Augusta Lower Road

"However, it has also generated complaints from some Brunswick residents concerned about a proposal to build a train layover facility where trains would be kept overnight. Neighbors fear that noise from idling trains might bother them.

Maine Rail Group officials, in a previous discussion with councilors, said the former Statler site, some parts of which are not near any residences, could possibly take the place of the proposed layover building."

http://www.pressherald.com/2014/12/12/a ... ice-study/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

BM6569 wrote:"However, it has also generated complaints from some Brunswick residents concerned about a proposal to build a train layover facility where trains would be kept overnight. Neighbors fear that noise from idling trains might bother them.

Maine Rail Group officials, in a previous discussion with councilors, said the former Statler site, some parts of which are not near any residences, could possibly take the place of the proposed layover building."

http://www.pressherald.com/2014/12/12/a ... ice-study/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

An unrealistic proposal that ignores the value of siting such a facility in Waterville.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:10 MPH freight and canning every job from Waterville to Rigby vs. 40 MPH freight and making it in one shift...

It's worth pointing out that a significant portion of the Back Road is now 25 MPH, making Waterville to Rigby easier to achieve than before (with one crew, that is).

My advice, give up the passenger rail beyond Portland fantasy.

My advice, give up the passenger rail beyond Portland fantasy.

CN9634 wrote:My advice, give up the passenger rail beyond Portland fantasy.

What are you talking bout? Passenger rail already extends North of/beyond Portland!

Cosmo wrote:

CN9634 wrote:My advice, give up the passenger rail beyond Portland fantasy.

What are you talking bout? Passenger rail already extends North of/beyond Portland!

I'm well aware.

CN9634 wrote:My advice, give up the passenger rail beyond Portland fantasy.

Given current development patterns north of Portland and the ever increasing traffic on I-295 I don't see why that makes any sense. I commuted almost daily to Portland for much of September and October. I was stunned to see heavy traffic at virtually all hours south of Brunswick and peak hour congestion that stretched from 4pm to as late as 9pm all the way from Portland to Augusta. When you're driving north through Richmond at 830pm at night on a Wednesday in mid-late October and all you can see is a two lane stream of red tailights stretching all the way through the flats to West Gardiner I think it has become a little more reasonable to talk about these alternatives. There were absolutely no seasonal/holiday travelers to speak of and most of the traffic was passenger cars. All of this is with an already robust bus service as provided by Concord Coach Lines. This pattern repeated itself time and again. I don't know what the traffic count statistics look like for I-295 but I'm sure they're quite high. Certainly far more so than "back in the day" (late 1990s, early 2000s) when driving on I-295 was often an experience comparable to the barren and desolate stretches of the highway north of Lincoln.

I think some kind of passenger rail solution is part of a series of options that need to be considered in order to prevent I-295 from becoming overly congested in the next 25 years.

gokeefe wrote:

CN9634 wrote:My advice, give up the passenger rail beyond Portland fantasy.

Given current development patterns north of Portland and the ever increasing traffic on I-295 I don't see why that makes any sense. I commuted almost daily to Portland for much of September and October. I was stunned to see heavy traffic at virtually all hours south of Brunswick and peak hour congestion that stretched from 4pm to as late as 9pm all the way from Portland to Augusta. When you're driving north through Richmond at 830pm at night on a Wednesday in mid-late October and all you can see is a two lane stream of red tailights stretching all the way through the flats to West Gardiner I think it has become a little more reasonable to talk about these alternatives. There were absolutely no seasonal/holiday travelers to speak of and most of the traffic was passenger cars. All of this is with an already robust bus service as provided by Concord Coach Lines. This pattern repeated itself time and again. I don't know what the traffic count statistics look like for I-295 but I'm sure they're quite high. Certainly far more so than "back in the day" (late 1990s, early 2000s) when driving on I-295 was often an experience comparable to the barren and desolate stretches of the highway north of Lincoln.

I think some kind of passenger rail solution is part of a series of options that need to be considered in order to prevent I-295 from becoming overly congested in the next 25 years.

How does this logic sound: why focus on moving cars off the road in a State with a stagnant and in some cases shrinking population that is barely the level of a decent size metropolitan area yet geographically 1000 times bigger than a simlar metropolitan area when you can focus on the other half of the equation -- freight. Why doesn't the MaineDOT work on putting public money into the freight line and support infrastructure (terminals, yards, etc) to remove truck traffic off these same highways thus increasing their capacity for passenger vehicles?

