Here’s an example of how some town and county officials are making transportation decisions for us all. Traveling around Maine, if you drive, you thrive.

If you don’t drive-----Hitch Hike, damn it!
The story below happened at an Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments “Transportation” meeting. The meeting was held at Martindale Country Club. The interest in public transportation was minimal, at best.

We, as people who need transportation and people who are often priced out of transportation by the high costs of decent cars, gasoline, maintenance, and insurance must begin to make ourselves heard. When you read the following, as published in the Sun Journal in September, and you read the companion story about Go Maine does it make you wonder what people with disabilities have to do to get more serviceable public transportation so we can go to work when we find a job?

“Regional Transportation Priorities Road work is tops on list By Scott Taylor , Staff Writer

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.”

How many among us don’t drive? How many are too financially strapped to own a decent car?

Isn’t it time we contacted The Maine DOT commissioner and Dale Doughty to find out how to make our voices heard as loudly as AVCOG and other organizations? Call Maine DOT today! Ask for David Cole, the commissioner, and express your opinion.

(Quoted Source;
From the Saturday Sept. 16, SunJournal
http://www.sunjournal.com/index.php?storyid=19548 )

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