Downeaster fails to win federal grants
Photo/Tim Greenway
The Amtrak Downeaster will expand from Portland to Brunswick next year
Requests totaling $20 million for projects related to the expansion of the Amtrak Downeaster were denied by the federal government, but rail authorities intend to look elsewhere for money to bring rail service and related operations to Brunswick.
Three Downeaster requests that would have helped defray the costs of building a maintenance facility and improving rail capacity and efficiency were not among the $511 million awarded Thursday by the federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program, according to The Times Record. Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which applied for the Maine rail grants, told the paper the latest round of TIGER awards was "extremely competitive" and the agency would seek alternative ways of financing the projects.
NNEPRA intends to bring passenger rail service to Brunswick from Portland by 2012 and to build a train maintenance facility there. In September, NNEPRA received $21 million for rail improvements from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
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