What use is it taking the train if you are going anywhere else but Boston? You have to connect to a different station (North to South in Boston) to leave Boston which makes it too complicated if you are using the rail for practical commuting. Do you honestly believe that expanding to Brunswick instead of Auburn was a great decision? I do not because we failed to capture the dual use freight benefits. Now we want to go to Augusta to move passengers to Boston. Why? Unless we make the freight connection, I see no point.

Study the volume of cars all day,but unless you know what their destinations are it makes no difference. If I'm traveling Bangor, ME to Albany, NY would I rather drive the whole way or drive to Augusta, take one train and take another train. Might as well fly if my goal is to avoid driving and cost need not matter. What percentage of traffic is going to/from Portland each day? Clearly a Portland to Brunswick commuter option is not wildly successful. So we must assume that a majority of traffic on the i95 corridor is not necessarily being served by current rail options and most likely will not by expanding the line to Augusta.

CN9634 wrote:How does this logic sound: why focus on moving cars off the road in a State with a stagnant and in some cases shrinking population that is barely the level of a decent size metropolitan area yet geographically 1000 times bigger than a simlar metropolitan area when you can focus on the other half of the equation -- freight. Why doesn't the MaineDOT work on putting public money into the freight line and support infrastructure (terminals, yards, etc) to remove truck traffic off these same highways thus increasing their capacity for passenger vehicles?

What use is it taking the train if you are going anywhere else but Boston? You have to connect to a different station (North to South in Boston) to leave Boston which makes it too complicated if you are using the rail for practical commuting. Do you honestly believe that expanding to Brunswick instead of Auburn was a great decision? I do not because we failed to capture the dual use freight benefits. Now we want to go to Augusta to move passengers to Boston. Why? Unless we make the freight connection, I see no point.

Study the volume of cars all day,but unless you know what their destinations are it makes no difference. If I'm traveling Bangor, ME to Albany, NY would I rather drive the whole way or drive to Augusta, take one train and take another train. Might as well fly if my goal is to avoid driving and cost need not matter. What percentage of traffic is going to/from Portland each day? Clearly a Portland to Brunswick commuter option is not wildly successful. So we must assume that a majority of traffic on the i95 corridor is not necessarily being served by current rail options and most likely will not by expanding the line to Augusta.

I think you're absolutely right about dual use benefits which is part of the reason why I think Augusta is without a doubt the wrong place to stop. Furthermore, I would support rehabilitation of the Rumford Branch, the Bucksport Branch, the Searsport Branch, all three, individually or as a pair for a stand alone bond proposal. Searsport in particular probably should be Class III. I would further state that I would support installation of wayside signals on the SLR from Auburn to the ME State Line along with any necessary upgrades to Class IV. Same goes for Royal Junction to Leeds Junction on PAR.

In terms of demographics about 1/2 Maine (600,000 people +/-) lives in the Portland area. To a certain extent this only serves to make the geographic isolation even worse up north but the fact remains that travel to and from Portland is one of the biggest uses of the highways in Southern and Central Maine. In terms of Brunswick I saw it as a wise move for several fundamental reasons, first it is a natural junction point for two branches, second it enabled extension to Augusta, third it is lightly used and essentially unchallenged by freight traffic, fourth Brunswick needed the development, and fifth it brought car centric Freeport onto the rail line. If the assumption was that the service would never go beyond Brunswick I would agree, wrong place to go. But if we do assume that an extension is going to take place someday then I think it was a step in the right direction and from an operational standpoint the better option by far.

Bottom line: If an extension is to occur I would support going to Waterville. Furthermore, it should be done as part of a "Four City Plan" that includes Waterville, Lewiston/Auburn and Augusta as part of a coordinated strategy that is going to bring these communities online as part of a long term passenger rail development strategy. To answer the other question about travel south of Boston I think a Northeast Regional "State of Maine" operating as a day coach train via Worcester and Providence between POR/BRK and NYP/WAS should happen sooner rather than later. If Maine intiated the service they would capture all revenues between PVD and POR/BRK which likely would be very significant and lower any requirement for an operating subsidy.

GO'K, let me get this straight: You support a publicly-funded rehab of the Bucksport line - a branch which will soon be embargoed due to no active on-line customers? And installation of wayside signals and an upgrade to Class IV on a freight line that sees two-four train movements per day?

In all seriousness, do you not believe that public dollars should have to provide a positive return on investment?

Cowford wrote:GO'K, let me get this straight: You support a publicly-funded rehab of the Bucksport line - a branch which will soon be embargoed due to no active on-line customers?

