Until October 2008, a swath of downtown Brunswick not far from Bowdoin College sat unused, a decades-old eyesore contaminated by coal ash and unfit for development or public use. Known as Maine Street Station, the rubble-strewn lot bankrupted a past redevelopment effort and marred an otherwise scenic downtown landscape.
On Nov. 1 of this year, an Amtrak Downeaster train rolled up to the platform at a new visitors’ center, to the same site, marking the extension of Amtrak’s Boston-to-Portland passenger rail service to Brunswick. Riders who disembarked from the train could dine at a restaurant or pub within the station complex. They could shop in stores that now occupy the rehabilitated brownfield site or luxuriate at a new inn. They could even seek medical attention at an adjacent walk-in clinic.
During the past four years, the prospect of passenger rail service fueled the successful conversion of Maine Street Station from a symbol of decay to a downtown renewal success story.
In a community suffering from the departure of roughly 5,000 jobs affiliated with Brunswick Naval Air Station, which closed incrementally between 2005 and 2011, the downtown project added employment opportunities and buoyed downtown merchants.
Now, the challenge will be to fully realize the potential benefits envisioned when state and federal officials first started collaborating to extend Downeaster service to Freeport and Brunswick. Any measure of the Downeaster’s success must look beyond a simple accounting of the rail line’s profitability to include its impact on the midcoast region as far up the coast as Rockland, because riders to Brunswick will be able to take Maine Eastern Railroad trains there.
U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a longtime advocate of the project who worked with Democrats in Augusta and Washington, D.C., to bring it to fruition, estimated that, within 20 years, adding Brunswick and Freeport to the Downeaster itinerary will create 800 more jobs and generate $325 million in construction contracts.
The extension also offers another opportunity to promote Maine’s quality of life to city dwellers accustomed to traveling by rail. Within a year, the Downeaster will deliver 36,500 riders to Brunswick and Freeport, according to Amtrak. That’s a new customer base for the state’s tourism, lodging and restaurant industry to tap. And their first impression of Maine won’t be a traffic logjam at the York toll plaza.
Amtrak’s detractors argue that because passenger rail requires federal subsidies to augment ticket revenues, it’s a bad investment. But as Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman pointed out during a September 2012 U.S. House Transportation Committee hearing, all forms of transportation — air travel, urban transit systems and highways — receive federal subsidies.
Amtrak now covers 85 percent of its expenses with ticket sales and other revenues, requiring a pittance in subsidies compared to what the federal government allocated during the past four years for the highway system.
Fares and other revenues cover about $8 million of the Downeaster’s $15 million annual operating costs. Annual allocations from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program within the U.S. Department of Transportation fund 80 percent of the balance, with the state covering the remainder through car rental sales tax revenues.
As Congress and the president figure out how to fund necessary national transportation needs when the federal gasoline tax no longer covers the bill, continuing the roughly $6 million yearly subsidy for the Downeaster, which annually breaks ridership and ticket revenue records, makes sense. Maintaining the steady rise in ticket sales would lead to a decreased need for government subsidies. In addition to underwriting the rail service, those subsidies contribute to economic development of the affected communities.
If the economic arguments don’t persuade you, take a train to Brunswick, grab a seat at a trackside pub or bistro and ask to see photos of what Maine Street Station looked like five years ago.
Amtrack pork has been around for a long time, without it it couldn’t survive. now they are calling it something else, to save the planet.LOL!!!
Your car is the most subsidized form of transportation available.
As a non-car owner, I still pay substantial taxes to keep Americans on the road.
Yet the ill-informed consider public transportation wasteful.
LOL. Great editorial.
1. You are ignoring that a substantial portion of road funding is paid by gas taxes, excise taxes and tolls. These are “user fees.” Amtrak’s funding comes from all taxpayers regardless of whether they ride the train. This is a “subsidy.”
2. Intersate 295 between Brunswick and Portland probably handles 36,000 vehicles per day while the train is projected to handle 36,000 riders per year. I suspect that the “subsidy” per passenger-mile on Amtrak is hideous compared to the vehicle on I-295.
