Portland Passenger Rail

Eminent domain for the shopping center would allow a walkable location to Maine Medical Center and Hadlock, and the new soccer stadium. The only walkable location for this spot is Mercy Hospital, a small hospital that can't seem to make a profit, so it's now contracting (layoffs). If you don't look at the bigger picture, the result is always less than sufficient. Ten years or sooner from now it will be looked upon as a regrettable action.
 
This spot deserves more than platforms and a pedestrian bridge. Need to think big. I agree with some eminent domain of the awful strip mall and how about we think big for once (talking to the city) and build a mixed-use train station with community, walkability, plus connect-ability!
 
I have no issue with the chosen location and a majority of comments during the selection process preferred site 3. However, 750 SF for the passenger waiting area is a joke and it needs to be expanded to minimum of 2,000 SF in my opinion.
 
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I agree with most here. This station is incredibly lame, and location 3 is the worst of all the options. Portland always seems so bad at planning ahead. Everything always has to be the bare minimum, cheapest and easiest possible solution.
 
This plan is already outdated and unfeasible. 105 parking spaces and 750 sq. ft. passenger waiting area? What about planning for the future? Oh wait. It's Portland. We don't do that here.
 
This is all kind of a bummer because we on the arch blog can already predict what will happen from this less than attempt.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
That's not even an Amshack by official definition. :(
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"Amshack", that's a great way to put it. Portland will be getting a new Amshack. Do they even bother to think about what they are doing? The public access to the station? If it's situated on one side at Congress Street it allows direct access for a major thoroughfare along with better access to Thompson's Point for Concord Coach options. Also, it's much closer to Maine Medical Center (10,000 plus workers), Hadlock Field (6,000 during game day), Portland Stadium and the soccer renovation (7-10,000), and perhaps a safer area (not tucked into a de facto abandoned warehouse grouping after 6pm). I'm imagining several old men have come up with this easy idea, only looking at the cheapest alternative and not using any creativity or asking questions because they are lazy. What about a sponsor for naming rights? A retail anchor/s tenant? Federal funding with help from our popular and effective U.S. senators? Susan Collins has been able to get billions in contracts for Bath Iron Works over the years. Hey, wasn't Mayor Pete here a few weeks ago on a tour and enjoying a lobster roll or two? He's the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Perhaps ask him and Collins to tag team this? And Collins' office in is in downtown Portland! Laziness and de facto stupidity is what is happening here. It's what you get when you don't have leadership and rely on bureaucrats.
 
TC_zoid said:
"Amshack", that's a great way to put it. Portland will be getting a new Amshack. Do they even bother to think about what they are doing? The public access to the station? If it's situated on one side at Congress Street it allows direct access for a major thoroughfare along with better access to Thompson's Point for Concord Coach options. Also, it's much closer to Maine Medical Center (10,000 plus workers), Hadlock Field (6,000 during game day), Portland Stadium and the soccer renovation (7-10,000), and perhaps a safer area (not tucked into a de facto abandoned warehouse grouping after 6pm). I'm imagining several old men have come up with this easy idea, only looking at the cheapest alternative and not using any creativity or asking questions because they are lazy. What about a sponsor for naming rights? A retail anchor/s tenant? Federal funding with help from our popular and effective U.S. senators? Susan Collins has been able to get billions in contracts for Bath Iron Works over the years. Hey, wasn't Mayor Pete here a few weeks ago on a tour and enjoying a lobster roll or two? He's the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Perhaps ask him and Collins to tag team this? And Collins' office in is in downtown Portland! Laziness and de facto stupidity is what is happening here. It's what you get when you don't have leadership and rely on bureaucrats.
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"Amshack" is of course a pejorative characterization of Amtrak's standard station program of the 1970's and 1980's, with their cookie-cutter dated boxy architecture. But the point I was trying to make is that the stations were standardized with amenities and required square footage vs. passenger load, and some amount of thought was put into the amount of space you needed for a certain loading. If you click on the Wiki link in my post they had something like 6 different station plans fitting various station riderships. At 750 sq. ft., the Portland proposal doesn't even qualify as an Amtrak standard station for Portland's passenger loading. It's a "sub-Amshack".
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
"Amshack" is of course a pejorative characterization of Amtrak's standard station program of the 1970's and 1980's, with their cookie-cutter dated boxy architecture. But the point I was trying to make is that the stations were standardized with amenities and required square footage vs. passenger load, and some amount of thought was put into the amount of space you needed for a certain loading. If you click on the Wiki link in my post they had something like 6 different station plans fitting various station riderships. At 750 sq. ft., the Portland proposal doesn't even qualify as an Amtrak standard station for Portland's passenger loading. It's a "sub-Amshack".
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Amshed
 
