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Midcoast Route 1 Plan Makes Some Headway

November 09, 2009 - AUGUSTA -- You can experience the best and the worst of Maine during a drive along the midcoast section of Route 1 in the summer.

The region's major transportation corridor wends its way through wonderfully preserved 19th-century New England seaside villages and scenic panoramas – but the traffic jams along the way can ruin the experience.

Fifteen midcoast communities from Brunswick to Stockton Springs have banded together to make sure Route 1 stays passable yet retains its historic character. The towns signed on to an agreement to implement the plan, developed over five years, to control traffic congestion.

By meeting an Oct. 31 deadline, the group will receive $500,000 in startup money from the Maine Department of Transportation. The communities are also eligible to become members of a regional planning coalition that will make decisions about transportation projects in the future.

"This is not anything that has been done in Maine before," said Stacy Benjamin, project administrator.

The Gateway 1 Plan grew out of several protests earlier in the decade over MDOT plans to widen Route 1. In 2002, a dozen people were arrested after they chained themselves to trees and perched on branches to prevent the removal of trees in Warren. Two years later, 200 people showed up to protest the cutting of 170 trees in Camden in another road-widening project.

"MDOT needed a new way of working in the midcoast area," said Benjamin.

A steering committee was set up with representatives from most of the 20 communities along a 100-mile stretch of Route 1. The panel worked with MDOT and the State Planning Office to come up with a specific pattern for future development along the corridor.

The goal was to reduce congestion and increase the capacity for job and population growth.

Part of the problem is that the largely two-lane Route 1 is the midcoast's region's major transportation route. A study team for the steering committee concluded that in 25 years, at the current rate of growth, nine more miles along Route 1 and its Route 90 bypass will be commercially developed.

The team also found that 52 percent of homes in the corridor would be outside the recommended emergency response times, and 20 acres of scenic views along Route 1 would be lost.

Towns that have signed on to the agreement must make a good-faith effort to adopt the plan locally as part of their comprehensive plans and ordinances. Member communities will spend the next year fine-tuning the plan.

It asks towns to create core commercial and residential growth areas with densities high enough to support public transit, expand public water and sewer services in core areas, develop pedestrian and bicycle paths and limit the number and location of driveways and other curb cuts.

Local elected officials or town meeting voters will then decide whether to adopt the final plan and become part of a regional coalition that will have the authority to prioritize which midcoast transportation projects will be funded by the state.

The plan, the brainchild of Maine MDOT chief planner Kat Fuller, has been garnering interest across the country, said Benjamin.

Officials in some of the communities that have signed on said they hope to avoid having a major highway forced on the region because of congestion problems.

"I know there is no problem getting through Bath today, but we are looking out 25 years in the future," said James Upham, director of planning and development in Bath.

Communities that have signed the agreement include Stockton Springs, Damariscotta, Brunswick, Searsport, West Bath, Nobleboro, Bath, Newcastle, Rockland, Rockport, Waldoboro, Edgecomb, Thomaston, Lincolnville and Camden.

Belfast, Warren and Woolwich have yet to decide whether to participate.

Not every corridor community backs the concept of regional planning to keep Route 1 free flowing. Northport selectmen voted against signing the agreement. So did selectmen in Wiscasset, the scene of some of the worst traffic jams with vehicles backed up both ways for miles in the summer.

"It would make development more difficult," said Bob Blagden, Wiscasset selectman chairman.

Upham said the corridor plan will have not dampen economic growth in Bath, which has a long history of encouraging growth in core areas and has seen its downtown flourish in recent years.

"It is a matter of zoning, foresight and courage," he said.

By BETH QUIMBY, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, November 8, 2009


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