3. Do the taxpayers owe you an Amtrak train at any price because it has more leg room than the bus?
When we consider what the driver doesn’t pay directly, it becomes clear that municipal authorities — and thus taxpayers — are holding a very large bag. Nationally, some 70% of all state and local law enforcement activities are spent on traffic management issues — a giant 20% of state budgets going to the car. In New Jersey, typical of the suburbanized nation, motorists pay $733 million a year less in user fees like gas taxes and tolls than the state spends in building and maintaining its roads. The rest is a taxpayer subsidy extracted through nonautomobile fees like the property tax.
— Jane Holtz Kay, Asphalt Nation, 1997 Crown Books, page 124
Elmer Johnson, a former General Motors vice president who left the corporate driver’s seat, cites figures in a report for the Urban Transportation Project: “The suburban commuter pays only 25% of the costs of travel to the central district by car.” Private industry’s trucks, which do twenty times as much damage to the roads as cars, pay only 40% of their way.
–same source, page 120
There is little reason to believe that this situation has changed in the 15 years since the book’s publication. It has likely gotten worse. The funding for the car culture comes from all taxpayers regardless of whether they habitually drive. This is a “subsidy.” I suspect that Amtrak subsidies are tiny in comparison.
Do the taxpayers owe you inexpensive gas and a clear road for your SUV at any price because you don’t want to take the train?
Maybe so, but commuters and trucks also create economic activity by which the central district prospers. Propose to your city government that it restrict traffic ‘to save money’ and watch what happens.
Any form of mass transit that doesn’t provide door-to-door transport on demand will serve only those people whose needs correspond with what the system delivers: the roads will still have to be there, and still have to be paid for.
You’re so right. Those of us who walk, bicycle, or ride mass transit to work or to do our shopping are completely incapable of contributing to economic activity.
Those of us who walk, bicycle, or ride mass transit to work or to do our shopping are completely incapable of contributing to economic activity.
Not completely incapable, but pretty seriously constrained. Be interesting to see you haul a water heater home on the bus, or a week’s groceries for a family of four. And jobs don’t always happen next to a bus stop.
No one is suggesting that we get rid of the roads.
However, the simple fact is that we cannot afford to continue expanding the ones we do have and building still more roads. Not to mention that in many cities now, we no longer have the room for wider roads. Boston didn’t have room for wider roads. So we got the Big Dig!
Rail represents a way to slow the expensive and underfunded growth of our highways. Especially rail projects like the Downeaster, which not only takes drivers off the roads, but it improves freight movement too. Already 40% of all freight in this country moves by rail, only 28% by truck. If we can get that rail percentage even higher, that only helps our highways both in terms of fewer trucks on the roads and in terms of less damage from the trucks to the roads.
Don’t misunderstand… I like train travel and even went out of my way to take a train trip across the US thirty years ago. But tracks that connect A to B can’t compare to a road network linking A to B to …Z, especially if you need to go from D to X. Trains may work in the special case of connecting population centers in the Northeast Corridor, but beyond that America is too thinly populated for them to be cost-effective.
And as far as only 28% of freight moving by truck, I have to wonder how the freight gets from trackside to its final destination.
I won’t be reading Ms. Kay’s book, but what are her recommendations, beyond raising prices and fees?
The third of the book’s three sections is dedicated to potential (and partial) solutions, some of which we already see being implemented. I don’t want to be long-winded, but I’ll summarize a few:
1. Change zoning laws to encourage mixed-use, i.e. businesses and residences sharing space in pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods.
2. More bike lanes and readily available bike racks; special lanes for buses.
3. Increased train and trolley service. San Diego, in car-friendly southern California, has, over the past decade and a half, built a successful and well-used trolley system.
4. Don’t build any more highways. They encourage increased car use and do not alleviate traffic.
5. Charge a fair price for parking. Free parking is nothing more than welfare for cars. (There’s a good book on this subject: The High Cost of Free Parking, by Donald Shoup.)
