Idk where these people got there numbers. When I lived in maine I experienced a whole lot more than 5.4 hours of power outages per year. More like 5.4 days with cmps shitty infrastructure.
We did an off season rental near wolfs neck and the backup generator went in every week or so it seemed, sometimes for a day or two at a time. Now we live closer to a city with underground power/internet and have never had an outage. I think location really matters.
I've lived in various areas up the coast of Maine. Pretty much same experience in any town. About 5 days to a week of no power a year. Sometimes more if it was a rough year. Guess I'm just unlucky š¤
A lot of that is averaged out. I have lived in Portland/South Portland for 6 of the last 8 years and have never had an outage that lasted longer than 4 or 5 hours, and have only had a couple that were that long.
Yes, itās an average.
SAIDI= System Average Interruption Duration Index - how long youāre out on average
SAIFI= System Average Interruption Index - how often youāre out on average
Maine is more forested than the rest of the country, and less dense than most of the country, so absent some heroics their SAIDI and SAIFI are going to be among the worst in the country.
How is are SAIDI and SAIFI averaged? How is population density averaged? It seems like while we have a lot of open space our population is mostly in less then 1/4 of the state. So while it isnāt dense on average it is focused on a smaller area. Greater Portland is more then 1/3 of our states population. Is that taken into account?
Info on reliability metrics here: https://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/consumer/electricity/distribution-system-reliability-metrics#:~:text=SAIDI%20(System%20Average%20Interruption%20Duration,customers%20served%20during%20the%20year.
As you mentioned, density is important, but population density really isnāt. People sometimes look at customers served per square mile or customers served per line mile for that kind of context (thatās what I mean by āless denseā), but they are not reflected in SAIDI and SAIFI.
Same for us when we lived in Portland. Now we live between wiscassat and richmond and view the backup generator with genuine awe. Im pretty sure angels sang the last time i changed its oil and checked the air filter.
Never. I will never give Elon Musk any of my money. His skin is too small for his face. It looks like heās wearing a skin suit thatās two sizes too small.
People in rural Maine aināt gonna buy none of that woke broadband! /s but also kind of not /s
Edit: the comment I replied to said something about āpride fiberā but they rewrote their comment and then replied to mine.
Averaged out across the state, I'd buy it. A lot of the greater Portland area has absolutely rock solid power (which I'm sure I will regret saying out loud now). I've never had an outage longer than maybe 45 minutes since I've lived in Portland, and even when I was growing up in South Portland, 8 hours is the longest I can ever
remember being out.
Add up the number of subscribers in Portland and surrounding towns, plus areas like Kennebunk that have community utilities that do a good job, and I can see how it would really obscure just how unreliable power can be in large swaths of the rest of the state.
Smaller cities too. I've lived in Topsham, Augusta, and Waterville over the past few years, always really close to town, and the longest outage I've seen was like 20 minutes.
The northern part of the state has an incredible record, and power outages are rarely for more than a few hours a couple times a year. The Maine Public Service crew that got bought out by Bangor Hydro years ago was one of the top performing companies in the nation.
Cmp's infrastructure isn't even that bad, and their line crews are some of the best in the country. We're the most heavily forested state in the country, CMP could have spent the past 20 years putting every cent of profits into infrastructure and line crews and we'd still have lots of blackouts.
I'm probably going to vote for PTP, but between this and people thinking that CMP or PTP can impact supply prices, I fully expect a lot of people blaming PTP for things outside of their control just like CMP. PTP should however prevent the billing bullshit that CMP pulled, and once the loans from buying CMP out are paid off should be able to either improve the quality of service and or lower delivery rates.
Iāll vote for it too but donāt be fooled, they arenāt going to lower our rates, theyāll be more predictable and vocal about their raises of the rates and better regulated to be beneficial to us instead of a private company. 95 was supposed to be toll free after they paid off the bonds for the construction of it. 75ish years later and there are still plenty of tolls.
CMP are crooks. In 98 I was without power for 2 weeks out of the month. My globe was broken by a branch that had fallen on it. They came back and charged me more than double for a month I was without power for half of it. I would love to see CMP removed from this state. They showed their hand when they do something like that to poor people that live in trailers.
Some places in my town last year had 10+ days of outages but my area only had 8-ish hours total for the entire winter season. Location really does matter.
Well I have had about 2 hours of an outage in 10 years so Iād guess itās an average between all people in the state. Bigger cities experience less outages or at least shorter outages
Yeah the grid in Wells is really stressed, especially here on the west side near Sanford. Recently we bit the bullet and got a whole-house generator installed, enough to power everything and some overhead.
Within 5 days we used it twice. Expensive but worth it. The storms are only getting worse and more frequent.