Let's think about this, do we need a fancy train station? It's not the 30s, 40s. 50s where train travel was glamorous. It's more about getting from point to point now. North Station is a commuter hub so is South Station with Amtrak. I consider the Downeaster as a commuter train than a 10 hour ride to DC. If we had a train that left the terminus and went to Montreal or Bangor, I would consider a larger building. Are you going to shop or eat at a restaurant in the station? no. It will be empty most of the time. Our travel habits have changed and we are only concerned now about getting to where we need to go. It just breaks my heart that we lost these treasures, but does it make sense to resurrect the past?
 

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If they have to remove the clock from Congress Sq Park for the park renovation why don't they work it into the new design?
 
PWMFlyer said:
Let's think about this, do we need a fancy train station? It's not the 30s, 40s. 50s where train travel was glamorous. It's more about getting from point to point now. North Station is a commuter hub so is South Station with Amtrak. I consider the Downeaster as a commuter train than a 10 hour ride to DC. If we had a train that left the terminus and went to Montreal or Bangor, I would consider a larger building. Are you going to shop or eat at a restaurant in the station? no. It will be empty most of the time. Our travel habits have changed and we are only concerned now about getting to where we need to go. It just breaks my heart that we lost these treasures, but does it make sense to resurrect the past?
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I don't think the complaining here (at least on the last page-plus) is about the lack of "fancyness" in the plans. It's more that what they're proposing is completely, utterly inadequate for the passenger loading of existing Portland train ridership. By an order of magnitude. In addition to the concerns shared that NNEPRA stacked the deck for the access-poorer Alternative. Job #1 of a train station is to be an adequate train station for its ridership, and whatever "knit the community together" secondary factors play into it are just that...secondary.

People are mad because it doesn't do its primary job at all. This, as proposed, is a bad train station. The waiting area is too small by half for the passenger loading, too small to provide essential amenities to the existing Downeaster audience, and offers no room to grow with the service.
 
I have a feeling that the passenger waiting area will exceed 750 SF once the plans are finalized especially if the stakeholders read all of the posts on here and the Portland Press Herald. Is it even possible to build a train station that is not much larger than some of the tiny houses that I've seen on HGTV which barely accommodates two people!
 
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I am wondering if the small station is actually a feint by MaineDOT / NNEPRA to drive public feedback in order to convince whoever needs to be convinced to OK a move to buy the Ferguson building in addition to the smaller buildings along St. John St. Presumably that would also entail someone in the Portland Economic Development Office (do we have someone in there currently?) finding Ferguson a new home, maybe out on Warren near where the Granite Group moved into the former Happy Wheels.
 
Reading back through the long-range strategy and insights in the Crazy Transit Pitches - Maine Edition thread that was referenced earlier, it's clear that the current proposal for relocating Portland station is only one manifestation of a broader lack of vision among TPTB. Local rail advocates apparently have a lot of missionary work to do, and probably not much time to do it. Prioritizing where to invest their energy will be key.

For the Portland station relocation, it's almost certainly too late to convince NNEPRA to fully back away from Site 3 -- the study's been released, and if they spurn its findings, they'll hold up making progress on a project which has been one of their priorities for years. I could see two advocacy stances toward a station at Site 3, one more prudent and the other more ambitious:
  1. Prudent - Accept Site 3's shortcomings on multimodal connectivity and TOD potential, and simply focus on securing better station components (full-length platforms, adequately-sized indoor waiting space, etc) to maximize rail functionality. Minimizes feather-ruffling and takes advantage of the existing institutional momentum.
  2. Ambitious - Argue that Site 3's shortcomings (and lack of compelling reason against restoring the wye, if Mountain Branch access is so critical) disqualify it as the long-term home for Portland's station and push for Site 3 to be understood/designed as a *temporary* station site with modular/inexpensive station components (trailers for indoor waiting space and restrooms; foundationless/recycled material platforms like at the temporary Lynn Station, etc). Pitch Site 2 as the right long-term home for the station, and convince them to combine the long-term station build with grade-separating Congress Street. This allows them to save money in the near-term, and not lose time, relative to the strategy they're currently pursuing, but asks them to invest more planning energy (and ultimately more money) into Portland than they expected.