6. Raise the gas tax, which is at a historic low.
7. Improve and promote public transportation to remove the stigma that it’s only for poor people. An example of this can be seen in Bangor, where stimulus funds purchased several new buses for the BAT system. They are much more appealing than the older ones.
8. The biggest thing that has to change is the mindset of the American people. We don’t need to jump into the car to go down the street for a gallon of milk.
Thanks
Do you ever ride the bus?
BTW, I ride a bicycle to work six months of the year. How about you?
Last year I put my bicycle away in early December and got it out again in March; I’m not big on riding in the dark, snow or rain, but I don mittens in cold weather. I ride the BAT bus about 300 times a year, and also use the Concord Coach frequently for out of town trips.
I don’t ride in the dark either. And I use Concord Trailways for business in Boston. The environmental assessment projects 20 round-trips to Brunswick daily and 48 arrivals and 12 departures from Freeport daily (don’t know why the unbalance). Not spent yet is the Brunswick layover yard whose bids went way over the $12 million budget. All this for 100 one-way fares per day? The opportunity cost is huge. Why not build a state-wide bus service that connects to Amtrak, airports, ferry terminals, etc? Even the trains to Brunswick are foolish. Why two round trips of full size passenger trains. Why not a single unit diesel rail car that could make 6-8 round trips per day and meet every train to/from Boston? But if you question anything about how we do these trains you get branded a right-wing nut!
You don’t sound like a right-wing nut to me. And you make an excellent point regading connectivity of public transportation. For instance, the Concord buses from Boston and the coast get into Bangor fifteen minutes after the last BAT bus of the day goes past the Union Street depot. The piecemeal nature of public transpo discourages use. Bangor needs a centralized, downtown hub for the BAT, Concord Coach, Greyhound and Downeast Transportation. A statewide bus service is a good idea.
Halsey,
Sadly the gas tax isn’t paying a “substantial portion”; in fact the gas taxes barely cover half of the spending on just the Interstate Highways in this county. We drivers only manage to cover 51% of the costs of the highways via fuel taxes and other direct fees.
http://www.subsidyscope.com/transportation/direct-expenditures/highways/funding/analysis/
Things get even worse at the local city/town & county levels where property taxes tend to pay the bulk of the bills.
This imbalance can further be seen by looking at the Taxpayer’s receipt for 2009. It shows that a married couple with 2 kids and $80K in income watched $3.83 of their Federal income tax dollars go to Amtrak. That same couple watched $110.06 of their Income Taxes go into highways. That’s of course on top of what that couple paid towards roads & highways via state fuel taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and in some case state income taxes.
A retired couple with $100K in income watched $3.11 go to Amtrak. They also paid $89.38 towards the highways, even if they can no longer drive a car, much less own one.
Thank you for that. A country without a passenger train system is not a modern country. It is Orwellian doublespeak to say that we “invest” in highways and “subsidize” trains.
Europe is really great for that. Cheap (for the traveller), clean, fast, and frequent.
Well, the retired couple is probably happy that the grocery store was serviced by trucks, and their home health-care aide had a way to drive to their house.
I strongly believe we need to increase public transportation for many reasons. I am happy that the trend (or thinking) seems to be heading in that direction.
Would have loved to have been on that maiden voyage today from Boston to Brunswick. Great!
You are true
I love Amtrak
You tax dollars go into roads in Maine
I just can’t help but laugh at the fact that it is called the Downeaster and it is the farthest it could possibly be to Downeast Maine….it is the Downeaster that doesn’t even come close to the actual Downeast Maine.
