By Kerri Pepoy,Staff Writer

POLAND – Fearful that badly needed improvements to Route 26 are being overlooked in favor of new transportation projects in other parts of the state, the head of EnterpriseMaine is trying to jump-start a coalition to lobby for funds to fix the deteriorating state artery.

“I’m not knocking these other projects. But what I am saying is that we need to fix what we have now before we start building new roads,” Brett Doney, president and chief executive officer of EnterpriseMaine, said Tuesday.

A meeting at Poland’s town office brought together managers from the Maine Department of Transportation, representatives from the state Legislature, and officials from towns along Route 26 including selectmen and managers from Oxford, Norway, Greenwood, Paris, Woodstock and Poland, as well as representatives from the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments. Representatives from Sen. Olympia Snowe’s office also attended.

DOT managers briefed attendees on Route 26 projects that were impacted by the $130 million in project deferments that DOT recently released. DOT said the deferments, which affect communities across the state, were forced by higher construction costs and the federal government’s new transportation funding system that impacted cash flow and reprioritized several projects.

Attendees then brainstormed how they could lobby for money to improve Route 26, which was recently listed as the fifth most congested highway in the state.

Doney said the meeting would hopefully kick-start the Route 26 Corridor Coalition, which was successful in the 1990s in securing money for improvements to Route 26 but has waned in recent years. He said the state Legislature in the late 1990s committed to fixing rural roads over a 10-year period, but lawmakers are instead favoring new roads over improving existing ones.

“I would like to get the Legislature recommitted to fixing existing rural arterials,” he said. “Money gets allocated in two ways. DOT’s planning perspective plays into it, but politics do play a role. Not partisan politics, but regional politics.”

Doney said Route 26 does not meet federal highway safety standards, and many sections of the road have been patched several times rather than being rebuilt. “The federal standards now are 12 feet of lane and 8 feet of shoulder. In many sections (of Route 26) we have 10 feet of lane and no shoulder.”

Meanwhile, he said, funding has been allocated elsewhere including a new $20 million highway that will connect Houlton to Presque Isle. “We need to get organized so we can start competing for this money,” he said. “We have not had our fair share. I see us being pushed further and further back.”

DOT officials acknowledged that projects slated for Route 26 have been delayed in Poland and Oxford, but said the situation is not completely bleak. The Gray bypass that will connect Route 26 with Route 202 is fully funded and bids should be posted “any day” with construction starting early next year, said George MacDougall, DOT project manager. That project should be open to traffic in fall of 2007.

However construction funding is delayed that would build a center turn lane and upgrade drainage and pavement on a stretch of Route 26 in Oxford beginning at Burlington Homes and extending to Skeetfield Road. Construction on the project is not anticipated to start until late 2007, MacDougall said.

And a 3.9-mile stretch of Route 26 in Poland beginning at the intersection of Route 122 and extending north to Brown Road also was delayed. Shawn Smith, also a DOT project manager, said construction on the entire section probably would not start until late 2006 or early 2007.