The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Myles Smith is a member of the steering committee for Mainers for Smarter Transportation.
Despite multiple setbacks and widespread opposition, the Maine Turnpike Authority is still trying to push through its proposed 5-mile, $331 million expansion from South Portland to Gorham. Last month, Scarborough’s town council voted 6-1 to rescind its support. Portland, the highway’s destination, also opposes it. Others are likely to follow.
This dispute may seem like a local issue concerning a few Portland suburbs, farmers and homeowners facing bulldozers, and a largely unaccountable quasi-government bureaucracy. Actually, this involves all of us — when the MTA collects tolls and spends on itself, all Mainers foot the bill.
The Maine Turnpike is effectively a state-endorsed monopoly on interstate vehicle traffic in and out of Maine. When the tolls go up, we pay directly, and indirectly in the rising cost of everything that we import and export.
The MTA admits that it is saving toll profits collected from Mainers to pay for the Gorham Connector, and that it will raise toll rates in coming years to subsidize this project. Meanwhile, the project’s cost has skyrocketed while traffic in the area to be served has actually fallen, which the MTA hid from the public.
The Maine Turnpike uses profits from its toll collections to fund its own perpetuation, not to serve the state’s most pressing transportation needs.
Right now, the MTA is spending $42 million to rebuild an exit to Route 112 in Saco. The idea is to mitigate a traffic snarl that the MTA itself created back in 1983 when it removed an exit in the same place. Traffic engineers had projected future demand that would justify a highway to Old Orchard Beach. Decades later, the four-lane highway, I-195, has less traffic on summer days than a regular avenue — a complete miss in projecting future demand — and now we’re repaying to rebuild the thing it was supposed to replace.
If that’s not enough, consider how the MTA spent $146 million to widen five miles of the turnpike to six lanes, from Scarborough to Exit 48 in Portland. Except, the highway congestion was not there; data from that time showed I-295 north of Portland carrying over 30 percent more traffic.
Why the waste? Because the Maine Turnpike Authority sets its own toll rates and spends what it collects from us however it wants. The Maine Department of Transportation is responsible for I-295, collects no tolls, and has said for years that it can’t afford to maintain the highways and roads it already has.
Here we are again, with the turnpike operators telling us there’s no alternative to another new turnpike expansion to west of Portland. To me, their past performance does not merit our trust. Our group has published a paper highlighting the many cheaper, greener, and reversible alternatives to turnpike expansion that the MTA has overlooked. We believe any combination of those alternatives would make far more fiscal sense.
When Maine spends our scarce transportation funds on an unnecessary highway expansion, there’s less money around for every other need — transit for seniors, safe routes to walk and bike to schools, or repairs on our extensive rural roads. The funding problem is just going to get worse. As electric vehicles become more popular, gasoline tax revenues plummet. Ever-heavier trucks, SUVs and EVs all rip up the roads faster than ever, requiring more pothole repair and repaving. As a result, the state projects a more than $312 million hole in the highway fund over just the next two years.
So, what do we do about this? First, the Maine Legislature can rescind the MTA’s authorization to build the Gorham Connector, saving us $331 million, or more, to benefit more of the state.
In the longer run, we need to look closely at how we fund and maintain our transportation infrastructure. The current path — more lanes, higher costs, and shrinking revenues — is not sustainable. Whether you are thinking of climate change or hard economics, we are on a road to ruin. Taking the wheel from the MTA is a good place to start.
