Crowd resists widening I-295

Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Caribeth Klemundt of Portland shows her support for mass transit before a Portland forum Tuesday.

Highway expansion of any sort was the primary target Tuesday during a meeting in Portland on transportation spending.

Only a handful of people expressed support for proposals to widen Interstate 295 in Portland or improve highway interchanges in Falmouth, Yarmouth and Freeport.

Many more in the crowd of more than 100 people -- judging by the applause and the signs that people waved -- believed that regional planners should make investments in public transit their top priority.

"We've got tons of roads and highways, but we've got nothing else," said Sam Frankel, a 24-year-old volunteer with the League of Young Voters.

The Maine Green Independent Party gave planners a resolution urging them to "stop feeding our out-moded highway industrial complex."

The forum was held at the Clarion Hotel, where many people arrived by bicycle or on a Metro bus.

But Lauren Corey of Portland, an accountant who travels around the region for her job, told planners that she depends on the automobile to visit her clients and her office in Augusta. She noted that Amtrak's current service requires a $7 million subsidy.

"I am not convinced that the majority of Maine taxpayers are in favor of the burden of another operating subsidy," she said. "I believe it is the call of a very vocal minority that these public meetings appear to have attracted."

The Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation Committee held the forum. The agency represents 15 communities between Biddeford and Freeport.

In two years, roughly $50 million in federal money will likely be available for one to three major transportation projects in Greater Portland, officials say.

This is the first time the committee has gone after such funds, which are earmarks in the U.S. government's five-year transportation spending plan.

A subcommittee has drafted a list of eight projects, with the goal of paring it down to two or three to send to the federal government in 2009. The top projects include adding lanes to I-295 in Portland and replacing Veterans Memorial Bridge between Portland and South Portland.

The idea of adding lanes to I-295 was the most controversial Tuesday. The project is intended primarily to make that stretch of highway safer by shifting through traffic away from the on- and off-ramps, according to transportation planners.

Opponents of the widening say it simply would funnel more traffic onto city streets.

John Duncan, the director of PACTS, said the committee will probably narrow the list over the next few months and then send it to the 15 cities and towns in the region for "their blessings."

If communities back the plan, he said, it will be easier to win the attention of the state's congressional delegation.

Staff Writer Tom Bell can be contacted at 791-6369 or at:

tbell@pressherald.com