoron, first of all. There's no such thing as a 'luxury' commuter bus. There are luxury buses, like Greyhound - which is a case in point example as to why luxury bus services are on the decline. And then there are cheap, nebulously-legal-at-best cut-budget bus operations like Megabus and Fung Wah. I bet your commuter bus would operate more like the second.

Unfortunately, acquiescing to the bus compromise has a funny way of causing rail expansion plans to evaporate. Those "train nuts" you so disparage did the right thing in lobbying against the bus.

Montreal has a pretty robust rail and bus service, and the economic benefits (particularly in the tourism/travel sectors) to connecting Boston, Portland and Montreal are immense. You missed the point of the article entirely - yes, it's going to cost a lot more. It's going to provide a much, much, much larger return on investment as well.

I'll give you that there should be an investment into bulking up top speeds and headways on the line between Boston and Portland. We're completely capable of having 125 MPH on that line. That investment shouldn't come at the expense of extending the line.

Generally, I'm much more in favor of rail over bus service when it's feasible--it's generally faster, doesn't sit in traffic, is more attractive, the fixed-route means greater stability, and it generates more economic growth and redevelopment around stations.

That said, with limited funds, a Portland-Auburn commuter rail line sounds like a waste of money that could seriously limit rail expansion and improvements elsewhere. I'm not incredibly familiar with development and commuting patterns north of Portland, but I would be surprised to find that there is a sizable population commuting between Portland and Auburn, not to mention the rural areas in between.

This really seems like an instance in which a good commuter bus would be a better investment. And your comparison to commercial intercity buses really doesn't reflect what would likely happen here. First of all, commuter rail is not luxury; it is fairly bare bones, and that's sort of the point. Sure it's more comfortable, spacious and smoother than a bus, but it's not Amtrak. Similarly, commuter buses shouldn't be like coach buses--they should be quicker and easier to board.

I still don't think that a Portland-Auburn route would necessarily justify something like this, but the http://www.ctfastrak.com/index.php/en/http://www.ctfastrak.com/index.php/en/ BRT being built in the Hartford area provides a good model of a bus in lieu of light rail. The bus has a dedicated track separate from traffic, and in this case, separate from any roadway. But at the end, the buses can circulate through the downtown, or branch off into other neighborhoods. Perhaps something like this could work if most of the line and stops where in Portland, perhaps along Forest Ave or something, and with some buses continuing on via I-95 to Lewiston/Auburn.

That said, I've always thought that extending the Downeaster along existing track north through Lewiston/Auburn, beyond to Bethel, north through the White Mountains and onward to Montreal would be a worthwhile extension. Currently you have to go to New York to get to Montreal by train and vice versa. Having a Boston to Montreal train would probably be a more than insignificant draw, especially for Canadian tourists coming to Maine.

Much as this would benefit Canadian tourists and the OOB economy, I don't see it happening. Especially now that rail advocates are back in power in New Hampshire, I think it's much more likely that commuter rail will be extended to Concord from Boston. And then rail can be continued north from there to Vermont, where a high-speed train could eventually operate much more directly between Montreal and Boston.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Generally, I'm much more in favor of rail over bus service when it's feasible--it's generally faster, doesn't sit in traffic, is more attractive, the fixed-route means greater stability, and it generates more economic growth and redevelopment around stations.

That said, with limited funds, a Portland-Auburn commuter rail line sounds like a waste of money that could seriously limit rail expansion and improvements elsewhere. I'm not incredibly familiar with development and commuting patterns north of Portland, but I would be surprised to find that there is a sizable population commuting between Portland and Auburn, not to mention the rural areas in between.

This really seems like an instance in which a good commuter bus would be a better investment. And your comparison to commercial intercity buses really doesn't reflect what would likely happen here. First of all, commuter rail is not luxury; it is fairly bare bones, and that's sort of the point. Sure it's more comfortable, spacious and smoother than a bus, but it's not Amtrak. Similarly, commuter buses shouldn't be like coach buses--they should be quicker and easier to board.

