AUBURN – It’s an overworked joke in Maine that you can’t get there from here, but if the state doesn’t step up its transportation commitment, it could come true.

That was the message from Paul Lariviere, the keynote speaker at the Auburn Business Development Corp.’s annual breakfast meeting Wednesday. Lariviere is a senior associate with Maine Tomorrow, a transportation consulting firm that prepared the report “Can We Coast Much Longer” for the Maine Better Transportation Association last month.

The report casts a long look at Maine’s roads and bridges, many of which have been neglected over the past few years because of funding shortfalls, according to the report. Lariviere noted that in 1975, 25 percent of state revenues were earmarked for Maine roads, a percentage that fell to 10 percent by 2005.

“In the last couple of years we’ve seen a real deterioration in the condition of the pavement,” he told the crowd gathered at Martindale Country Club. “You’ve all seen it as you drive around and notice the badly rutted parts of I-95.”

Up until the mid-1990s, Maine’s maintenance and improvement schedule for roads was on par with New England and the nation. But as state funds were diverted to other uses, those schedules lapsed. The result is a higher percentage of roads in poor condition – rather than fair or good – and bridges that are perilously close to posting or closing, Lariviere said.

“In 2004, 25 percent of state roads had poor pavement, up from 6 percent in 2001,” said Lariviere as he gestured to his PowerPoint slide. “The cost to get roads back to good from fair is pretty small. But to improve poor roads, then you get into rebuilding the roads and the cost increases significantly.”

Lariviere said it would realistically take 25 years to bring all 200 miles of Maine’s most heavily traveled roads to modern standards, despite a 1998 directive from the Legislature to complete the task within 10 years. Lariviere said about one-third of the work has been done to date.

The situation is equally dire for Maine’s 2,600 bridges. More than 200 are more than 80 years old, beyond the typical life expectancy of a bridge.

The state was replacing old bridges on an average of 15 per year until this year and last, when the rate fell to six bridges, Lariviere said. The rate should be around 37 bridges per year to avoid a crisis down the road, he said.

“DOT (Maine Department of Transportation) denied a bridge bubble for a long time, but they just weren’t looking out far enough,” Lariviere said. “At 20 years it doesn’t look like a problem, but if you look 30 to 50 years out, there’s a bubble.”

“A third of our bridges will be 80 years old soon,” he said. “I think it’s likely a number of those will be closed or posted.”

The funding situation is exacerbated by a Legislature whose members are termed out in eight years, as is the governor. That makes it politically difficult to get traction on action that will prevent a crisis 30 to 40 years out, he said.

But there are groups trying. He said the MBTA is preparing a bill it hopes will be introduced within the next couple of weeks that calls for standards and timelines for Maine’s roads and bridges.

And he said the governor’s bond package, which sets aside $131 million for transportation, is a step in the right direction.

But more is needed, Lariviere said. Ceding that it’s a very unpopular idea, he noted that electronic technology makes tolls an appealing option. For instance, in 1993, the state considered a toll at the Carlton Bridge in Bath to help fund the replacement of that bridge. But charging each motorist 50 cents to cross the bridge would have only covered the cost of the toll system – it would have raised no revenues for the actual project.

“But today, things have changed,” Lariviere said. “With transponders and GPS systems, I think tolls are much more viable.”