State forgets about Maine residents north of Augusta unfortunately.

Edit: North

Never going to happen. Not nearly enough ridership potential.

I'm being a little snarky, but have you contacted a representative or anything about this, or is the extent of your effort? Because asking reddit is going to accomplish nothing. Reach out to Joe Baldacci about it, he sponsored a bill last year to study bringing rail service to Bangor.

I'll get right on that for ya

The existing bus lines are barely making it. There’s not enough demand for passenger travel by land.

My father has long suggested that someone bring historic steam trains back to Maine, especially a scenic Bangor to Calais route. It could be a tourist trap.

The capitalist catch-22, need infrastructure to keep people in low pop places, can't build infrastructure because it's not profitable for low pop places.

The tracks are long gone. Replacing them would cost tens of millions of $$.

You can subsidize it but that’s never popular since it is intended to either lose money or pad the pockets of a private company. Socialized losses; privatized gains

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Only way it would work is if Bangor were in the middle of a route they went to Quebec City or St John. Not enough riders to justify a Bangor end of line.

Bangor to quebec would be an amazing train ride

Why? Bangor is a dying town.

Actually most of the bus lines in Maine (and the US) are subsidized by the federal government.

3rd latest city and could anchor a route, especially in conjunction with Orono and Old Town stops. Durham/UNH is one of the busiest stops on the Amtrak Downeaster today.

That train contributed to southern Maines down fall. You don’t want it going any further.

UNH and UMO are vastly different places in terms of surrounding population. Apples and oranges. Not only that, just because it is still kind of large now, doesn't mean it will continue. Bangor is currently declining at a rate of -0.41% annually and has been for over 30 years.

Put the train cars on lowbeds and truck them across the airline. Cheap and easy.

Boston to Quebec would do well I would think..

All transit is “subsidized”. Driving a car is also heavily subsidized, just in different ways.

The existing bus lines suck because they turn a 3 hour drive into a 12 hour drive.

Chicken and egg problem. Existing bus service is paltry, so no one rides it, and service isn’t expanded because no one rides it.

Transit needs to be easier than driving because driving will always be more convenient. Making transit easier means making it run more frequently and making it run faster (dedicated bus lanes or dedicated rail).

I saw articles earlier this year about a proposal to run a train to Rockland

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I did a flip flop hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2016 where I hiked from Georgia to West Virginia, then bought an Amtrak ticket from D.C. to Bangor. What I didn’t notice was that there was a 4 hour delay in Portland waiting for the contracted bus to finish the route. I would have easily paid an extra $100 to just stay on a train and not waste all the time and effort getting to and onto a bus for a slow ride. Take it easy.

Have you ever taken the train from Portland to Boston? It stops every 50 feet

Dedicated bus lane in central Maine lol. Totally unnecessary. Rail is only faster without stops, the trip by train from Portland yo Boston is no time saver

I'd ride the heck out of it.

Well yeah. But you can be drinking all the beer while it’s stopping every 50 feet. Still a win in my book. Plus it’s super fun for kids. I have been bringing my daughter on that route for years and we play cards and hang out. Way more fun than me driving while she asks when we’re going to get there!

Disclaimer: I do it without the beer when my daughter is with me 😂😂😂

It's all of 8-9 stops from Portland to Boston.

The timing for routes would not work starting on Bangor

It’s faster using the concord coach bus. Also cheaper and more frequent

Correct. 10 mins per stop equals 90 mins of not moving, one way.

I think you got your cardinal directions mixed up

Why? It a million years it could not sustain itself. It is expensive to acquire property, build and maintain a railroad. There aren’t enough people who would use it to make it work.

Rail travel is dog shit in this country.

Sure did just edited it

The train stops for like 30 seconds bro

love it, yes please

I really like this idea. And I would do it so I could carry passengers up Maine. If I ever win the lottery that’s what I’m doing!

The train is a half-hour slower than the bus or just driving in yourself. None of the stops are longer than a couple of minutes.

