Saint John, New Brunswick
SAINT JOHN, New Brunswick —With diesel fuel about to hit $5 a gallon and with both the Maine and U.S. governments coping with growing deficits, Peter Vigue has never been more convinced that the time to build an east-west toll road through north-central Maine is now. As the chairman, president and CEO of the Pittsfield-based Cianbro Companies, Vigue is quick to point out that the concept of a new cross-state super highway has been cussed and discussed in Maine for 30 years. What’s new, he says, is the notion that the proposed 220-mile roadway between the U.S.-Canada border crossing at Calais and another border crossing at Coburn Gore would be privately financed and built and operated as a toll road.
In 2008 dollars, Vigue predicts construction costs will exceed $1 billion. His timeline calls for work to begin in 2011 and the toll road to be operational in the fall of 2014. Back in the days when Maine had budget surpluses and the federal government wasn’t spending $17 million an hour on waging a two-front war, a route for a government-funded, east-west roadway through Maine was being planned. It followed Route 9 from Calais into Bangor, tying into Interstate 95 and then following Route 2 to the Quebec border. Vigue thinks routing more heavy truck traffic through Bangor and other existing communities is a mistake. His route relies almost entirely on existing rights-of-way, including largely dormant logging roads.
The 2,000-foot-wide corridor would avoid communities, but would allow controlled access by hunters, fishermen and other non-commercial traffic headed to the wilderness areas the toll road would traverse. Vigue said the proposed transportation and utility corridor needs to be 2,000 feet wide to accommodate setback requirements should the right-of-way include high-voltage power lines and gas pipelines. That width also would accommodate future construction of an east-west rail line, he said.
With an almost religious fervor, Vigue has been busy since last August, preaching the Maine East-West Toll Corridor gospel in both in Maine and in Atlantic Canada. On May 22, he spent 90 minutes outlining the concept to the Saint John Board of Trade in New Brunswick’s largest port city, where, clearly, he was preaching to the choir. Saint John is one of the Canadian Maritimes’ largest cargo ports and massive container ships laden with Asian and European cargoes headed to markets in the American heartland would offload there and in ports in Nova Scotia such as Halifax, Melford and, possibly, Sydney. “This is a huge venture, well in excess of $1 billion,” Vigue told his Canadian audience.
“It will cost $100 million just to get to the point where we can put a shovel in the ground. That includes design, permitting, engineering, tying up the property and putting earnest money down. This is a very significant exercise, and we’re going forward.” Vigue said that despite whatever merits the ambitious infrastructure project may have, such a road would never be built if it required public financing. “I can assure you of one thing: the state of Maine can’t pay for it, the federal government in the U.S. can’t pay for it, and the Canadian government can’t pay for it,” he said. “So it’s a user, or toll highway, system.
“I’ve begun interacting with firms that are in the infrastructure business globally — owning, operating and maintaining infrastructure on a global basis. And we’ve received significant interest from people who want to partner and participate in this.”
Vigue contends that an east-west toll road through Maine offers enough benefits to generate the level of tolls required to bankroll the project. “There’s got to be a cost benefit,” he said. “How much am I going to pay for a toll and, on the other hand, how much am I going to save by not having to go the long way? “I can assure you, based on the studies we’ve done so far, there’s a very significant financial advantage to the users of the highway.” Regardless of where a westbound truck is headed from Calais, not having an east-west thoroughfare through Maine adds anywhere from two to four hours to a trip across the state, Vigue said. Even before the arrival of $5-a-gallon diesel fuel, he said it cost as much as $150 an hour to operate a semi-tractor trailer. Federal regulations, he notes, require that truckers pull over after 10 hours of driving time, sometimes adding an extra day to a cross-state delivery. Time being money, Vigue is convinced that the opportunity to save both will make the toll road a financial success for its investors and a win-win for the economies of Atlantic Canada and Maine. Better implementation of existing technology that could speed the process of inspecting cargoes entering the United States from Canada also would save time and money, he said. “These two border crossings would be demonstration projects for utilizing technology that would reduce delays that, for trucks, can run into hours,” he said. “This technology already exists, but it’s still not being utilized. And it would be far more efficient than a human and a dog crawling over that truck with a flashlight.” Beyond its capability of handling heavy trucks towing tandem trailers, the proposed east-west toll road could provide a new utility and communications corridor for high-speed fiber optics networks, natural gas pipelines and electrical transmission lines. The route also would intersect with existing and long-abandoned rail lines, including the massive, mothballed rail yard at Brownsville Junction. Critical to the project’s success, Vigue feels, is a vision that looks 50 to 100 years into the future and envisions how a growing global economy could positively affect Atlantic Canada and Maine. “Collaboration is critical,” he said. “We can’t separate ourselves as a community, a country, a state or a province,” he said. “We’ve got to look at the big picture. When we improve the economy in our region, we’re all going to benefit.” Vigue ended his formal presentation by displaying a photo of his four grandchildren. “What I’m talking about here has nothing to do with me or our company,” he said. “It’s about people. And not you, but these young people who come after us and our responsibilities to them. The problems they face will be more significant, more complex and more difficult. The best thing we can leave them is the ability to understand the world we live in, and that’s about all of us.” TO READ this copyrighted story from The Ellsworth American News, please click and follow the link.
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