East–West Highway (New England)

The East–West Highway is a long-proposed east–west highway corridor in northern New England, intended to link remote northern communities in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont with markets in the Maritimes, Quebec, and upper New York State.

Well-worn Yankee truisms like "You can't get there from here" have their basis in the difficulties east–west travel poses in much of northern New England.^{[citation needed]} Natural barriers like the White Mountains and significant distances to population centers in southern New England have left the region underdeveloped economically. (At present, Interstate 90 in Massachusetts is the northernmost complete east–west freeway in New England.)

Proposals for an east–west highway date back to the 1940s. In the early 1970s, all three northern New England states and New York proposed two new Interstate Highway corridors: one from Albany, New York, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and another from Glens Falls, New York, to Calais, Maine. The southerly corridor incorporated the route of the current New Hampshire Route 101 expressway, while the northerly corridor (designated as Interstate 92) traced U.S. Route 4 through Vermont and New Hampshire. The Federal Highway Administration ultimately did not approve the plan.

Current backers of the highway propose an east–west axis through northern and central Maine. One portion of the new highway would run from Interstate 395 in Brewer, Maine, to the Canada-United States border near Calais, with a direct link to New Brunswick Route 1—a major transportation corridor serving the Maritimes. A second would travel northwest from Interstate 95 near Waterville, Maine, to the Canada-United States border at Coburn Gore, with a connection to a proposed extension of Quebec Autoroute 10 toward Montreal. A third would travel due west from Interstate 95 near Waterville, following the U.S. Route 2 corridor through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and upper New York state.

Maine Senator Olympia Snowe said in 2004 that the region is disadvantaged by the fact that it was the only region in the United States for which a federal High Priority Corridor was not designated in the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act.^[1]

References

1. ^ Senator Olympia Snowe (25 June 2004). "East–West Highway Will Connect Mainers to All Points In-Between and Beyond". Weekly Senate Update. http://snowe.senate.gov/wsu06-25-04.htm. "Regionalism has been on the upswing since the establishment of the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Equity Act (ISTEA), which created 43 transportation corridors that are designated as federal "High Priority Corridors." But what is worrying is that while every region of the United States has a designated High Priority Corridor (HPC), New England does not. This leaves our region tremendously disadvantaged in competing economically given the tremendous volume of trade that is shipped through our ports and across our border with Canada. What is clear is that New England requires an HPC that includes portions of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine." 

External links

• Maine Department of Transportation 1999 east–west highway corridor study executive summary
• Maine Department of Transportation Web page on the highway proposal
• Steve Anderson's BostonRoads.com: Unbuilt Interstate 92 in New England
• Maine Citizens for Increased Jobs and Safety (Taken from the Internet Archive)