The thing is drilling through miles of mountain ridges and making bridges. Sure it would be a beautiful journey but it would take many many years to do assuming people from Maine would want it but considering it’s connecting Massachusetts to their state, I’d argue that wouldn’t really go that well.

ok its on its way

Ok, I'll play, how in the world are you correlating those two things?

Friendly reminder before you start typing, correlation =/= causation.

If it goes via Rockland then maybe. Extremely slim chance it goes via Augusta, since the railroad bridge over route 24 in Richmond has been completely removed (initially they removed just the actual bridge itself, but more recently they removed the side supports for it too, which pretty much tells me there's a near-zero chance it ever comes back).

I’m just happy it’s frequently coming to Brunswick now. Used to be a drive to Portland if I wanted to go to Boston, now it’s a 3 minute drive to the station. I can also say there’s barely anyone on the train in Brunswick as is. I just went down to the Bruins game last weekend, big Saturday game against the Cup champs, sell out game caliber showing, there was maybe 10 of us getting on the train here. Portland is still the huge hub by a mile. I’m sure it would be arguable to have an Augusta stop. Bangor would make that a pretty long trip though, plus it would really change the scheduling for the much more frequent Portland-Boston trains.

I’d absolutely love a train to Canada though. As others have said, it would take a ton of work and probably not remotely enough interest to be funding that.

I love this idea. Some of us can maybe at least get a day or two in Canada when the tourists are tourist ing.

>Not enough riders to justify a Bangor end of line.

Heck, are there enough to justify Brunswick as the end of the line? Whenever I've taken it from Portland to Dover, it's at about 10% capacity.

Trust me, dude. Maine would absolutely rather be a stop on Massachusetts’ trips than their destination

>driving will always be more convenient

If I want to get from home in Unity to visit family in NH and back, I need a 45 minute car ride from someone to a bus that takes 3 1/4 hours with five stops, or a 1 1/2 hours ride to a train that takes almost 2 hours with 4 stops, then with either, another 45 minute car ride from someone- EACH WAY. Between tickets and gas, it costs $35-95.

If I drive myself, it's a bit over a 5 hour round trip that costs about $30 in gas.

I don't expect Maine to ever have good public transportation because we just don't have the population to support it, but damn, it would be nice.

You need rezonings to allow additional residential construction so that the potential ridership is higher. But for that to even matter, there needs to be at least some market pressure for more residences there due to good job opportunities, which there really aren't in Bangor's moribund local economy. But jobs, housing, ridership, and new rail service is the order of operations.

With climate migration, that population density will come, but it's still a generation away.

The metro area has grown +50%. They’re leaving Bangor for its suburbs, and those people still would use the rail whether they lived in Bangor, or moved out to Bucksport

Why does transportation need to turn a profit?

We have no problems dumping trillions into road repair so that GM can profit from making cars that break down after 100k miles. The amount we subsidize for a car centric culture is now turning against us, we are 70% overweight and 50% obese because we moan about walking distances longer than a driveway. They had no problems stealing farmland to build 95 and the state roads, so why not do it for railroads?

Trains long term are cheaper. But Nope! GM and Elon Musk can’t profit from it so it’s a bad idea

I like it. Cosigned.

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You would need massive growth in Bangor to be worth doing an Amtrak line, and that comes with a lot of its own issues. It's not a very large city. Personally I kinda like Bangor how it is. Not too big and busy, not too small as to have nothing.

Even in areas with good transit it can't compete with driving (in my experience.) I lived in Seattle, and right on a rail like in Pittsburgh and transit would still take longer than just driving to your destination. Normally a good 3x as long.

Yeah, this is the fundamental issue. Transit can compete with driving in congested cities, but in those cases we're usually talking about rail. For buses to be competitive with driving, they need dedicated bus lanes and priority at traffic lights.

I sometimes have to travel from Pittsburgh, PA to Bangor, ME and I seriously wish this would be a thing.

Since it would likely go past Augusta, seconded

should we also close all the roads that don't turn a profit? Or is it only trains that need to do this? Does the road YOU live on 'turn a profit"?