Not quite that extreme. I would support it if a new major online source of traffic were identified.

Cowford wrote:And installation of wayside signals and an upgrade to Class IV on a freight line that sees two-four train movements per day?

In this case only if a future passenger rail use is identified and implemented. I think there is at least one if not more. "As is" I would agree, they don't need anything more than what they have.

Cowford wrote:In all seriousness, do you not believe that public dollars should have to provide a positive return on investment?

I definitely do. Looks as if I wasn't clear that any investment of this nature must be directly linked to a known traffic source. The Rumford Branch would be the most obvious choice at this point. In my mind everything possible should be done to protect that line and the viability of the Androscoggin River paper mills.

gokeefe wrote:

BM6569 wrote:"However, it has also generated complaints from some Brunswick residents concerned about a proposal to build a train layover facility where trains would be kept overnight. Neighbors fear that noise from idling trains might bother them.

Maine Rail Group officials, in a previous discussion with councilors, said the former Statler site, some parts of which are not near any residences, could possibly take the place of the proposed layover building."

http://www.pressherald.com/2014/12/12/a ... ice-study/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

An unrealistic proposal that ignores the value of siting such a facility in Waterville.

If they can get Augusta to agree to have the layover facility in Augusta, why not? If that's what gets rail service extended further into Maine even if it means letting Brunswick go for the convenience of being west of the junction then so be it. AFAIK Rockland was never part of even any long term expansion plans for Amtrak anyway. It's been mostly either Montreal, Lewiston/Auburn, or Augusta as the next step. And reaching Augusta makes Waterville and perhaps eventually Bangor more within reach even if it takes another 25 years to get there.

NH2060 wrote:

gokeefe wrote:

BM6569 wrote:"However, it has also generated complaints from some Brunswick residents concerned about a proposal to build a train layover facility where trains would be kept overnight. Neighbors fear that noise from idling trains might bother them.

Maine Rail Group officials, in a previous discussion with councilors, said the former Statler site, some parts of which are not near any residences, could possibly take the place of the proposed layover building."

http://www.pressherald.com/2014/12/12/a ... ice-study/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

An unrealistic proposal that ignores the value of siting such a facility in Waterville.

If they can get Augusta to agree to have the layover facility in Augusta, why not? If that's what gets rail service extended further into Maine even if it means letting Brunswick go for the convenience of being west of the junction then so be it. AFAIK Rockland was never part of even any long term expansion plans for Amtrak anyway. It's been mostly either Montreal, Lewiston/Auburn, or Augusta as the next step. And reaching Augusta makes Waterville and perhaps eventually Bangor more within reach even if it takes another 25 years to get there.

Rockland may not be part of the long term plans but neither was Portland. It was all state directed. I think the marketing geniuses over at Maine Eastern were very smart to get the Amtrak VIPs over on their section of the railroad. NNEPRA is the deciding factor in all of this. If they get the layover facility built in Brunswick (not so much if but when...) I think there might be some interest in at least studying the potential of running a single daily roundtrip to/from Rockland. As with any such proposal "timing is everything" but for the moment Rockland has got going for it something that none of the other potential destinations do, operational viability.

In so far as Augusta goes I disagree with siting a layover facility there because it would make it much harder later on to justify service through Lewiston/Auburn via the Back Road let alone justify going to Waterville. Having Augusta and L/A as "stub end" terminals make no sense to me, especially if it means you build two more facilities instead of having a consolidated facility in Waterville along with the operational flexibility of running trains via either Augusta or L/A. Waterville also serves as a natural "leap frog" option to Bangor in much the same way that Brunswick has served as an intermediate point for extending service to Augusta/Waterville.

Back Road and Lower Road...and a smidge of Rockland? Whoa. Let's not get carried away here. Amtrak is not going to be doing total blanket coverage throughout Maine. If NNEPRA really wants that they're going to have to start shelling out for their own homegrown trainsets Carolinian-style because Amtrak's got way better places to go with its rolling stock and a lot of other prospective state-sponsored routes to choose from that'll net much higher margins than the north-of-Portland 'Family Tree'. It does take two to tango here. NNEPRA can't just wave a wad a bills in front of Amtrak's face, say "OBEY", and expect to get instant satisfaction. Maine isn't the only state that wants new routes, and some of those other routes serve much bigger populations than that you're talking here while diversifying the Amtrak system in more distributed (and thus politically valuable) locations. Maine is not Virginia. I don't care how many times it's said on these threads that the population numbers don't tell the whole story about demand...if there's 5 new state-sponsored routes bidding for Amtrak's attention and equipment, numbers matter the world.

