Portland Passenger Rail

[markhb]

By the way, their recommended station is illegal under the new zoning code: they want to build a 150-space parking lot on Saint John Street, but the ReCode specifies a maximum parking ratio of 1 parking spot per 500 square feet of station floor area for intermodal transportation facilities (see page 18-3).

Unless they're planning to build a station that's bigger than a football field, there's no way they'd be allowed to build that much new parking. The intent of the new parking maximum rules is that the city wants these kinds of facilities to be built near bus routes, instead of wasting more land on government-subsidized parking lots – but Patricia Quinn and VHB weren't paying attention, so they whiffed it.

The city had best realize that this isn't a Portland-centric facility. The majority of the users come from outside the Metro area, and no one from Windham or Buxton is going to figure out where to park to get on Metro (or even how to pay, since I don't believe they even take cash anymore). Especially if they're taking a Little League team to a Red Sox game.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Worth noting that this study was (mis)managed by vhb, the same firm that's flubbing the multi-billion dollar Allston Multimodal Project in Boston:
https://mass.streetsblog.org/2025/0...es-remain-unresolved-for-allston-i-90-project

I don't understand why agencies keep on making the mistake of hiring these guys. They obviously have no interest in designing or planning practical infrastructure projects. They can collect more consulting fees on "planning" studies that make dumb recommendations, and therefore require us to pay them for yet another "planning study" in a few years once everyone finally realizes their first planning study was awful.

Garbage in, garbage out. Engineering firms like that need to be carefully managed to produce the desired results, but public agencies have generally lost the ability to provide adequate oversight to contractors. So if you don't provide coherent specs like "Platform needs to provide level boarding matching current and future-size consists while providing freight passing solution", "Platform should not be any bit substandard to existing adequate Thompson's Point platform", and "Waiting room should accommodate established and future-growth passenger loading for Portland; use former Amtrak Standard Station program as a rough guide for required square footage"...you simply leave the contractor to their own devices to deduce what it is you want. And they're usually wrong and/or make cost cuts in the wrong places. It seems like the only guidance NNEPRA gave was "we kind of like ConnDOT's modern station designs", and then let VHB fill in all the blanks from there. Similar problem with the MassDOT Allston project. So much of the general layout of the area is still undecided at the state level and loaded up with placeholders and specs that are still being endlessly dickered over that VHB was unable to fill in enough blanks to net a final plan that works. So they're in a doom loop where endless change orders have to be filed to fix what's broken in the plans, the cost keeps sailing and deadlines keep slipping as a result, and generally none of the stakeholders are happy with how things are going.

The contractors-managing-contractors-managing-contractors model is broken largely because the government agencies have no one qualified to manage all that private-sector machinery. So the machinery just ends up chewing up the projects with cost-aggregating approximate guesses, compromises in the most destructive places, and subsequent refinements that bust budgets and grind progress to a halt. NNEPRA is choking on the very bigness of the decision to relocate their signature big-city station, just as MassDOT is choking on the very bigness of trying to fashion a new urban neighborhood and transit node out of a very complex highway relocation. The infuriating thing is that they're not totally incompetent at managing their contractors on projects with lower stakes, like the Wells station expansion. But when the in-house oversight talent is completely absent, you just get a lot of impotent flailing at the top leading to garbage-out unworkable plans at the end of the assembly line.

 

[TC_zoid]

Thanks for the technical perspective. It sounds like a potential $100 million dollar project if better functionality, parking, and future growth are factored in. And it should be. It's why the existing station, though not perfect because of the train back-up issue, is good as is. Thompson's Point has a decent functional intermodal dynamic with outstanding public entertainment offerings, and soon we will see substantial new housing and a progressively designed hotel. Passenger convenience and safety negates the logic of the time savings and relatively small cost for those headed north from a new station, and as far as Concord Coach dictating terms as a landlord, deal with it. Figure out a way to work with them. Delaware North and the MBTA in Boston seem to make it work for North Station. As I've mentioned, I think a somewhat temporary structure could be erected for more comfortable seating and food and drink options to bring in more revenue. North Station, South Station (the new), and Moynihan in Manhattan are all heavily focused around food and drink offerings. Certainly, more revenue would be appealing to Concord Coach? And the new parking garage planned for the new residential housing could be built higher to offset any parking loss. Transporation hubs are above all else, supposed to be designed for convenience. Put the narrow-minded Gov mindset to the side to allow something better for those who will actually use it.

 

[HenryAlan]

I also can't get over the **750 square foot** waiting area. That's MICROSCOPIC. That's the size of a 2-bedroom apartment. Imagine 100+ people waiting for the morning southbound. Even the infamous "Amshacks" had waiting areas twice as large.

I honestly didn't even see the station when I first looked at that render. I thought it was just the "current," to soon have a companion "proposed."

 

[Dr. StrangeHat]

The sacrifice of customer experience just doesn't seem to add up to the benefit of saving 15 minutes, especially since that time savings really only positively impacts riders from north of Portland. It feels like they're rushing it for the sake of getting something, anything on the mainline. Personally, I'd rather they exercise some patience and try to work with MaineHealth, who owns Union Station Plaza, to redevelop it into a mixed-use development featuring a train station, retail space, commercial space, a hotel and both market rate and affordable residential.

Union Station Plaza and its parking lots take up 6.4 acres of prime real estate. The potential ROI on a development there with scale has to be attractive.

 

[PWMFlyer]

You have a lot of well-established businesses at Union Station, Maine Hardware, Save Alot, Buckdancers, the pool hall and the Pawn Shop. That strip and the stand-alone building is 100% occupied. If the strip was 50% occupied, I would go for it. But there are a lot of patrons who rely on especially Maine Hardware being close to the downtown. My opinion would build a nice station plus a parking garage on the Mercy site(Parking lot). It would be very prominent from the highway and being a gateway to Portland. A hotel next to Mercy could also help with families that utilizing the hospital. It's still on the mainline!!!

 

[markhb]

The sacrifice of customer experience just doesn't seem to add up to the benefit of saving 15 minutes, especially since that time savings really only positively impacts riders from north of Portland.

It does impact the time between Portland and Boston, because the new station is closer to Boston and omits the 0.7 of a mile at slow speed between the new station site and the PTC. So that's something (5 mins?) they can put on a flip chart timetable. Plus there's the crew expense of 15 mins * x employees * 10 or more trips/day, and the chance of employees timing out.

So in short, it gives NNEPRA and Amtrak potential savings in operational expenses, and allows them to trumpet reduced trip times, while Maine's share of the capex cost of station development gets buried in a MaineDOT Transportation bond issue.

I definitely hope they wind up buying the Ferguson building, whether to renovate or replace it.