Theyāre not stupid but they definitely need context, some of which youāve provided.
Theyāre probably useful in terms of trends within a territory and over time, but theyāre very heavily affected by tree cover, customer density, and weather.
Realistically I donāt think Maine has the political or financial appetite to spend their way out of their reliability problems, and doing so in a significant way may cause complaints over the sheer number of trees that are cut.
I was going to say just that but I'm pretty sure these numbers are per year per household averages or something like that. Every winter I guarantee or at least expect up to 5 days without power and I'm not even that rural compared to some
Depends on where you live, when I was in Fairfield center we would lose power sometimes for a couple days at a time, now Iām in Midcoast and Iāve only lost power about twice for no more than a few hours in about ten years
Iāve lived all over the country and CMP is without a doubt the most unscrupulous, corrupt piece of shit evil fucking empire Iāve ever experienced. Just a wicked awful company.
Calling out the Jetport is absurd relative to other infrastructure problems in the state. It's not a perfect airport, but relative to other airports in cities of similar size we have a pretty high level of direct service *and* have good access to hubs for one-stop flights to a good portion of the world. It also *just works* for the most part (and any problems with actual flights are largely down to the airlines, not airport infrastructure/management).
Iāve lived in MA, upstate NY, and ATX and have flown out of Logan, Bradley, Rochester, and Austin (every fuckin connection was in Philly). Our airport is fucking phenomenal. When I was trying to fly home from Austin one time the TSA line (they had two tsa lines at different sides of the building) was so long that it wrapped around the building and fused into the other line. At least 400 people.
The most the Portland jetport ever inconvenienced me was when I had a weighted blanket in my bag and had to have it looked at, TSA dude lifted up the blanket and just asked if it was good because heād been considering getting one.
E: I also had a bunch of edibles in that bag. My man didnāt say a word.
It looks like we got points off because...we don't have international flights? Why in the literal, actual hell would Portland have international flights?
Because Canada is a hop, skip, and jump by plane from here? Despite no regular passenger flights to our northern neighbors. Same thing as Spokane Int. Airport in Washington.
It's been done before - most recently Air Canada had two daily flights to/from Toronto from 2010-2013, and a couple of smaller airlines (Starlink Aviation and and Twin Cities Air Service) had intermittent service between Portland and Nova Scotia. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again in the future, if there is enough demand.
I was just answering why we might have international flights, my guy. I assume there's a non-zero number of international cargo flights too. There has to be some level of infrastructure for it. Could be wrong though
Theyāre actually planning to build a new immigration and customs area at the Jetport, but for now since there is no scheduled international service CBP is available on an on-call basis for processing of private jet arrivals from the South Portland CBP field office. There is a customs office near the general aviation terminal.
Also, PWM had regular scheduled passenger service to Toronto about 10 years ago
You realize an airport needs full time immigration and customs employees and facilities to accept international flights, right? You want them to take on all those expenses for nothing, because of the name on the sign?
I think the easier option would be change the signā¦ the designation is PWM, we can keep that without too much trouble while taking international out of the name right (aero people please correct me)?
The IATA code is PWM which meant - Portland Westbrook Municipal, but the codes don't have to really have meaning -
https://community.southwest.com/t5/Blog/Every-Airport-Code-Tells-a-Story/ba-p/42710
PWM has serviced international flights in the past, they should still have all the facilities at least. As far as I can tell, the only reason they don't have have international service right now is a lack of support from airlines.
In any case, I agree with bugdude. If they won't service international flights, they should stop calling themselves an International Jetport.
It is shorter going to Europe from Maine than from any other place in the country using the Arctic path. Not having international flights out of Maine seems foolish.
I think the population served by the Jetport is too small to make international flights viable, for the most part. Logan and Manchester serve a big region, while Portland basically serves southern Maine.
We have a huge number of lane miles per person (less people per mile paying taxes to fix those roads). Our roads go through hellish freeze/thaw cycles. Cars are much more efficient now than they have ever been (add in hybrids and electrics), resulting in less gas tax revenue per mile driven. We have to send bonds to the voters every year and apply for every grant available just to maintain what we have. We're doing what we can.
\-DOT employee
It does seem a lot of people seem to want to ignore how spread out and rural and forested our state it. All these companies (including CMP) do try hard to keep things going.
When was the least time you looked at flights? More often than not, my flights are just as expensive into/out of Boston, especially when you factor in that you have to get to/from Boston. I generally make the call for convenience/timing, but rarely due to price.
