MAINE: Greens routed in ballot

Pro-highway people this year won a smashing victory over the greens in Maine, getting a 60/40 vote in favor of widening the Maine Turnpike. The Widen-the-Pike vote got majority support in 13 out of 16 counties in the state this time, and even the three losses were small. The result this Nov reversed a defeat in 1991 when a similar state referendum was won by the greens, stopping plans by the Maine Turnpike Commission to widen the busy southern section of the tollway to 2x3-lanes.

The c$100m project that now has voter support to proceed involves 3-laning and widening of shoulders and other improvements on 50km of the pike between the 20km post at York and Exit 6A at Scarborough, the major gateway to Portland the state’s principal city. The first 20km north was widened to 2x3-lanes years ago. Trips taken on the section to be widened average around 100k/day though point-AADT range between 30k and 52k veh/day on different stretches York-Portland, but demand is highly skewed with sharp seasonal and weekday swings. Southern Maine is growing quite rapidly and forecasts were for major increases in congestion without the extra lanes.

The legislature under a so-called Sensible Transp Policy Act of 1991 required independent study of alternatives to widening the pike. No surprise. It found there were no feasible alternatives. Existing parallel roads are already crowded and cannot be upgraded without more disruption and cost than widening the pike. HOV wouldn’t work because there are already too many multiple occupant vehicles for a single lane. New bus, transit and rail and “transp demand management” were all modelled and had no discernible impact on pike traffic and large cost. For example Portland-Boston passenger rail was calculated to divert 368 passengers/day from cars on opening (129 in the peak) and 1,480 by 2015 (518 in the peak). This for a capital expenditure of $38m and annual losses of $2m. The forecast diversion to rail is so tiny it would be unnoticed on the pike, which has total trips rising from about 100k/day now to 170k/day in 2015.

After 6 years and these studies of alternatives producing nothing, opinion swung in favor of the pike widening. The local newspapers came around, as instanced by columnist Larry Favinger in the PORTLAND HERALD with scathingly dismissive attacks on the opponents. The popular vote in favor of the pike was also helped by a strong campaign led by a business-sponsored and grassroots groups called Citizens for Jobs & Safety and a Maine Better Transp Assoc which had failed in 1991.

Maria Fuentes exec director of the MBTA says her group learned from the lesson of 1991: “We were always behind then. The pike’s opponents framed the issues and we were always trying to react to what they said in 1991. We actually spent less money this time but we spent it better. We started earlier and we pitched a positive message. Jobs and safety were our two themes.”

Mainers are a bunch of individualists and in post-mortems of the 1991 defeat MBTC decided that its use of state leaders pitching for the pike in TV spots had been a mistake.

“This time we didn’t use a single authority figure. We deliberately went out there and found regular people — an emergency medical services guy, a nurse, a fire chief, a housewife, unknown people and got them talking to the camera from the turnpike about the present problems. We didn’t use actors. We didn’t script it. It was stuff from the heart. People could relate to that.”

Fuentes said it helped a lot that her campaign was able to quietly drive home the point in every ad that no tax dollars were involved, that toll revenues would service all the debt that the pike would incur.

“They killed us last time with the theme that downstaters were getting a goldplated road at taxpayer expense, and at the expense of small roads elsewhere. They managed to get very strong support outside the south of the state with the argument that with all that money being spent on the turnpike there would be less tax money left for fixing local roads upstate. This time we took the offensive and always emphasized it was tolls that would pay, not taxes.”

Getting to accidents: The accident rate on the 4-lane section is 70% higher than on the more modern 6-lane section — because the 4-lane section is a typical unforgiving 1940s roadway with minimal shoulders, poor sight lines in places, and the frequent backups lead to rear-enders.

Fuentes said her group was able to bring that issue to life with an effective ad using an ambulanceman beside his ambulance talking about the difficulty of getting to the accidents on the narrow section of the pike, how there was nowhere for the traffic to pull off and no shoulder for them to drive along.

“Our ads also hit jobs, how the economy of Maine depends on vacationers and visits and how they just won’t continue to come here if they face a traffic nightmare every time they drive here.”

It also helped that time had passed. Alternatives to the wider highway had been tried (discounted tolls) and had not worked and congestion had gotten worse. Opposition was again led by the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the leading state environmental group, but it had less money than in 1991 and appeared demoralized this time, Fuentes says.

“We kept expecting a big last minute blitz from them but it never came.”

Her group spent $800k this year compared to $1.2m in 1991.

In both 1991 and 1997 the state governor supported the pike widening, but the 1991 governor was not popular at the time of the election and his support was counterproductive, whereas this time the governor has a high approval rating, and helped. (Contact Maria Fuentes MBTA 207 622 0526)