According to AVCOG Transportation Day participants

• Upgrade Route 26 between Bethel and Poland.

• Downtown Connector and new turnpike interchange in Downtown Lewiston-Auburn.

• Reconstruct Town Farm Road in Farmington.

• New taxiway at Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport.

• Upgrade Route 2 between Rumford and Bethel.

Road work is tops on list

AUBURN – Regional roadwork trumps longer term transportation strategies, according to a group of regional municipal officials Friday.

Town managers, selectmen and city staffers from Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties picked road upgrades to Route 26, a new Lewiston-Auburn turnpike interchange and an enhanced Town Farm Road in Farmington as their biggest priorities for state funded transportation projects.

The group attending the Androscoggin Valley Council of Government’s Transportation Day meeting Friday at Martindale Country Club in Auburn gave fewer votes to plans for daily bus service between Lewiston-Auburn, Rumford, Farmington and Bethel.

“That doesn’t make those strategies less important to the region as whole, just to the people in this room,” said AVCOG’s Joan Walton.

The AVCOG Executive Board is scheduled to review the list at its Oct. 15 meeting in Farmington. They’ll select their top priorities and send them on to the state Department of Transportation.

Dale Doughty, acting director of Planning for the MDOT, said those priorities will be compared to lists from other regional groups and used to draw up a 20-year plan at the state level. That plan could decide which projects get state money and which don’t.

Work on Route 26 had the most support Friday. Walton said the road, between Poland and Bethel is one of several arterial roadways throughout western Maine in desperate need for work. The project has been planned for years, but the state hasn’t agreed to pay for it yet.

“We call them ‘arterial’ roads for a reason,” Walton said. “They really are the lifeblood for a lot of the region.”

The section of Route 26 from Poland north provides a critical link between Portland and New Hampshire. Sections are in very bad shape, however.

A proposed downtown Lewiston-Auburn turnpike interchange was popular as well.

“The turnpike was built in such a way that it bypasses the downtowns entirely,” Walton said. Plans being considered would put the new exit on the Auburn side, just before the turnpike crosses the Androscoggin River.

Work on the Town Farm Road in Farmington could move heavy traffic away from downtown Farmington and away from the University of Maine campus. Poland Spring Bottling Co. is considering building a bottling facility in Kingfield, and Town Farm Road would be an ideal route for the company’s trucks, she said.

The meeting also favored building a new taxiway at the Auburn Lewiston Municipal Airport, and work on Route 2 through Rumford. Designating the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad lines between Auburn and Portland as high speed rail lines also garnered votes.