By U.S. Sen. Susan Collins
(R-Maine)
Growing up in Caribou, I saw every day how hard the people of Aroostook County work to support their families and how dedicated our businesses are to providing good jobs and opportunity. These are invaluable assets for economic growth, but our location and size — the largest county east of the Mississippi River — make a modern and efficient transportation network especially crucial for The County to move forward.
Rail is a critical part of this network, and the recent decision by the U.S. Department of Transportation to assist Maine in saving the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA) lines in Aroostook and northern Penobscot counties is great news for our region and our state. This assistance is a $10.5 million federal investment to repair and improve the 233 miles of tracks that the people of Maine voted to purchase with the help of a $7 million bond package last June. This combined commitment will help ensure continued rail service to about two dozen businesses in the region, helping to secure nearly 2,000 jobs that the abandonment of rail service would have jeopardized.
The decision by MMA Railway to abandon the tracks in Northern Maine was another unfortunate consequence of our nation’s economic downturn. MMA officials stated that they could not wait until the economy recovered because of mounting losses resulting from the decline in freight traffic. In addition, MMA has allowed the track to deteriorate significantly causing its service to be extremely slow. At the same time, however, economic recovery in Aroostook and northern Penobscot would have been severely hampered by the loss of this vital transportation link. Mills in other parts of the State that depend on wood fiber from Aroostook also would have been affected.
The MMA tracks are northern Maine’s only link to the national rail network. As a member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, I made preserving the rail line a priority. At a Subcommittee hearing last March, just after MMA announced its intention to abandon these tracks, I described this potential crisis to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and gained his assurance that he would work with Maine to help address this critical matter.
Secretary LaHood’s follow-through has been exemplary. Shortly after the hearing, he sent the Federal Rail Administrator and a team of transportation officials to Maine. Our meeting with state officials and business leaders laid the groundwork for the plan that now is in place to save the railway.
This plan included the State applying for a grant through the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER, program. In September, I wrote and called Secretary LaHood, urging him to fully fund the $10.5 million request, and I was delighted to receive his call in October informing me that the TIGER grant had been approved. This grant ultimately will improve the quality of the track and thus the service to the businesses that rely on the railroad.
In the County, numerous businesses, particularly in the forest products industry and in potato processing, would have been unfairly hurt if the railroad had been abandoned. McCain’s, the Louisiana Pacific mill, and Twin Rivers come quickly to mind. But other businesses rely on the continued operation of the MMA rail lines as well. In Houlton, Tate & Lyle manufactures high quality starch used in processed food, while Northern Maine Distilling Company is a young start-up whose hand-crafted vodka is gaining a wide following. These businesses exist because of hard work and dedication. They can thrive with this cost-effective transportation link secured for the future.
