What if you could bike all the way from Portland to Augusta on a protected bike trail?
That possibility came significantly closer to reality at the end of this legislative session, when Governor Janet Mills signed two bills into law. They begin the process that could create interim rail trails along unused train lines.
The trails would span from Portland to Auburn and Brunswick to Gardner. There's even an extension Downeast in Calais. All in all, it could result in the creation of about 70 miles of connected walking and biking trails.
Nash Callahan, owner of Capitol City Bikes in Augusta, is a familiar figure in the cycling community. Through all seasons, and all sorts of weather, he can be seen biking to and from his shop and his home.
"As someone who's never owned a car," Callahan said, "bikes are kind of my life."
Not owning a car is possible, he said , partially due to the 6.5 mile Kennebec River rail trail, which opened in 2001.
"That was a 4.5 mile commute that I made every day," he said. "You know, both ways. So it was nine miles that I did, and that was mostly on the trail."
Callahan said he sees a lot of commuters on the trail, especially folks riding e-bikes to Augusta.
"There's not a lot of public transportation in Augusta, so a lot of people rely on bikes for transportation if they don't have a car for various reasons. So that's a lot of people that I see here is just trying to, you know, get to work and stuff like that."
And advocates for the latest rail trail projects hope the number of bike commuters will multiply if the trail can connect from Augusta all the way to Portland.
"I would love to use this trail," said Jeremy Cluchey, a member of the Merrymeeting Trailblazers. "My kids go to school in the district, and we could use this to get to both the elementary and the middle schools. I could use it to get to work, and I would plan to do so as often as I could."
"About 13 years ago, I started showing up to meetings of the Merrymeeting trailblazers," he said, "Which is a group of volunteers who've been meeting since 2008. So, I'm actually a relative newbie to try to convert this long, unused rail corridor into a trail."
Cluchey said the group and many in the community want to put these publicly owned assets to use.
"We have this long dormant rail corridor. There are no signs of life that it will be anything other than vacant for a long time," he said. "Could we have people walk, bike, do other activities on it in the meantime?"
The rail trails are an 'interim' option said Mattie Daughtry, a state senator representing Brunswick, Yarmouth, and the surrounding area.
“It is interim rail trail for a reason. It can be reversed into using for passenger rail. I'm a huge advocate for trains. If this was something we could feasibly have, you know, being used by trains. I'd be right there for it. But the fact is, these have been identified by stakeholders as corridors that are not being used. So why let them sit empty?"
The Rail Use Advisory Council found that in the near future, it isn't economically feasible to bring back passenger rail.
But rail advocates say, once you rip up the tracks to build the trail, that's it — they're not coming back. And building out the trail would mean removing whole sections of the tracks.
"When you remove railroad infrastructure so totally, it will never be economically viable to completely rebuild them. So there really isn't anything interim about it. It is going to remain a trail once the rail infrastructure is removed," said Finn Kelly from Maine Switching Services
Kelly said the trail would add just one more barrier to the already difficult process of bringing rail back to the region — and that the word 'interim' is just a technicality.
"What these bills aim to achieve is removal of the railroad infrastructure," Kelly said. "They are said to be interim because legally, there is an obligation to rebuild."
Kelly and other train advocates say many of the tracks in question haven't been 'abandoned,' and that there is active interest in using certain sections, for passenger or freight.
But Kelly said, rather than pitting trail versus train, they can coexist — you don't have to have one or the other.
The Kennebec River trail, which Nash Callahan bikes every day, was built alongside the train tracks. That's what train advocates like Kelly have been pushing for on the Merrymeeting trail.
"Much of the lower road is double tracked," Kelly said. "So you actually have two parallel rail lines along the corridor for much of the route. So, it's absolutely doable to find a way for both of them to coexist, even if it means getting creative working with local municipalities."
Adding a trail alongside the tracks could more than triple the cost of the project according to a study by the Rail Use Advisory Council. A rail trail is estimated to cost between $30 million and $40 million to create, whereas a trail installed alongside the tracks could clock in at around $140 million.
But advocates for green transportation say that the cost of not building out alternatives is even higher. Transportation is the most polluting economic sector in Maine, accounting for nearly 50% of the state's carbon emissions. And besides the high carbon emissions, it costs millions each year to maintain Maine's roads and highways.
For disclosure, Jeremy Cluchey is a member of Maine Public's Community Advisory Board