The Brunswick extension cost taxpayers $38.3 million to upgrade the track. In addition a $12 million layover yard is proposed in Bruunswick. Nobody at NNEPRA will ever tell us what level of annual subsidy the Brunswick extension will require. This is to serve an estimated 36,000 one-way riders per year or 18,000 round-trips. But just take the $38.3 million and divide it by the $20 cost of a round-trip ticket on Concord Trailways between the train station in Brunswick and the train station in Portand. We could hand out free bus tickets for 106 years and the taxpayers would save money! We all want to get the federal budget under control. We all scoff at taxpayer funded pork and boondoggles like the Alaskan “bridge to nowhere.” But when it comes our Amtrak trains the economics aren’t even discussed. Amtrak’s purpose should be to get as many people out of cars as possible with a given amount of funding and not just connect dots on the map. How about an extensive feeder bus service to connect with Amtrak trains in Portland? Amtrak trains to Brunswick, Farmington, and Fort Kent just makes us look foolish.
when did anyone suggest farmington or fort kent lets hope augusta and bangor could get amtrack in the future. now for u right wing tax and spend grumblers out there remember you voted for george w bush who took us from a surplus to a deficit. I would like a refund for the 1 trillion dollar war in iraq you voted for.
No, you just look foolish acting like a parrot for right-wing nutcases that use Amtrak as the perennial whipping-boy.
http://subsidyscope.com/transportation/direct-expenditures/highways/funding/analysis/
Oh, and there aren’t railway tracks to Farmington, anymore. Can’t you read a map?
But it would only be about a million dollars a mile to put that track back in. Under the thinking of everone else, that would be a great idea.
No it doesn’t
Halsey,
Your math assumes that everyone is only going between Brunswick & Portland. No doubt many are continuing on to other places. Additionally your calculations include nothing for the fact that these improvements will also benefit freight service, meaning that trucks can be taken off our roads & highways.
Besides, that $38 Million represents 0.001% of the Federal budget. Cutting that wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket. We’re not going to balance the budget by cutting the meager spending on rail.
1. No I didn’t assume everyone is only going between Brunswick and Portland. I suggested a feeder bus service from all over Maine to connect with Amtrak trains in Portland. 2. There is very little rail freight coming out of Brunswick or even Brunswick to Rockland. The improvements will do nothing to get trucks off the road in this corridor. 3. Everyone thinks our little share of pork is just a drop in the bucket. That’s why the bucket overflows with red ink.
Amtrak is awesome and were lucky to even have passenger train service back in operation in Maine so please stop with negative comments
What negative comments? This article was completly positive, even if it was stupid.
The last paragraph said “If the economic arguments don’t persuade you, take a train to Brunswick, grab a seat at a trackside pub or bistro and ask to see photos of what Maine Street Station looked like five years ago.” YOU CAN NOT TAKE A TRAIN FROM BANGOR TO BRUNSWICK.
People were making bad comments below as usual
So your comment was preemptive.
Most of the comments seem positive to me.
Oh I see what your doing…..
Please explain what I am doing, I thought I was just stating an obvious truth.
i would love to see all the larger maine communities connected by train, with stops at the smaller communities along the way. i hate driving, hate spending money on a car. if the train just followed the interstate right up to bangor, the furthest i would ever drive would be too the train station (and then i would likely just walk). it’s really to bad america more or less gave up on trains as public transportation decades ago, other than in cities. cars should be a luxury, not a necessity. sadly, i doubt that will ever be the case in maine.
Passenger rail will never be viable in Maine, but freight rail could be viable which would allow passenger rail to be established.
Actually yes it is haha
It is what? a sink of every cent put into it?
Passenger rail is viable in urban areas but passenger rail in rural areas can only be a side product of freight rail.
Sit down and think about the economy of it, it can not work.
Larry,
I think that one needs to clarify exactly what is meant by “rural areas” before one can make the statement you’ve made. If rural means at town of 100, then yes, you’re probably correct. However, if one means a town of 50K, then no it would not be correct.
Case in point, an Amtrak train called the Lynchburger. This is a train that the State of Virginia contracted with Amtrak to run, much like Maine essentially contracts with Amtrak for the Downeaster. The State of Virginia asked Amtrak to run a train between Lynchburg population around 60K to DC. The train makes a few other stops along the way in cities with similar population sizes.