I still don't think that a Portland-Auburn route would necessarily justify something like this, but the http://www.ctfastrak.com/index.php/en/http://www.ctfastrak.com/index.php/en/ BRT being built in the Hartford area provides a good model of a bus in lieu of light rail. The bus has a dedicated track separate from traffic, and in this case, separate from any roadway. But at the end, the buses can circulate through the downtown, or branch off into other neighborhoods. Perhaps something like this could work if most of the line and stops where in Portland, perhaps along Forest Ave or something, and with some buses continuing on via I-95 to Lewiston/Auburn.



Much as this would benefit Canadian tourists and the OOB economy, I don't see it happening. Especially now that rail advocates are back in power in New Hampshire, I think it's much more likely that commuter rail will be extended to Concord from Boston. And then rail can be continued north from there to Vermont, where a high-speed train could eventually operate much more directly between Montreal and Boston.

CTFasTrak, the billion-dollar busway, isn't a good model of anything. That is quite possibly the most mismanaged and wasteful public transit project under construction in the country. It's going to end up being almost as big a rip-off as South Coast FAIL when the cost overruns are tabulated and actual throughput is realized after all the engineering compromises they had to make. That turd is effectively going to be the final stake driven in the BRT fad in this country. The cities that haven't already backed away from that mode are going to disavow themselves of it forever when they see the bath CTDOT is about to take on their folly. DO NOT WANT.


Auburn-Montreal is a political lightning rod simply because it lands on these New England governors' fantasy HSR payola maps. It's laughable from the standpoint. The problem is we haven't yet defined a class of limited regional service where a couple trains a day bootstrapped onto freight improvements opens up some low-hanging fruit. And that's where the SL&A main does have upside.

It's a relatively direct route on existing well-maintained track that's got *almost* passenger-capable speeds for most of its length. Similar characteristics to the NECR mainline the Vermonter runs. Think in terms of the Central Corridor New London-Brattleboro proposal for a little bit of track work for uniform 60 MPH speeds, and some bare platforms with single-door boarding mini-highs for intermediate stops. It's arguably less money to take the already decent track and bring it up to the max allowable unsignaled speed than it is to rehab awful track like Pan Am just did on the Portland-Brunswick extension. The Downeaster extension was taking crap 10 MPH freight track with unprotected grade crossings galore and spiffing it up to fully signaled 80 MPH to support a full day's Amtrak schedule. Except for the state-owned portion, SL&A doesn't have that huge a maintenance backlog to get moving to competitive speeds. Nor does it necessarily have to aim as high as Downeaster frequencies to find its niche.

It's also a high-growth freight corridor. SL&A's owners, Genesee & Wyoming, just scored one of the freight industry's largest recent mergers...swallowing up NECR's owner RailAmerica. They're getting ready to sink a lot of money into SL&A to go to war with Pan Am for Northern New England intermodal traffic. Much like NECR with its Central Corridor advocacy, there's a lot of potential to cheaply bootstrap some passenger interests on the back of purely freight upgrades that are going to pay back handsomely in freight traffic. That's why the Vermonter upgrades have happened so quickly. Upgrading NECR to haul 286,000 lb. rail cars and double-stack trailers through Vermont is the economic meal ticket; the fact that it also buys smooth, fast passenger track is gravy. Now that these two freight carriers have the same owner, you can almost count the days until SL&A starts dangling public-private partnership red meat in front of the state the same way NECR worked to perfection in VT and is trying with fanfare in CT and MA for the Central Corridor. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they trotted out exactly the same Central Corridor sales pitch: "Give us some modest track improvements, and we'll run the passenger service ourselves for a profit."


Think of it in those terms and the barrier to entry gets a lot, lot lower. It just doesn't belong mixed in with the NEC route network, that's all. It's not going to have "commuter" stop density...if you want to milk 60 MPH sustained for competitive travel times, it's got to treat flyover country like flyover country. It may have to remain unsignaled and apply for a PTC waiver, which means no two trains can occupy the line between major yards at the same time. That would be perfectly legal, as PTC prevents train-on-train collisions and if there's no possibility of train-on-train during passenger service hours it would make no viable difference whether the line's signaled or not. But it's not going to allow more than a round trip per day...maybe two on weekends...and still coexist with the freight schedule. So forget about Downeaster-like frequencies or anything resembling the expanded Vermonter schedule.

