Portland Passenger Rail

Why do we have to include NNEPRA in the first place, why does everything that has do with rail must be Amtrak? Just mention Amtrak and costs rise 110%. The T in Boston runs commuter rail which works fine most of the time..LOL Currently, the Downeaster has to borrow a T engine to bail them out due to poor old engines. it's just frustrating to hear from career politicians, lifelong MDOT officials, Nate Moulton who is mr rail is all about rails to trails, was a big promotor of Guilford, and is reluctant to promote anything that will negatively affect MDOT(Federal funds) that are earmarked for road projects. Currently, Conway Scenic is pushing for passenger/freight on the Mtn Division line. If CCR wants to link with Amtrak, all the cars would have to be Amtrak ready. This is the same problem that was seen on the Rockland Line. This state can never look at the glass being half full or half empty. Let a pvt company run a commuter rail to Portland, then let them do it.. We would be better off to rid Amtrak and go with the MBTA(T) to Boston. If I had to option to go direct to NYC, keep Amtrak,
 
As things stand, the Maine legislature has accepted the recommendation of the Rail Use Advisory Council to convert the Mountain Division to a trail ("until rail," tee hee), although they declined to fund any such work. So CSRR is kind of out in the cold on that one. And Amtrak is in the mix because CSX is legally required to work with them when they want to run passenger service; they can frustrate, delay and obfuscate, but ultimately they have to work with them. They are under no such requirements where the MBTA is concerned; they don't even need to pick up the phone.

Plus, replacing Amfleets (or even Horizons if they ever come back) with lame MBTA commuter cars? No cafe? Given that there is not a critical mass of commuters using the train and the MBTA's mission is to alleviate traffic in Boston, I don't see that they'd have any interest in the Portland run.
 
I don't have the link handy, but NNEPRA is going to present to the city Transportation and Sustainability Committee on Tuesday regarding the new station. The packet is quite the read, as city staff is pushing hard for the Union Station site, but NNEPRA says that Maine Health has already said they aren't interested in having them there so they don't want to waste time on it.
 
Maybe there's a slow-play here? If MaineHealth wants nothing to do with a train station at Union Plaza, which really is the only true viable option for a station of any substance along the mainline, then perhaps the platform by Barber Foods could become more of another temporary option until the LaQuinta, Hood or PWD properties become available, or NNEPRA can snatch up the properties along Hemlock Street. Other than that, aside from reactivating the rail through Bayside and building a bridge across the mouth of Back Cove, the only other spot is much further up the line at the property between Bruno's and Portland Boxing Club, which IMO is too far outside of downtown.
 
I really wish we could have something along Marginal Way....of the three sites they cover, though, site 2 would be my preference.
 
I've favored the Bruno's site (Deering Junction) for ages, both because it has all the room in the world for anything you'd want to build around it, and because it's walking distance to my house. I think the open question is to what extent downtown Portland is a traffic magnet, and how great a traffic source it is relative to outlying areas. But obviously NNEPRA wants to stay close to the existing Thompson's Point maintenance facility.
As far as Marginal Way goes, there used to be a poster, probably at railroad.net rather than here, who thought the Forest Ave. Post Office would make a great station; tear down the Payne building and put the platforms there. The obvious drawbacks to that would be that you'd still have the backup move to the mainline, and USPS has shown absolutely no sign of making that building surplus.

You know, if Portland's staff thinks they know what needs to happen with the new station, why don't they build it for NNEPRA?
 
I’m on the city’s side on this one. This is important enough that MaineHealth probably should be put on the defensive a bit and be pressured to explain why they can’t come to the table and find a way to make the Union Plaza site work for all parties.

Likewise NNEPRA should have to explain why it insists on clinging to the Thompson’s Point layover facility…to the point that they made convenient access to that specific facility one of the defining criteria that resulted in such a sub-optimal station siting recommendation…instead of using/expanding the Brunswick layover.

The proposal on the table is honestly underwhelming. They’re squandering the station’s potential for bike/ped/transit access by locating the platforms away from Congress Street. They’re not even proposing to build full-length platforms at their desired sub-optimal site! I don’t fault the city, or anyone, for asking tough questions about this specific proposal.
 
RandomWalk said:
I would think Maine Health would have a bigger gripe with the warehouse site closer to the wye than the Union Plaza site. It smells like sandbagging.
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Does Maine Health really have a gripe with a station at Union Plaza, or does Maine Health have a gripe with NNEPRA taking their property and building a parking lot instead of a high density mixed-use development there?

The ideal situation would be for a private developer to integrate a new train platform into a much larger building (similar to the Brunswick station but on a larger scale) to minimize the taxpayers' costs of construction and keep the land on Portland's tax rolls. Bafflingly, NNEPRA (and/or their consultants here, VHB) seems to be dead set against that scenario.
 
cneal said:
Does Maine Health really have a gripe with a station at Union Plaza, or does Maine Health have a gripe with NNEPRA taking their property and building a parking lot instead of a high density mixed-use development there?

The ideal situation would be for a private developer to integrate a new train platform into a much larger building (similar to the Brunswick station but on a larger scale) to minimize the taxpayers' costs of construction and keep the land on Portland's tax rolls. Bafflingly, NNEPRA (and/or their consultants here, VHB) seems to be dead set against that scenario.
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It seems like the larger goal for NNEPRA is to get out of a situation where they’re a tenant and also collect money from parking. There would probably have to be favorable terms with MaineHealth for such a situation to work that I’m not sure MH would be willing to bow to. I’m sure NNEPRA wouldn’t want to go from one landlord (Concord Coach) to another (MaineHealth) and be stuck without a revenue source for the foreseeable future.
 
