Screaming matches, protests, people chaining themselves to trees — it wasn’t a pretty picture when the Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) came to Warren to widen a stretch of Route 1 two years ago. The conflict left deep scars on both sides and garnered national press coverage. It’s not a situation either MDOT or coastal Mainers would like to repeat.
Enter the Gateway 1 project, a $1.85 million program designed to help MDOT and midcoast communities work collaboratively to determine the future of coastal Route 1. Gateway 1 targets 21 coastal communities along a 110-mile stretch of Route 1 from Brunswick to Prospect and all island and peninsula communities in between. Each town has formed a town response panel and appointed a steering committee member to work with MDOT on the project for at least the next two years.
Kathy Fuller, head of the project and director of environmental affairs for MDOT, said Gateway 1 didn’t come directly from the Warren confrontations. Instead, she said the seeds were sown with the National Transportation Policy Act of 1991, when Congress tied future highway money to a mandate for more community input. Still, Fuller said, Warren did serve as an exclamation point.
“Warren further emphasized our need to make some changes,” she said.
Planning as a Region
Gateway’s mission is ambitious. Rather than attack Route 1 problems piecemeal, Gateway participants and the MDOT are attempting to look at the highway holistically and seek out root causes of transportation problems. Then, collaboratively, they hope to come up with the best solutions.
But perhaps the most ambitious component of Gateway 1 is not the attempt at collaborative planning between MDOT and coastal communities, but the attempt at collaborative planning amongst coastal communities themselves.
“The thing I’d like to see happen most is neighboring towns planning together on Route 1,” said Emily Pinkham, Damriscotta’s steering committee member.
Land-use decision-making has traditionally been viewed as a town’s domain, not a region’s. But if a unified approach to Route 1 is to work, Fuller said, there will need to be a somewhat unified approach to land-use planning among municipalities, as well.
A soon-to-be-released Gateway 1 study shows there might be hope for this. A survey conducted by the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine seems to reflect basic agreement in beliefs and attitudes about land use among coastal communities. The 521 midcoast Mainers polled also said they were open to some regional land-use decision-making.
“There seems to be some appetite for the idea that communities need to share authority,” said Evan Richert, associate professor at the Muskie School and the study’s author.
But the study also found a significant split in attitudes of the best use for land along Route 1. Some polled wanted robust economic development, while others saw the highway’s scenic appeal as its ultimate economic value.
“There’s this balancing act that needs to go on,” Richert said.
Slow So Far
By 2007, Fuller hopes MDOT and the steering committee will create scenarios for Route 1 that can then be studied for feasibility.
Damariscotta’s Pinkham said steering committee meetings haven’t generated much of anything yet. “It’s really been a learning process so far,” she said. But, she added, “I think it’s gaining momentum.”
Jane Lafleur, Camden’s steering committee representative and director of the smart-growth group Friends of Midcoast Maine, also thinks the meetings have gone slowly.
“I don’t think we’ve gotten to the hard stuff yet,” Lafleur said.
But, she said, she’s glad something as innovative as Gateway is happening at all.
“It’s really the first time in the country that this kind of planning has been done,” she said.
Lafleur isn’t completely sold on the idea that Gateway 1 will bring future smooth sailing between MDOT and Route 1 communities. She said Gateway 1 proponents are currently a minority within MDOT, and they could be overruled at any time. Still, she thinks Gateway 1 is the region’s best bet.
“It’s the only game in town,” she said. “You have to be part of it.”
If MDOT is to win the hearts of Route 1 communities through Gateway 1, it might face the stiffest opposition in Warren, where the battle over Route 1 widening is still fresh in everyone’s mind.
Diana Sewell lives on Route 1 in Warren and is on the town’s steering committee. As part of the original Warren protest movement, she said she was yelled at, threatened and barred from meetings. “I’m trying to go in there with an open mind, but it’s hard,” Sewell said. “The DOT probably ruined three years of my life.”
Sewell said she joined the Gateway 1 process largely to keep an eye on MDOT. “I have just a tremendous distrust of them,” she said. “I feel I have to go to these meetings.”
What’s Next?
Fuller hopes to have a draft plan for Route 1 sometime around 2008. The plan will then be offered to Midcoast communities for ratification.
But some worry what might happen if a community holds back ratification. They fear MDOT will push through proposed projects as it did in Warren. Fuller doesn’t see this happening. “The decision, I think, is going to have to be a partnership,” she said. But, she warned, MDOT can only plan as smartly with Route 1 as coastal communities do with their own land.
“It’s going to be a two-way street,” she said. “We can only go as far as the will of the people will allow us.”
But no matter what MDOT does in the end, coastal communities might come out of Gateway 1 politically stronger than before.
Camden’s Lafleur believes that if coastal towns are able to band together and learn how to plan together during the Gateway 1 process, they could become a powerful political force in the future. Even powerful enough to oppose MDOT, if need be.
“If you have 21 towns…all saying, `This is what we want’ in unison, it’s kind of hard to ignore,” Lafleur said.