I live by some tracks that I heard will be converted eventually to passenger rail and you can go from Boston to Montreal. It will pass through Bangor but not stop there. Closest stop will be bRunswick

Total pipe dream I know but imagine a dual high speed line from Boston, one that went from Boston to Montreal, then Quebec City, and then hugged the Canadian border to St. John NB. The second went from Boston along Eastern Maine hitting Portsmouth NH, Portland, Augusta, Bangor, Bar Harbor and then connected with the first line in St. John. After connection one line went to Halifax

Would be sweet, but probably tough with the whole border thing

Even with the migration, I'll bet most people will settle in southern Maine and that won't bring infrastructure changes further north. It'll probably become one gross giant city from Providence to Portland.

The Concord Coach Line ride isn’t bad from Boston to Bangor. Just two stops in Portland and Augusta.

I disagree to some extent here. I live in Brunswick and have had to ride the train down several times, mostly very early in the morning (through to North Station). I've been almost alone on the train, but I've also seen it quite crowded. The bulk of the ridership on the southbound trip definitely boards in Portland, though.

With that being said I'll jealously guard my ability to board the train less than a mile from my house in Brunswick ... I just wish it didn't stop a hundred times on the trip to Boston effectively making the trip an hour longer than driving or taking a Concord Coach.

So If you wanna be hard core anti socialist/anti marxist you drive down the median like a boot strap pulling god? (Yelling America with your sister wife as banjos play YMCA.)

To go where? Boston? Boston to MTL via Burlington hasn't ever made money. Who is going to take it and to where to make any financial sense? Lot of people going to Boston, NY and DC live in banger.

No way we are going to lay new tracks. Id love to see high speed passenger rail but its a pipe dream it will ever come to a city losing businesses and populations. Better to take and run Mass to Acadia.

Where in Quebec? MTL or Quebec city? Neither will work as they dont work now Boston via Burlington to MTL. The government has to subsidize the crap out of it.

Its a blast to ride but its a slow moving ghost train.

I think as petro becomes more expensive, it would attract t more people

No not really just run the train between two airports in each country

I think Quebec City via existing lines with a bangor branch. Bangor sees a ton of PQ tourists every year AND IS CENTRAL maine located, and you could just link Logan bangor International and Quebec City Airport, so customs has all ready existing infrastructure to support international travelers

Actually the road I live on does turn a profit. Property taxes and gas tax maintain the road. Over the years, it has more than paid for itself. Don’t get me wrong, I like trains. The issue is,for large capital outlays, we as a country really need to start looking at investment opportunities based upon the return they provide to everyone. I realize people will hate this but, it is a simple spreadsheet exercise. We all want a lot of things. But the best ideas should be funded that provide an actual return so we can afford to do additional good ideas.

You absolutely have not paid enough in gas tax to make your specific road profitable, I call bullshit.

You have no clue.

Train is far more comfortable though, unless I can get to the back row my knees are either in my chest or buried in the seat in front of me on Concord Coach.

The tracks would have to be replaced in order to operate passenger service over them. The current tracks can support up 80mph in some areas with 60mph bing the highest along most of the route. So to upgrade to 90-110mph wouldn't be that hard to do and add more double track to run more service and to reduce conflicts with freight trains which is possible since most of the ROW used to have 2 tracks with one removed. You can run 3 RTs between Bangor and Boston with an overnight service extending into Canada to Halifax. The current Downeaster service loses money and so does the Interstate highway / road network no one complains about that.

Yep, 100% agreed. I even drop the extra $10 for business class on Amtrak. Plus, Amtrak goes to north station and the bus doesn’t, so it’s really dependent on where your final destination in Boston is. Airport is a no brainer for the bus.

The Northeast Megalopolis, pretty much DC to Portland.

there is a route that goes to Toronto from NY, Amtrak already knows how to handle it

You need 25 households for every 0.25 miles of Road to break even. Anything less dense and you’re being subsidized by Portland