BosMaineiac said:
It seems like the larger goal for NNEPRA is to get out of a situation where they’re a tenant and also collect money from parking. There would probably have to be favorable terms with MaineHealth for such a situation to work that I’m not sure MH would be willing to bow to. I’m sure NNEPRA wouldn’t want to go from one landlord (Concord Coach) to another (MaineHealth) and be stuck without a revenue source for the foreseeable future.
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Agree, but if they built a decent station with retail amenities for travelers + the neighborhood (a mixed-use station) then they could be collecting revenue from those as well and not just from another car-park. It’s further evidence of the myopic and visionless strategies and executions of NNEPRA and its “leadership.”
 
I'm pretty sure the plan is that Maine DOT will build the station and let NNEPRA use it for free. They're a six-person agency so I strongly doubt they want to get into real estate management, even if their charter allows it.
 
Agreed to both above. I’m not sure exactly how the situation will end up working, but I’m sure MaineDOT being the sole owner is the preferred option for NNEPRA (+the State).

Of course that doesn’t mean I think the best way to go about building a new station is the half-baked plan that we’ve seen. If anything it’s a step back from what Portland currently has, apart from being on the mainline.
 
Yeah, there was a *lot* of strongly reasoned public comment against NNEPRA's plans. It forcefully debunked their argument that they'd had an "extensive public process" and that that the alleged "majority" of input favored the station site in the isolated industrial zone.

I think the VHB study that NNEPRA commissioned was thoroughly rejected. I don't think they can come back from this.

We also learned how MaineDOT wants to fund this project, and why they were so eager for the City Council's approval. Their guy from Augusta was drooling like a vulture hoping to get funding from the Trump administration's (legally dubious) new "railroad partnership" grant program, which is trying to redistribute funding that had already been legally obligated to fund CA High-Speed Rail.
https://www.transportation.gov/brie...y-sean-p-duffy-announces-over-5-billion-get-0
 
After watching that whole meeting, I think it’s fair to say NNEPRA and MaineDOT earned the outcome they got. It takes quite a bit of chutzpah to show up to a meeting like that and say you’re ready to submit a grant application for a project that doesn’t even have the support of the City or the MPO.

The mayor’s comment about the two sides talking past each other summed up the dynamic well: on a fundamental level, NNEPRA/MaineDOT and the City/GPCOG have different priorities for this station relocation project. Those priorities naturally point to different station site candidates, and neither side wants to back down from its priorities.

I don’t fault NNEPRA/MaineDOT for not trying to convince MaineHealth to sell Union Plaza because that’s not their fight; of all the major stakeholders, the City is the one with the most obvious/direct interest in seeing Site 2 host the future station, so if anyone should take the lead on that particular issue, it’s the City.

But I absolutely do fault NNEPRA/MaineDOT for choosing to put on their blinders and approaching this project as if all other considerations are downstream of simplifying railroad operations when they had to have known far in advance the City would reject that premise. A half century ago, that sort of myopic thinking paved the way for thousands and thousands of people to be displaced when highways cut straight through their existing neighborhoods in the name of “optimizing traffic flow” or whatever other justifications there might have been. We do not make important decisions about transportation infrastructure in a vacuum anymore.

It looks to me like NNEPRA and MaineDOT went into this wanting to move the station onto the mainline ASAP, and unlike the City, they were unwilling to wait however long it’ll take for MaineHealth to change their mind about making the obvious station site (Union Plaza) available. So NNEPRA/MaineDOT rolled the dice and tried to spin Site 3 as being just as good as Site 2 in the hopes they could get the City to come around to the “let’s get something done quick” side. I don’t know why they thought that would work, and they made themselves look foolish trying.

When so many plans point explicitly to the intersection of Congress & St John as the desired location for the future station, you need to show you truly exhausted every possible option at your disposal to make that first choice work before you put forward such an obviously inferior alternative site. I don’t think they would have felt the need to resort to rushing the customer (“we want to pursue a grant in January and nobody knows if it’ll be there the following year”) and concern-trolling (“if it’s not Site 3, I don’t know…it might have to go somewhere outside the City of Portland…”) when making their case for Site 3 if they’d truly turned over every stone on Site 2.

Where things stand now, I think the next questions to explore are:
  1. If proximity to the Congress Street grade crossing is as big of a traffic safety issue as NNEPRA claims, how much more does it cost to bundle the station project with a grade separation project? Just because a project costs more doesn’t mean it’s less likely to get a grant award…eliminating such a busy grade crossing would bring important (= funding-worthy!) benefits. If the station platforms were elevated above Congress, you eliminate the traffic safety issue and gain optimal multimodal connectivity.
  2. If MaineHealth continues to insist on being a bad neighbor and squatting on the Union Plaza site, how about approaching the owners of the McDonalds and other three buildings south to Congress Street? If they were willing to sell so you could build the station facilities there, and the platforms were elevated above Congress, you can sidestep the “MaineHealth won’t sell” issue (and eventually TOD-ify the Union Plaza site whenever MaineHealth gets more reasonable leadership).
 
riptide, I'm impressed with your passion and knowledge of all things railroad related and I feel updated on the latest after reading your informative post. (y)
 
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