Maine
Jump in freight traffic brings hope and headaches to rural Maine towns along rail route
As extra freight trains journey throughout Maine between northern Washington County and northern Somerset County, rural cities alongside the route have needed to steadiness their hopes for bettering their native economies with logistical challenges offered by the elevated rail visitors.
Vanceboro, the place Canadian trains from the rising Port of Saint John cross into Maine en path to Quebec, could face the most important logistical complication of all of them.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has stated it should begin closing the car crossing there for 12 hours a day, as an alternative of maintaining it open across the clock, so it could possibly “higher serve rail visitors” that crosses the Saint Croix River from Canada.
“The port of Vanceboro has seen a considerable enhance in rail visitors whereas demonstrating a lower in car visitors,” an company spokesperson stated just lately. “These officers at present devoted to processing passengers in the course of the discount interval will probably be reallocated to inspecting cargo and rail visitors.”
That doesn’t sit properly with native officers in Vanceboro and McAdam, 5 miles throughout the border in New Brunswick, who say that the lowered entry would vastly disrupt life for space residents, a lot of whom have twin citizenship and family on reverse sides of the border. About 100 folks dwell in Vanceboro and 1,000 dwell in McAdam.
Cheryl Lengthy, a Vanceboro selectman and former native railroad worker, stated that regardless of the company’s claims about declining car visitors, she has seen that extra folks have moved to the city previously two years. She stated the soar in practice visitors throughout the border ought to be a motive for increasing border patrol sources in Vanceboro, not decreasing car entry.
“I don’t suppose there may be even one home on the market on the town,” Lengthy stated. “I hope the practice visitors will continue to grow. There ought to be much more jobs out there.”
Cheryl Nadeau, Jackman’s city supervisor, stated that after Canadian Pacific purchased the previous Central Maine and Quebec Railway line in 2020, it despatched crews to city for just a few months to improve the road. Many of the native lodging companies had been full and the eating places had been busy whereas the work was being executed, which helped the native economic system, she stated.
The corporate additionally has added two new jobs which are based mostly in Jackman.
However the trains are lengthy, and every time they cross Essential Avenue in Jackman — three or 4 instances a day — they bring about native visitors to a halt for half-hour or extra. Additionally they are required to blast their horns on the crossing, which wakes up close by residents at night time.
The repeated practice crossings at Essential Avenue will not be only a matter of inconvenience, Nadeau stated. What worries native officers most is that the city’s ambulance service and fireplace station are positioned on one aspect of the tracks, and the native well being heart is on the opposite. Having them minimize off from one another whereas a practice is passing by way of city might hamper response instances in an emergency, she stated.
“That’s our largest challenge,” Nadeau stated. “The trains have been two miles lengthy, and typically they’re longer than that. We’re going to speak to Maine DOT about a few of our issues.”
In Brownville, which lengthy has hosted an operations junction for the railroads which have owned the road, the rise in rail visitors has not posed any important issues for native residents. The influence of Canadian Pacific coming to city has been constructive, stated Felice Lyford, Brownville’s city supervisor.
“They’ve put in cash,” Lyford stated, including that the corporate constructed a brand new operations constructing on the town final yr. “There are a substantial amount of residents on this space who work for the railroad.”
The variety of folks employed by rail firms has fluctuated through the years, however trains have at all times been a significant a part of the city’s id, she stated. For many years, many native residents who didn’t work for the railroad commuted jobs on the paper mill in Millinocket or the shoe manufacturing facility in Dexter. These companies shut down within the early 2000s, across the identical time that Bangor and Aroostook Railroad, the native rail operator on the time, went bankrupt.
“It was fairly devastating to this space,” Lyford stated. “Exercise dwindled down a lot. To have the railroad choose up and are available again is a giant deal.”