MaineDOT’s Three-Year Work Plan

Maine’s transportation needs continue to outpace available resources. This has been the case for decades. In recent years, inflationary pressures have further complicated the matter. From the beginning of 2019 to the beginning of 2024, the National Highway Construction Cost Index shows a 71-percent increase in construction costs.

Fortunately for the people of Maine, lawmakers at both the federal and state levels have stepped up in recent years, working in a bipartisan fashion to deliver for transportation. This critical support has helped MaineDOT continue to deliver on its mission. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has been a game-changer for transportation funding in Maine. Additional support provided by the Mills Administration and the Maine Legislature has allowed the team at MaineDOT to start making real progress for the people of our state.

Creating MaineDOT’s Work Plan requires that we estimate future funding levels using reasonable assumptions. We make these assumptions with humility and respect, noting that decisions regarding funding are ultimately made by policymakers.

As mentioned above, MaineDOT’s State of the System report generally describes the impacts of varying funding levels moving forward. These are the three funding levels we have evaluated for this edition of the Work Plan:

• MacGyver Mode – A return to lower transportation investments would require MaineDOT to go back to competently managing the slow decline of the transportation system. This level of investment would allow our team to operate and maintain the system in an acceptable way, but asset performance levels would likely decline. While dollar-stretching ingenuity will always be part of managing a transportation system like ours, it can’t be the only approach if we want to continue to make progress.
• Pragmatic Progress – This level of investment would keep MaineDOT on its current track, allowing Maine to make steady progress in targeted areas. Performance measures in all modes would be maintained or improved with reasoned levels of investment. This funding level would support strategic investments in villages, limited capacity expansion, targeted multimodal improvements, highway improvement programs, and bridge investments for a sustainable transportation system.
• Aspirational – This level of investment would address all identified needs and raise performance levels. It would reflect responsible progress at accelerated rates. Aspirational levels of investment would result in conditions improving to meet or exceed State of Good Repair levels. This would not be an unlimited funding level but a level that is supported through quantifiable calculations with associated expected performance.

This Work Plan assumes that current funding levels will remain, providing MaineDOT with the resources needed to continue on a path of pragmatic progress. This approach reflects recent bipartisan judgements and provides enhanced safety, economic prosperity, and quality of life benefits in a measured and sustainable way.

This Work Plan contains more than $1 billion in funding from federal discretionary grant programs and Congressionally Directed Spending awards. Many of the major projects planned for the years ahead involve these special funding sources and are detailed below.

MaineDOT currently has five community-based initiatives and is launching a sixth with this Work Plan. While each one serves a unique purpose, these programs are all designed to identify specific transportation system improvements that can help communities better realize their own visions and priorities.

• Village Partnership Initiative (VPI) – Launched in 2022, MaineDOT’s VPI focuses on projects in lower-speed areas where people meet, walk, shop, and do business on a human scale. Maine's iconic New England villages are part of who we are, part of our brand, and a key part of our economy and quality of life. Simply put, the goal of the VPI is to make sure that once you get there, the there is a place you want to be. In this way, these projects can be bigger than transportation; they can become placemaking.

VPI projects are already underway in Sanford, Windham, and Portland. These projects have already been awarded discretionary federal grant funding. Several other projects are also moving forward into the preliminary engineering and design phases.

MaineDOT continues to work with dozens of additional studies that may result in future VPI projects.

• Planning Partnership Initiative (PPI) – The PPI is intended to address time-sensitive, locally initiated planning and feasibility studies that occur outside MaineDOT’s normal annual Work Plan cycle. This program is intended to be simple, flexible, and fast-moving for new economic development and other high-priority proposals. PPI work may result in a VPI.

Maine has three deepwater ports. The working waterfronts along our state’s coastline rely on investments to critical infrastructure in ports and harbors. This Work Plan provides $88 million for capital projects to support the development of Maine’s ports and marine infrastructure. Highlights of that work include:

• A Port Infrastructure Development Program (PDIP) Grant for a refrigeration infrastructure which, along with the new cold storage facility at the International Marine Terminal (IMT) in Portland, will double the current refrigerated storage capacity at the IMT – $17.8 million.
• Small Harbor Improvement Plan (SHIP) projects – $12.3 million.
• Boating Infrastructure Grants (BIG) from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – $7.8 million.