What Does $106 Million Get You in Maine? A Redundant Highway Expansion That Nobody Wants.
The vision to expand Interstate 395 in Bangor, Maine, began 25 years ago—and for 25 years, Maine residents have made it clear they do not want it. Despite a generation of opposition, MaineDOT officially began construction this year.
This expansion, formally called the I-395/Route 9 Connector project, has been persistently pushed by MaineDOT and politicians, despite strong public opposition. State officials even resorted to bullying planners by threatening to cut funding or delay all their other projects if they did not vote in favor of the highway expansion.
The Brewer City Council voted unanimously in opposition to the roadway. The Holden Town Council also voted against it. Eddington residents have voted against the plan and community leaders have spent years trying to obtain public information about it—an act that ultimately required a lawsuit. Despite this bottom-up opposition, the DOT continues to move the project ahead.
MaineDOT officials claim this six miles of asphalt concrete is crucial to fixing a “missing link” in the interstate system. Yet, I-395 and Route 9 are already physically connected by a roadway along the Penobscot river. The new highway will sit parallel to that existing roadway.
“This is a line we drew on a map back in the 1960s that MaineDOT feels compelled to connect today, despite all we have learned since then. It’s institutional inertia, which is the dumbest way to make spending decisions like this,” said civil engineer and President of Strong Towns, Charles Marohn.
(Source: Google Maps / MaineDOT.)
The project is estimated to cost $106 million in tax dollars. It’s going to displace families from their homes. It’s going to add to higher maintenance costs. Millions of dollars are being spent with the goal of saving truckers and drivers a few minutes on their route.
Meanwhile, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) reports that Maine’s existing highways and bridges are in poor condition and do not meet the expected measure for roadway safety and service goals. Every four years, ASCE rates Maine’s infrastructure condition from an A to F letter grade. Overall, the 2020 report gave Maine’s roadways a D grade, the worst rating of any of Maine’s infrastructure. The ASCE suggests that these poor road conditions cost drivers in Maine an estimated $1 billion per year in car repairs, or roughly $1,000 for each licensed Maine resident.
Maine’s bridges aren’t much better off, with nearly one in every seven of them being structurally deficient. MaineDOT says that they consistently lack funds for maintenance, and therefore their infrastructure is falling apart. The ASCE report says that Maine has fallen $233 million behind just for roads and bridges.
To address their enormous backlog of deferred maintenance needs, the state of Maine asked voters to approve an additional $100 million in transportation debt. The bond, which was approved by voters, was presented primarily as an opportunity to maintain existing transportation infrastructure.
“We are fortunate that Mainers historically have shown overwhelming support for transportation funding, and this year is no different,” said MaineDOT Commissioner Bruce Van Note in a statement once the vote passed. “We never take that support for granted.”
Yet, MaineDOT is clearly taking the public’s support for granted. The agency is failing at its central responsibility to maintain the roads and bridges it has already built. Instead of focusing on that urgent problem, the state’s transportation leadership obsessively works to build even more roads and bridges, despite enormous levels of opposition.
“That is the very definition of reckless and irresponsible,” said Marohn. “You don’t keep adding on to your home when you have a leaky roof. You fix the roof first. You respect local leaders. You listen to people.”
A strong and prosperous Maine will stop expanding their D-rated roadway infrastructure until they have a credible plan to maintain what they have already built. The I-395/Route 9 connector project is just more fiddling while Rome burns. The people of Maine deserve better.
The federal government’s refusal to hold TxDOT accountable for the harm it’s doing in Houston is allowing history to repeat itself—something the current administration pledged it wouldn’t do.