A transportation plan addresses the Twin Cities’ needs in coming years.
AUBURN – Foreign trade, rail service and highway improvements are all part of the plan.
The final draft of a 20-year transportation plan sets the agenda for the next two decades. It calls for major highway and road improvements, and other transportation projects to deal with population shifts away from the Twin Cities to surrounding towns.
The Androscoggin Transportation Resource Center’s Policy Committee officially adopted the plan last week, after waiting for public comment through November.
There were no public comments, said Director Don Craig. “Most people don’t really feel that it’s necessary to even look at a plan at this stage, until they start to see lines on a map.”
But the plan is important for the group’s state and federal funding status. The Transportation Resource Center needs to submit and update a 20-year plan every three years to qualify for grants. The center, an offshoot of the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, studies travel and transportation issues in Lewiston, Auburn, Lisbon and Sabattus.
The Maine Department of Transportation offered the only comment on the report, suggesting some format changes but none in the actual content.
More commuters
Population is projected to grow slowly in the Twin Cities over the next 20 years, but employment should increase by 35 percent, according to the report.
The plan recommends improvements to make room for an increase in commuter traffic. They include a downtown turnpike interchange off either Route 136 in Auburn or River Road in Lewiston, and a bus and rail station near the Auburn-Lewiston Airport.
The plan also recommends improvements to the roads between Lewiston-Auburn and Bath-Brunswick, possibly along Route 136.
The committee also updated its boundary map, adding the area between Sabattus Pond and Pond Road in Sabattus.
“Based on the 2000 Census, that’s become a more urbanized part of the area,” Craig said. “It doesn’t change anything but it brings more of that town into our area.”
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