Next year will mark 40 years since trains last moved along the Mountain Division's tracks west of Portland. It may also be the year the Maine Legislature is asked to approve turning 31 miles of that track into a recreational trail.
This past May, an advisory committee voted 11-1 to remove the rails and ties and pave a 10-foot-wide path. It would be available to hikers, bikers and, in winter, snowmobilers.
"There's numerous studies out there showing that bike trails actually do provide a number of economic benefits." says Paul Schumacher, executive director of the Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission, who served as chair of the advisory group.
Schumacher said that's why he thinks support for the trail proposal was so strong. He said the towns the trail would pass through, Standish, Baldwin, Hiram, Brownfield and Freyburg, "were very much in favor of it."
The single opposing vote came from Jack Sutton, a member of the Maine Rail Group.The Mountain Division tracks connect to rails in New Hampshire and Vermont. In a minority report, Sutton wrote that the advisory committee "overlooks the true strategic/economic value of the Mountain Division as a continuous railroad corridor to the tri-state region by assessing its potential largely based on comparative costs of trail construction vs. rail restoration in Maine alone."
Sutton, and some others on the advisory panel urged an alternative that would locate a path alongside the rails. But Schumacher, the group's chair, said that would have been expensive and "due to some of the environmental conditions," he said, "very difficult to do."
The Maine Department of Transportation must still agree to propose the recreation trail to the Legislature. And money will have to be found. The advisory committee estimates the cost at $19.8 million.
