CPF66 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 02, 2024 7:17 am
To be fair, the only expansions I could see the DE pull off with some sort of decent ridership levels would either be an expansion to Lewiston/Auburn or an expansion to Westbrook like what has been discussed in recent years. With the expansion to L/A, by the time the ball ever gets rolling again CSX will have the track speeds up, which will lower the cost maybe to the point where the legislature might bite.
An expansion to Augusta or to points east is a money loosing concept. It would be one thing if there were a large number of commuters traveling between say Augusta and Bangor, or points further south like Portland. However, I think you will find most of the people commuting to work to the east of Brunswick primarily work in those towns. Everyone I know normally travels less than a 30 mile round trip, which would severely cut down the ridership.
For the record, LD 860 is officially dead; the House insisted upon their acceptance of the ONTP report out of committee.
The trouble with running the DE to L/A (other than the dubious CPR) is that you now have two split routes, Lewiston and Brunswick, and extending north via Lewiston means that Augusta would be serviced via a station in downtown Winthrop (where is our friend Mr. O'Keefe these days?) Going north from Brunswick requires a substantial investment in restoring the Lower Road and means bypassing L/A, but it would run directly past the State House and possibly through "downtown" Augusta. I recall that, when M&E operated the Maine Eastern, they proposed running DMU's on the Lower Road from the Brunswick station to the foot of Capitol Park, but they lost the contract for the Rockland Branch just after the Brunswick extension came online.
Either way, running farther north than the Downeaster already goes means extending transit into a vast area sparsely populated by people who, for the most part, have chosen to live in an area where public transit is not part of life.
"...And then I thought, every time some company creates a more powerful locomotive does Superman become more powerful as well or is he stuck at 1938 locomotive power levels?" - A friend of mine elsewhere
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