Residents from Gorham and surrounding areas converged inside Shaw Gym at the Gorham Municipal Center on the evening of Sept. 22 for an update on initial findings from the Maine Department of Transportation’s Portland West Balanced Mobility Improvements Study. The well-attended open house–style event included detailed design drawings of four possible scenarios to address congestion and improve safety and mobility in the communities west of Portland.

As they circulated through the gym reviewing each scenario, attendees had options to weigh in on the pros and cons of each scenario, which ranged from localized, targeted roadway upgrades to the building of a four-lane highway connector, a solution previously advocated by the Maine Turnpike Authority. MaineDOT staff members were on hand at each station to provide detailed explanations of the scenarios and answer questions about the study process and next steps.

MaineDOT also presented its findings via a virtual public meeting on Sept. 24.

Per information on the department’s website, MaineDOT staff will use feedback from these meetings and from responses to public surveys to revise the alternatives. Then, each alternative will be evaluated “using traffic modeling and GIS to quantify the costs and benefits across all evaluation criteria for the mobility, safety, connectivity, community, environment, and feasibility categories.”

For those who couldn’t attend either the in-person or virtual presentation, you can still keep up with developments as study efforts proceed. Detailed information about all four proposed mobility improvement scenarios is available at https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7ae12d952d9a48e08c93713d1ab4f596