That has a lot of possibilities for doing on-the-thrift. Ultimately what'll drive it is how much freight revenue there is to gain out of that track, because that's pretty squarely where the cost-benefit is. If SL&A's owners are "goin' for it" for intermodal competition like everyone thinks they will, the options become clearer for how to bootstrap the passenger interests. But I'd pay more attention to the freight interests than what the state is doodling on HSR maps in brochures.

 

[FrankLloydMike]

CTFasTrak, the billion-dollar busway, isn't a good model of anything. That is quite possibly the most mismanaged and wasteful public transit project under construction in the country. It's going to end up being almost as big a rip-off as South Coast FAIL when the cost overruns are tabulated and actual throughput is realized after all the engineering compromises they had to make. That turd is effectively going to be the final stake driven in the BRT fad in this country. The cities that haven't already backed away from that mode are going to disavow themselves of it forever when they see the bath CTDOT is about to take on their folly. DO NOT WANT.

I'm not sure if you're arguing that this project should have been light-rail, that it shouldn't have been built at all, or what. But I don't see any other major urban transit projects actually being built in New England, so whatever misgivings you have, the CTfastrak has merit in my book. We can complain about costs all we want, but public transit (like highways) is expensive, and something that will use dedicated lanes to connect two urban areas with stops in several urban and suburban neighborhoods seems like a good use of money, whether it's light-rail or BRT. And since the Fastrak will be perhaps the first BRT project in the US to "feature all of the elements crucial to a good BRT project, including off-board fare-collection, level boarding, signal priority at intersections, and next bus arrival information at well-outfitted stations," it should fare better than some projects that a really just glorified city buses.

Frankly, I'm sick how much we study and plan things, including but hardly limited to transit projects, in this country, but hardly ever get around to implementing those studies and plans. The CTfastrak is a rare example in the region of a major investment in public transit in the last 20 years. The fact that it will bring rapid transit to the third largest metro area in New England, that it is expected to draw 5,000 new daily transit riders (16,000 daily total), and that it could lead to major redevelopment of long struggling areas, all indicate that it is a good example to me.

Of course, unlike most of this pie-in-the-sky dreaming, we'll actually be able to tell whether it's something to emulate or not in a year or so.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I'm not sure if you're arguing that this project should have been light-rail, that it shouldn't have been built at all, or what. But I don't see any other major urban transit projects actually being built in New England, so whatever misgivings you have, the CTfastrak has merit in my book. We can complain about costs all we want, but public transit (like highways) is expensive, and something that will use dedicated lanes to connect two urban areas with stops in several urban and suburban neighborhoods seems like a good use of money, whether it's light-rail or BRT. And since the Fastrak will be perhaps the first BRT project in the US to "feature all of the elements crucial to a good BRT project, including off-board fare-collection, level boarding, signal priority at intersections, and next bus arrival information at well-outfitted stations," it should fare better than some projects that a really just glorified city buses.

Frankly, I'm sick how much we study and plan things, including but hardly limited to transit projects, in this country, but hardly ever get around to implementing those studies and plans. The CTfastrak is a rare example in the region of a major investment in public transit in the last 20 years. The fact that it will bring rapid transit to the third largest metro area in New England, that it is expected to draw 5,000 new daily transit riders (16,000 daily total), and that it could lead to major redevelopment of long struggling areas, all indicate that it is a good example to me.

Of course, unlike most of this pie-in-the-sky dreaming, we'll actually be able to tell whether it's something to emulate or not in a year or so.

I don't want to get too far off-topic here, but you really should read up on the engineering problems the busway is having. On the merits it's a horrible, horrible project. Worse than you'd ever imagine, and worse than anyone is publicly reporting. See this RR.net thread: http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=126&t=69097. There's a CTDOT traffic engineer working on the project who posts on Somethingawful.com about all things traffic engineering. That forum is behind a paywall from the 1st-15th of every month, so I direct-quoted him on the RR.net thread. His words: http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=126&t=69097&start=75#p934091.


