AUBURN – A nine-year timetable for a new turnpike exit is too long, according to some Auburn city councilors.

Councilors will vote to pass a feasibility study along to the state at their meeting on Nov. 1, and that will let plans for the downtown Lewiston-Auburn interchange continue into the next phase. That phase can take up to nine years, according to Don Craig, director of the Androscoggin Transportation Resource Center.

“It’s too long,” said City Councilor Joe DeFilipp. “It seems like this whole process is designed to delay and delay and delay us and keep us from getting a new interchange.”

Many in the community are frustrated, said Mayor Normand Guay.

“They see interchanges opening in South Portland and Westbrook and then up in Sabattus and Augusta, but not here,” Guay said.

The study calls for putting a new interchange on either side of the Androscoggin River, either on River Road in Lewiston or on Riverside Drive in Auburn. Parts of the study also call for building a bridge between the cities farther north, between the current south bridge and the new interchange.

Craig said the resource center has been working with consultants Wilbur Smith Associates to narrow down options. That has included studying traffic patterns, economics of the area and environmental impacts.

“We’re hopeful the work we’ve done so far will make the next stages shorter,” Craig said. Once the cities and the resource center send the study the state, the Maine Department of Transportation, the Maine Turnpike Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will begin environmental assessments of the options. Those assessments can take from two to nine years to complete.

“But we’ve included many of the environmental questions in our studies so far, hoping that will answer some of those questions,” Craig said.

Conrad Welzel, government relations spokesman for the Maine Turnpike Authority, estimated it would take 18 months to two years to complete all the studies.

Plans

The resource center has been studying where to put a new interchange for more than year. The two most controversial options are gone. Those two involved putting a turnpike exit around South Main Street in New Auburn.

The group is going forward with six different options. Two call for building a full interchange, either on Auburn’s Riverside Drive or on Lewiston’s River Road. A third plan would put a full interchange on the Auburn side and a half interchange across the river on River Road. The half interchange would let traffic to or from the south enter or exit there.

The next three plans also call for building an intercity bridge over the river, probably between the interchange and South Bridge. That bridge, combined with the three interchange possibilities, make up the final three suggestions.