If NNEPRA wants their cake to eat everywhere then it's going to be up to them to develop a commuter/regional rail plan for it all that they can contract out to someone else, usefully coordinate with transfers, and launch without sugar-daddy Amtrak having to run the whole shebang. And they don't have those kinds of resources. If they don't have those kinds of resources, they have to go back to the drawing board not over-assume their leverage to hit up Amtrak for infinitely forking one-seat schedules.


Focus. Augusta is obvious. It's a continuation off one Downeaster route, one Downeaster schedule. That's very doable. Rockland?...Maine Eastern's got a good thing going. Fund them for more frequent schedules out of Brunswick, more equipment, faster track. This all sets up an obvious future trajectory to Bangor, which is pretty much the furthest extent to tie the Downeaster up nicely in a bow. And will get freight considerations, because whoever buys the most Class 4 track miles reaching closest to Waterville is going to get PAR's immediate interest at routing thru freight.

Auburn/Lewiston? Amtrak's not going to do that. Amtrak's going to go back to NNEPRA and ask them what's so intolerable about running a thruway coach all of 20 miles up Route 196 from Brunswick or 35 miles up I-95 from Portland where the transfer frequencies are going to fetch more bodies than schedule-diluted forking one-seats. Then point to every other thruway coach in the country that's holding its own quite well thank you for the very same reason. NNEPRA's got no defense for that. NNEPRA's got no defense for why they aren't doing that this bloody second.

And yes...the Back Road to Waterville will be done as a freight route if the Lower Road becomes the "somebody else is paying for it" path of least resistance for PAR. MEDOT's going to learn the hard way that not every ROW is saveable when the traffic and joint stakeholders aren't there. They're just too small a state to float more than half the route miles in their far-flung state rail network on their own backs, especially when there's so much route duplication. Two Augusta roads, outlandish fantasies about Lewiston Lower, the World's Loneliest Baked Beans Delivery, the Mountain, Calais, "every low-margin branchline as precious as the last"...maybe even Bangor-Keag if its latest stay of execution doesn't pan out...they can't juggle it all. No other New England state attempts to juggle it all and carry the whole entirety of the weight of those rails on its modestly-built shoulders. It's just not practical.

Mission-critical routes that can pack the most joint stakeholders in a room are the consensus ones that get the investment. It's how MA, VT, RI, CT, and even kinda-sorta NH do it. For Maine that means [Pick an Augusta Road], SLR and Yarmouth-Danville, CMQR main, and the Irving main as the utmost-important investments. And that means, yes, you can plan a Downeaster to Augusta, Waterville, Bangor to bring the most stakeholders together in one place (but you can't do it duplicate ways). Yes, you can earmark SLR as the deep long-term Canadian corridor...but you can't have it every which way (Yarmouth-Danville, not rebuilding Lewiston Lower and sending it places it never went before...not tarting up the World's Loneliest Baked Beans Delivery route because reasons). Yes, you can try to attract the Atlantic back someday onto its old CMQR + Irving routing...and yes, a thruway coach from the Downeaster's outer terminus to Brownville or Keag would probably fetch some interest. And yes, they should absolutely support the good thing they've got going with Maine Eastern. And yes, the skunkworks tourist lines BML and DSRX should get some love as the Downeaster advances closer and closer to their neck of the woods.


But c'mon. Not everything is equal. Make the best of some really good opportunities, but don't get disappointed that every mouth can't be fed and every line doesn't have limitless upside. Maine's rail network hasn't consolidated to the max-efficiency essentials like its 5 New England neighbors. A good thing because they can preserve the critical corridors with foresight, not lament their loss after the fact with regret. But it's going to get trimmed further. It has to. There isn't enough freight left and isn't enough passenger density potential to fill every nook and cranny. Some of the less essentials either will have to go when they're no longer sustainable, or be left to sink or swim on their remaining traffic while real-world priorities stick to the shortlist of high-margin investments. And some of the mothballeds are going to stay in mothballs (though nobody is saying Mountain and Calais have to get declared extinct and ripped out for a rail trail). It's just not a state that's ever going to have the tax base to subsidize everything for everyone. I would seriously re-orient to picking one set of tracks and driving a locomotive on it. Especially in light of all the somewhat nutty route duplication just north of Portland.