Legislature considers return of passenger train service to Bangor
File photo Courtesy / Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority
If approved by the Legislature, a feasibility study would explore an extension of the Amtrak Downeaster, which runs Boston to Brunswick, to Bangor.
Bangor hasn’t been served by passenger trains since 1961, but there’s new interest — and a new investment — in their return.
A bill introduced in the state Senate last week would provide $300,000 for a feasibility study and the development of a plan to extend passenger rail service to Bangor along existing railroad corridors. The extension would begin in Brunswick, where the Amtrak Downeaster service to Boston currently dead-ends, and run through Augusta and Waterville.
The bill, sponsored by freshman Sen. Joseph Baldacci, D-District 9, and seven co-sponsors, has gone to the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation. On Monday, the Bangor City Council is scheduled to take up a resolution supporting the proposal.
Connecting the Portland corridor by passenger rail with Augusta, Waterville and the Bangor metro area, Maine’s second-largest, would benefit much of the state, Baldacci told Mainebiz on Friday.
“It’s important that we have the state’s economy interconnected and all regions of the state interconnected,” he said.
He’s optimistic that the feasibility study will receive bipartisan support in the Legislature, and that elected representatives “will see it makes a lot of sense" for constituents beyond Bangor.
Still, the idea has been proposed, unsuccessfully, before — in 2001 and in 2017.
The revival of passenger train service in Maine has long been popular, but plans have sometimes been derailed by financial and logistical obstacles.
The Downeaster set a record high for ridership in 2019, carrying 574,000 passengers before the pandemic idled trains for much of the year. But it looked as if the train might never leave the station when the service was proposed in the 1990s. Concerns about speed limits and necessary track upgrades delayed the start until 2001.
After 40 years without train service, Mainers embraced the return. Amtrak and the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority added trips and stops, and in 2012 extended Downeaster service to Brunswick. Since then there have been discussions about additional routes.
A study in 2019 estimated the cost of launching a train link between Portland and Westbrook at $54 million to $74 million. Service to Lewiston was floated in 2015, when the Legislature approved $500,000 for a feasibility study. NNEPRA has also considered a pilot project to test service to Rockland.
But the Downeaster “was never brought here just for southern Maine,” Baldacci said. “It’s time to extend passenger rail to the central part of the state.”
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I am looking forward to passenger train service extending to Bangor. I hope that track improvements and other considerations will be smoother with CSX as the new owner of Pan Am.
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