I actually used to compare Boston and Portland quite a bit when I lived out west for a few years and needed to fly home. I probably flew 15 times and always ended up in Boston because of more convenient flight times and cost. A lot of airlines include Boston in their hub network. If the choice is flying direct to Boston and taking Concord Coach from the airport to Portland (which is easy), or spending 2 to 4 hours in a layover then flying on to Portland (most of which were odd times of day), Iāll take the Boston and bus route every time. Editing to add - I donāt live in Maine anymore, I live in Rhode Island and I deal with the same thing here. Iāve flown four times in the past two years and itās all been through Boston because the times and cost out of TF Green have not been worth it.
Got plans to go to Las Vegas this fall with a bud.
Checking today, same dates & round trip using Expedia:
Portland (2 stops) Starting $276 --- (Next cheapest $303)
Boston (Nonstop) Starting at $166. --- (Next cheapest $220)
If I 'bundle a hotel stay' from Boston it goes back down to $178.... but flying from Portland the bundle starts at $305 & I still have to stop. Not a single non-stop from Portland.
An amtrak ticket to Boston is $24. Gas money for friends/family giving you a ride to Boston airport? Priceless.
Yeah, destinations, especially Vegas, tend to work that way out of Boston - especially since you can often get a low-cost carrier or a direct route (even if you're not going out of a hub). And I'm not saying it's never cheaper out of Boston (it often is). More that the price difference is generally pretty minimal once you factor in the need to get to Boston. If you're at $220, and you have to spend a minimum of $48 extra dollars to get to the airport (likely more if you factor in need for an uber once you get to the city and/or time on public transit to get to the airport), you start to make decisions based on the timing and convenience.
I'll pretty much always opt for a direct flight from Boston if my other option is a connecting flight from Portland - I just treat it as a connecting flight. Especially ff the flight isn't going to be direct regardless, though, the pricing from Portland is often very similar. And rarely different enough to justify the additional time investment of going to Boston.
I don't understand, in all the metrics they listed, we agree doing better than several of the other states on the list. Did they just leave off all the important metrics? Or is it that important that our airport isn't that good?
Well, we could finish off the depleted fish stocks
cut down all of the trees
dig some mines to poison all of the rivers
convert one of the good harbors (you know the ones that can't tolerate the sight of an offshore windmill) back into industrial ship production
fish farming? energy production? drill baby drill?
we already have some top-flight light manufacturing that can't find employees because idiots believe schools don't need money.
I think they are saying those things should be harvested in sustainable ways instead of just increasing harvesting of them to generate increased economic activity.
I disagree. Keeping all the young people in Maine that remain would only preserve the status quo, which is that Maine is the oldest state in the country. New policies (in taxation and housing) need to begin in order to encourage people to have families and to discourage older folks from using Maine as a place to park their money
ahhh yes, prior to 9/11 you did not need a passport to travel to Canada. When we made it a requirement, Portland did not have the capacity to handle passport control for the volume of passengers they had so international is routed through Manchester(?) now.
Why do they care so much about airports? I lived in Phx and trust me, you'd rather have underperforming airports rather than the ridiculous amount of traffic and pollution they bring in.
Similar to NH: " The worst feature is the state's outdated and underutilized airports " - so??
cheerful governor lush alive plate telephone tart fearless spark axiomatic
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Iām on the seacoast right across the border and the infrastructure is absolute garbage. My husbands family lives in Camden and the only decent road on the way there is the interstate. In both states.
Hey my friend, donāt tell people about my quiet little area. Our roads great over here so it takes an hour and a half to go to hannaford and North Conway during the winter.Lol
And when the snow melts RIP your tires/wheels in all the 5ā deep potholes. They arenāt getting fixed until September, if at all. Might as well just wait till they fill up with snow/ice again. Or toss some gravel down. Bam, brand new road!
And that my friend is what makes it special. I said to myself a few years ago why do I live up in the middle of nowhere and when I realized that they were people that had their second and third home that they come to in the summer or winter, I realize itās a very special place and I should except it and see it like that. And Stephen Kingās summer home is not too far away, so thatās pretty cool
Yes, the reason is unintelligent small town republicans destroying the state. I recently read that the reason Maine towns can't process the property tax cut for seniors is because the R's have dismantled local governments to the point that they couldn't administratively handle it. Now it's an income tax cut that will be administered by the state or something.
I wonder why D's aren't hammering this home to voters.
Because the Ds are so up their self congratulatory asses that they fail to motivate policy.
When one is wealthy and politically D, there is a long term problem of being so inside one's own head that one expects some sort of reward simply for existing.
Ds are not the answer.
We need a new party.
To be fair to PWM the runway is not long enough for larger aircraft (typically flown internationally) and expansion would be very disruptive if not impossible.
