AUBURN — Business and municipal leaders from Western Maine will gather at the Northern New England Rally for Passenger Rail next week.
It will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24, at the Hilton Garden Inn. The deadline for registration was Sept. 14.
Speakers will include Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, and Peter Morelli, former town planner and development director for Saco. He will share his experience with advocacy and the community investment required to become a stop on the Amtrak Downeaster. Morelli will also speak about the positive impact rail had on the Saco-area economy.
Rep. Jared Golden, D-Lewiston, will also speak.
Legislation that provides funding to complete a service plan for implementation of passenger rail service between Lewiston and Auburn and the Amtrak Downeaster service was sponsored by Golden and approved by the Maine Legislature.
“The format will encourage open participation and allow for plenty of time for questions of the panelists and members of the AOCC,” Robin Zinchuk, executive director of the Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce, said in a news release. She is longtime advocate of passenger rail into Western Maine and northwest to Montreal.
“Let’s picture the rail lines as we are now viewing our rivers,” she said. “Visualize the new commerce that could be realized! At one point — not too many years ago, when our rivers were polluted — our communities turned their backs on them. Now that they are cleaner, businesses are gravitating and community assets are being developed along the waterfronts.
“In a similar vein, we should be developing new thinking about the economic and community benefits derived from commerce created along, and adjacent to, the rail lines. Only then can we view expenditures that federal, state and local governments strategically make on rail as investments in our future,” Zinchuk said in the release.
The rally is hosted by the Androscoggin, Oxford and Coos Counties Rail Coalition, which is a consortium of Western Maine towns and businesses working to re-establish passenger rail service between Boston and Montreal via Western Maine and Eastern New Hampshire.
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