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A new route across the state has been talked about for decades, but this time around, a number factors could make it happen.

By MATT WICKENHEISER, Staff Writer April 6, 2008

 

 

Lincoln Paper and Tissue puts 150 tractor-trailers on the road each week, down I-95 through Bangor, Augusta, Portland, Kittery and over the New Hampshire line.

"Everything that we manufacture leaves the state of Maine," said Keith Van Scotter, president and chief executive officer. "It's not like we can pick up our mill and move it. If the cost of energy and everything else gets to be so bad, then we're dead. It's a big deal for us."

Half the trucks travel to customers in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, the others to the Upper Midwest. They all have to leave the state the same way, down the interstate pipeline.

But what if the Midwest-bound trucks could drive down to the Bangor area and hook a right onto a four-lane highway heading west?

"That's a bonanza," said Van Scotter.

The idea of an east-west highway, spanning Maine's girth like an asphalt belt from Calais to Coburn Gore, has been around in different forms for decades. But after years of study, proposals and "what-ifs," the idea has gained new energy.

The development of a Nova Scotia deepwater port almost 400 miles to the east, increased and paralyzing congestion along established North American trade routes, and a plan to build the east-west highway as a private toll road – rather than a public project – are all factors.

As is the person making the proposal: Peter G. Vigue, chairman of the board of the Cianbro Cos. The Pittsfield-based construction company has 2,300 employees, including about 1,300 in Maine. Under Vigue's watch, Cianbro has succeeded in landing some surprisingly successful projects. The construction of two oil rigs in Portland Harbor is one example. Another is the redevelopment of a defunct Brewer paper mill into a plant to manufacture building modules – with a multimillion-dollar, 15-month contract to build modules for a big Texas refinery expansion already in hand.

Cianbro is working as a project integrator – facilitator, even – identifying the possible route along existing private roads; dealing with landowners such as International Paper; working with a design firm, the Louis Berger Group; pitching the idea to potential investors; and spreading word among business and community leaders in Maine and Canada.

Cianbro builds bridges, not roads, Vigue is quick to point out; other companies in the state do that. The real benefit to Cianbro, said Vigue, is that the state's economy will grow if the highway is built.

The highway would help businesses in central and northern Maine directly and would spur economic development, removing the impediment of remoteness to most of the upper two-thirds of the state.

The project also would benefit Atlantic Canada, allowing companies shipping from that region to cut across Maine and hook up to the Trans-Canada Highway. It would cut several hundred miles out of the trip that normally involves going up around Maine or down and through I-95, and allow quicker, easier access to Quebec, Montreal and mid-America.

But the only realistic way to get the road built, Vigue said, is through a private project.

"The world is changing because governments don't have the financial wherewithal to finance this stuff," said Vigue. "We've looked to government here in the state to solve our problems. It can't. And we'll continue to struggle, and our economy will continue to shrink.

"It's up to private entities to work together in a collaborative manner."

PRICE TAG OF MORE THAN $1 BILLION

The overall cost of an east-west highway would be more than $1 billion. Vigue's plan calls for construction to start in 2011, with the road open for commercial operation in late 2014.

According to Joe McKeever, vice president at Louis Berger, 60 to 70 percent of the proposed 220-mile route is on existing private roads used or owned by wood products...