Virginia estimated a first year ridership of just under 50K and based upon that number, they set aside money to fund a 3 year trial of the service. The train started running in October 2009, the start of the new fiscal year for Amtrak. By March, the train had already met the 50K goal in ridership. They ended the first year with more than 126,000 rides taken, more than double the estimate.
Even better, the train turned an operating profit. Not only did Virginia not spend any of the money they had set aside, they actually turned a small profit on the train. Granted Virginia didn’t have any capital expenses to really worry about.
The train is still doing as well, and in fact even better than during its first year. As of August, with one month left in the fiscal year, the train had turned a $3.6 Million operating profit. Ridership is currently at 172K and they’ll easily add at least 15K in September to that number.
Maine has only one city with a population of over 50K, Portland 66K, and 2 cties with over 20 K, Lewiston 57K and Bangor 33K, Wikipedia shows 20,278 as Brunswick’s population but that is Wikipedia. In order to get the 126K yearly rides an average number of daily round trips of
about 173.
Is there 173 people willing to commute to Boston on the schedule of Amtrak? If there isn’t, there is little chance that even with state and federal subsidies would the run be profitable.
I’ve been on it and it’s pretty busy
Larry,
I didn’t say that the Downeaster would ever turn a profit. I was simply trying to show that one cannot cast a blanket like you did that rural areas can’t be viable for rail. And of course no one is accounting for, or giving credit to the Downeaster, for the improved freight service thanks to the track improvements for the Downeaster.
However, if we really want to help make it viable, then lets raise the fuel taxes to the point where drivers will actually realize just how much it actually costs them to drive their cars. If we do that, I can almost bet that the Downeaster will be able to raise fares just enough that when combined with the increased ridership caused by people cutting back on driving, that the Downeaster will cover its costs.
So you are advocating having the Federal government force the populace to do what YOU think is good for everyone, very statist of you. That is the reason that your way is absolutly wrong.
Larry,
I’m not advocating for that. Remember I said “However, if we really want to help make it viable.” “We” means all of us in my dictionary; I did not use “I”. And I qualified the statement with “However”.
And the Fed already does dictate to you how you should travel. They dictate it by making you falsely believe that driving is cheaper than it really is. The reason we now subsidize Amtrak is because the Fed started subsidizing flying & driving. Trains used to be privately owned & operated, until government interfered in the Free Market.
Personally I don’t think that it would be a good idea to do so. It would destroy our economy if we did so; unless it were phased in very, very slowly.
It seems to have been doing good for the last couple of years… Were lucky were have it so stop your whining
“…with the state covering the remainder through car rental sales tax revenues.” So I rent a car in Bangor, and I’m paying for the Downeaster?
For the record, I FULLY support the Downeaster.
That is correct.
We can’t drive down to boston and back for under $50.00 , so i am thrilled this is a plus for the area .
You can’t drive to Brunswick to take the train to Boston economically, besides there isn’t enough parking in Brunswick to support the train as a connecting point.
There is a very large, free parking lot specifically for Amtrak passengers at the western end of Station Avenue.
My mistake, I have not been to Brunsuick in a decade or so, there isnt a train that runs there from Camden
Not yet.
Me, too.
Many comment here tout that freight is the only feasible use for the rails here in Maine, that passenger service will never be profitable, that’s probably true. But in order for freight service to return you need good rails and facilties. And Amtrak is improving rail systems that have long been neglected here, which in turn may entice private freight service (I doubt there are many railroads willing to build infrastructure any longer, the rails have been melted down, the priceless rights of way sold, made into rail trails or parking lots). Rail service to Fort Kent would be a boon to Arroostook county, cheap transportation for potatoes, lumber AND people.
Maybe even the return of ski trains from Boston.
The money spent, was well spent.
36,500 total expected riders. 6 trains a day. That is an average of 17 riders per train. I doubt if that pays for the engineer’s salery, never mind all the other expenses.
Yep, makes total economic sense to progressives….
Not so much to those of us in the real world.