One thing that is clear about the arrival of train service in Brunswick: many people have confused the arrival of AMTRAK service with a second issue, the placement of the AMTRAK maintenance facility.
The two are separate.
The train will be coming to Brunswick no matter where the maintenance facility is located. The train will come to Brunswick even if no maintenance facility is located in Brunswick.
The addition of a maintenance facility to the project came very late in the game, long after AMTRAK had already accepted the federal stimulus money that obligated it extend the Downeaster passenger service to Brunswick. During most of the planning period AMTRAK and the rail authority planned to continue doing maintenance in Portland. So if the Maintenance facility is located at Bouchard Drive, at the Crooker lot at Cook’s Corner, or even in Portland, AMTRAK Downeaster service will start in Brunswick in 2012.
Understanding this is important to appreciating the fact that the residents of the Bouchard/Hennessey neighborhood, now known as the Brunswick-West neighborhood coalition, are not “anti-train.” No one who favored the Cooks Corner location for the maintenance facility is against the train.
I have worked long and hard to assure the success AMTRAK’s return to Brunswick, both as a planning board member, and on the town council.
- While on the planning board I, along with other planning board members, pushed for the inclusion of a “train station” within the Maine Street Station Development. The developer had hoped t0 devote the entire building to retail space, a more lucrative option.
- I was on the council when we agreed to rent back the train station/visitor center from the developer. We paid five years rent–$220,000–in advance. At the time, it was the only way to keep the Maine Street Station project alive. Keeping the project alive was necessary to getting the train service.
- As Vice Chair of the Council in 2009, I spent hours with the town manager and our local representative from the EDA (Economic Development Agency, a part of the US Dept of Commerce that administers various grants) and staffers from our Congressional delegation working to repackage a grant application for the Maine Street Station project. The original application had suggested that Maine Street Station was just a retail and hotel complex. To be successful the application had to include a transit component.
- During 2009 we met with the Governor to assure that the state would continue its funding for the Downeaster service between Boston and Portland, an obvious necessary first step to extending the service to Brunswick. This required the Governor and Maine DOT to commit to using funds from both the STAR (State Transit Air Rail with funds generated from car rental taxes) account and the CMAQ (Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality, a federal source) accounts to fund the project. As it is Maine operates under a temporary waiver of typical CMAQ rules that allow us to use CMAQ funds for operating expenses; usually these funds are available only for capital expenses. Continuation of this waiver is crucial to keeping passenger service alive in Maine, let alone extending it to Brunswick. (It remains to be seen whether the current governor will support such use of DOT funds).
All of these steps were crucial in obtaining the funding to upgrade the tracks from Portland to Brunswick to accommodate passenger rail service. Many people do not recall that we were in competition with Lewiston/Auburn for the extension of the Downeaster service. Brunswick’s being ready was the decisive factor in the rail authority’s choice of Brunswick even though the population of Lewiston Auburn is much larger. I am proud of the work I’ve done in support of returning passenger rail service to Brunswick.