Read that and tell me the logic washes. It's an apocalypse of a project, has been compromised to the point where it does more traffic harm than good and squeezes out some of the "true" BRT features, and most gallingly: it's being built shovels-in-ground before the most critical parts of the design--ramps and bridges--are past 60% design, while West Hartford is threatening a lawsuit to kill it dead, and while the lease for the shared ROW with Amtrak has yet to be signed and leaves all the leverage with Amtrak to price-gouge the state. Plus the portion that runs alongside the I-84 Viaduct will have to be totally torn up and rebuilt when they replace the Viaduct with an at-grade cut (state has determined cut is cheaper over 50 years than new Viaduct, so the only question is whether that project happens in 7-10 years or 10-15). And Amtrak retains the right to boot the busway off its ROW at-will whenever it wants to install a third Springfield Line track...no questions asked, and it's repeatedly stated that it fully intends to do so (again, question is whether that's in 10 years or 20 years). Oh yeah...and the only portion of it that won't be torn up and totally rebuilt elsewhere by either I-84 or Amtrak is sitting right in the path of the 2040 Inland HSR ROW. The only good news about that one is that it might take 30 years before that's torn up, if ever.

Apocalypse-bad.

 

[Dr. StrangeHat]

More news:

http://www.pressherald.com/news/Hau...ff_for_railroad_.html?searchterm=st.+lawrence

http://www.pressherald.com/news/demise-of-freight-trains-just-the-ticket-for-commuter-rail.html

The more I think about this, the more I don't think we'll ever see this happen in the next decade or two. The economics simply don't work right now. Just from a logical stand-point, it doesn't make sense that the train would terminate in a semi-rural area of Auburn and not run through Downtown Auburn and Downtown Lewiston. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, one would assume that gaining access to Lewiston residents that don't have cars to travel to the Auburn station would benefit this line.

 

[markhb]

I don't think lack of service to downtown L/A is that big a deal, since the purpose of the proposal is to capture current commuters who are presumably driving already, and I highly doubt they are living in downtown L/A. Putting the station at the airport (with city bus service to downtown) will better serve that population and won't leave the state trying to fit sidings onto PAR's mainline.

The real concerns I have with this proposal, however, are:

• Lack of a demonstrated need. IMHO, commuter rail pays off when adding more cars to the downtown parking situation becomes truly cost-prohibitive or near physically impossible. We love to complain about the cost of parking in downtown Portland, but the reality is it isn't even near that point.
• Lack of job concentration in downtown. The only new office space that I can recall coming online on the peninsula in recent years has been the Pierce Atwood offices, and I think their former digs at One Monument Square may still be vacant (although I'm not sure of the latter). Much of the office job growth in recent years has been in South Portland, Falmouth and Scarborough, and most of the industrial growth has been away from the bus lines (Riverside Industrial Park and Riverside St., Five Star except for twice/day, etc.) Once you get to India Street, there's no particularly great chance that you're near your job, even by Metro, even if you work at Maine Med the way the bus lines currently are.
• Doubts about the suggested cost. I'm certainly not a bridge inspector, but the reported costs for refurbishing the Back Cove trestle have seemed to be pretty low-ball, particularly for a bridge that has been sitting stationary, open, and unmaintained for over 2 decades.

 

[Dr. StrangeHat]

Since we touched upon the whole Montreal-to-Boston train via Portland idea in this thread...

http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?t=4721

 

[Digital_Islandboy]

Since we touched upon the whole Montreal-to-Boston train via Portland idea in this thread...

http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?t=4721

I thought the conservatives in NH were staunchly against anymore rail. 1) Since 'it wasn't in the interest of NH to have anymore rail extended to Boston' plus 2) 'it cost too much with only limited benefits to that state?'

They said the car would always have to reign supreme in NH anyways.


One of the opponents against anymore rail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V4XU78Xr70

 

[FrankLloydMike]

I thought the conservatives in NH were staunchly against anymore rail. 1) Since 'it wasn't in the interest of NH to have anymore rail extended to Boston' plus 2) 'it cost too much with only limited benefits to that state?'

They said the car would always have to reign supreme in NH anyways.


One of the opponents against anymore rail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V4XU78Xr70

Those conservatives lost big in the last election. With overwhelming public support for passenger rail in the state, the governor and a majority of the Executive Council, House and even the Senate I believe all support expanding passenger rail service. The state earlier this year approved federal grants and matching money to more seriously study the Capitol Corridor commuter rail between Concord, Manchester, Nashua, the airport and Boston. That video didn't work for me, but people like that don't represent the majority of residents in New Hampshire, and they're no longer in power. I'd actually be more concerned about expanding rail in Maine while they still have a Tea Party governor.