For the bigger-picture idea of rerouting the Downeaster along I-295, there's no time to waste, as one of NNEPRA's other ongoing planning projects is for an infill park-and-ride station in West Falmouth on a stretch of track that would be bypassed by the 295 concept. The 295 concept would be much better for reliability (since it bypasses all the unresolvable grade crossings in Woodfords Corner) and would enable constructing a station in Bayside, which would be just a half-mile walk from the heart of downtown Portland and offers the most compelling TOD prospects on the corridor. Advocates in support of that alignment should build consensus with the municipalities involved. Get the City of Portland excited about redeveloping Bayside and alleviating the traffic/noise impacts that residents of Woodfords Corner currently deal with. Get Yarmouth excited about the idea of an infill stop, and reassure Falmouth that a park-and-ride off 295 is doable if they really want one. That's no small task, but the Trail Lobby never sleeps...who knows how much time is left before the door closes on this possibility.
 
I went to the NNEPRA board meeting Monday. I did ask, during public comment, about the possibility of acquiring the Ferguson building to allow a larger footprint for the station (and a waiting room > 750 square feet. Patricia seemed surprised by the question but said that all the building plans are preliminary.

It was also stated during the meeting that the public comment they had received was very much in favor of Site 3.
 
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The August webinar video shows a slide with public input data around the 31-minute mark. They received 17 comments in favor of Site 3; 10 in favor of Sites 1 and 2 (split evenly, 5 each); and 11 comments were neutral on the choice of site location, but in favor of relocating somewhere. You could argue public input was significantly in favor of Site 3 depending on how you break down the proportions, but taking a step back, 17 comments is not that many in absolute terms. As someone with personal experience in "making the most of" these sorts of voluntary public outreach opportunities, all you'd really need to get 17 responses are two or three people who each pester a handful of friends to send in a quick survey reply.

If you look at that same slide in the video, there are some bullet point summaries on the side. One says "maintain connections to other forms of public transportation," and another says "allow for future east/west rail service." I don't mean to relitigate this issue endlessly, but the main comparative advantage of Site 3 over Sites 1 and 2 is that it offers the easiest access to the Mountain Branch. Sites 1 and 2 are right on Congress Street's high frequency bus corridor. At risk of oversimplifying, when push came to shove, east/west rail service seems to have taken priority over transit access.

Since I haven't followed the idea of rail to Westbrook very closely, my big question has been where the push for east/west rail is coming from (i.e. is it a grassroots initiative, how much institutional buy-in is there, etc). After a quick Google search, I found the following quote in a 2019 Press Herald article about the conceptual study NNEPRA put together for it:

Quinn said the developer of Rock Row, Massachusetts-based Waterstone Properties Group, approached the rail authority about a year ago to discuss the possibility of a passenger rail line connecting Rock Row and Thompson’s Point. From there, the discussion evolved into the current proposal, she said, which would involve between five and six miles of track connecting the two cities’ downtown areas.
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The article says the service was estimated to cost around $100 million to put in place. Everyone who was quoted seemed to acknowledge the price tag: the Chamber of Commerce called the idea "ambitious," Portland City Hall said they had to be "realistic" about the project's chances of happening, and even NNEPRA said they thought the idea of rail to Westbrook was "at least worth exploring."

Earlier this year, the Greater Portland Council of Governments released a study calling for implementing a BRT service connecting Portland with Westbrook and Gorham. Look at PDF p.40-41 for the many reasons (cost certainly being one of them) why they decided rail was not the right transit mode. (And as for NNEPRA citing their public engagement survey to back up their study findings' legitimacy, it's worth noting the GPCOG BRT study pulled in 1,669 respondents.)

I'm sorry to ask an impertinent question, but how serious is the east/west rail proposal? If your local MPO throws a truckload of cold water on the idea, states its reasoning, and gathered two orders of magnitude more public input than you did...and their findings came out before yours did...how do you just "tune out the haters" and let east/west rail play such a central role in your station relocation decision?

The world won't end if the relocated station gets built on Site 3, but Portland shouldn't have to settle for this, or pretend that this outcome was reached purely through sound reasoning.
 
The East- West Rail idea is so far on the back burner at Rock Row it isn't even funny. And to be honest, if they (Rock Row) really want to get creative, they specifically market their eventual apartments to UNE students and try to run a DMU shuttle on the Warren Ave. line from the gym (former Joker's / ancient Grossman's) to the Bishop St. parking lot.
 
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