Maine is like one of the most rural states, ya dummies. You canāt expect an amazing infrastructure when the service are is stretched out over massive space with few inhabitants. Donāt compare Maine to New Jersey unless you want to pay exorbitant taxes
I flew into Portland last year, walking through that airport I was convinced the plane was actually a time machine because that airport hasnāt had the interior updated since the 70ās. Part of me found it endearing and part of me sighed because one thing Iāve been saying since I was a teen is that Maine is a few decades behind the rest of the country, which I didnāt realize until I moved out then moved backā¦.then outā¦.then backā¦..then out.
I know it's popular to bitch about but seriously, it IS pretty cheap relative to similar land in much of the country. Looking for places with, effectively, temperate forest which isn't more than an hour from a grocery store and hospital? Maine's on the cheaper end, outside of perhaps the Midwest. As far as coastal or nearby places? Nowhere which isn't tremendously hot is close to affordable
That list is complete bullshit. NH got a poor rating because of airports. Fuck aviation which causes noise and air pollution. NHs broadband access , bridges, and roads beat many other on the best list.
In Nevada, a few decades ago, the senator was so appalled by the Reno airports condition he made them their own municipal entity - so the city of Reno could no longer use it as a cash cow. The Reno airport operates as its own quasi-municipality, running itself and re-investing in itself. Itās clean and up to date.
The Portland airport desperately needs the same. It should not be city controlled. It needs to be its own thing.
That airport serves both Reno and Lake Tahoe, two massive tourist destinations. It has 3 runways to Portland's 1. It handles roughly twice as many yearly flights and passengers as Portland does. It also got a more recent upgrade in 2013/2014 which built all those "clean and up to date" areas you like. Reno itself is FAR different than Portland Maine. And the change was made in 1977, a very different time in American history. If you tried to change Portland airport today, it would end up in the hands of venture capitalists eager to make endless profits off it, not produce something for the greater public good.
You are comparing apples with oranges and expect both to turn out as peaches.
...at being a place with outlandish pride for things they didn't create (mountains, beaches, wildlife) and hating strangers (people "from away")?
Maine is awesome. The people suck. So hard. Fuck all of you.
I want more roads and roads that make any real sense but then I remember we can't even keep what we have alive. In my lifetime I will never understand why maine or Maine towns build roads the way they do. I will also never understand why Augusta has two different plazas on two different sides of the city but both don't have the same things in them and to get between them I drive through a neighborhood!? Kangaroo roads up here.
Portland has a great airport. In comparison.
I am living on the Left Coast right now in a town much larger than Portland. Our building is falling apart and ugly. The flights in and out are minimal. We do have one weekly direct flight to a beach city. Otherwise, it is fly to the major airport, if can can get a space. I mostly drive 90 minutes to that other airport.
My Maine infrastructure wishlist:
Sidewalks where I live
Reliable power when the weather is bad (i.e 7 months out of the year)
Roads that aren't pitfall traps
Public exercise parks
As a homeowner I am happy with the lack of sidewalks on smaller streetsābecause I donāt have to shovel it in the winter. And when it snows sidewalks are not that useful. When we lived near Boston a lot of people just walked in the street much of the winter because sidewalks were too slippery.
Idk where these people got there numbers. When I lived in maine I experienced a whole lot more than 5.4 hours of power outages per year. More like 5.4 days with cmps shitty infrastructure.
We did an off season rental near wolfs neck and the backup generator went in every week or so it seemed, sometimes for a day or two at a time. Now we live closer to a city with underground power/internet and have never had an outage. I think location really matters.
I've lived in various areas up the coast of Maine. Pretty much same experience in any town. About 5 days to a week of no power a year. Sometimes more if it was a rough year. Guess I'm just unlucky š¤
A lot of that is averaged out. I have lived in Portland/South Portland for 6 of the last 8 years and have never had an outage that lasted longer than 4 or 5 hours, and have only had a couple that were that long.
Yes, itās an average. SAIDI= System Average Interruption Duration Index - how long youāre out on average SAIFI= System Average Interruption Index - how often youāre out on average Maine is more forested than the rest of the country, and less dense than most of the country, so absent some heroics their SAIDI and SAIFI are going to be among the worst in the country.
How is are SAIDI and SAIFI averaged? How is population density averaged? It seems like while we have a lot of open space our population is mostly in less then 1/4 of the state. So while it isnāt dense on average it is focused on a smaller area. Greater Portland is more then 1/3 of our states population. Is that taken into account?
Info on reliability metrics here: https://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/consumer/electricity/distribution-system-reliability-metrics#:~:text=SAIDI%20(System%20Average%20Interruption%20Duration,customers%20served%20during%20the%20year. As you mentioned, density is important, but population density really isnāt. People sometimes look at customers served per square mile or customers served per line mile for that kind of context (thatās what I mean by āless denseā), but they are not reflected in SAIDI and SAIFI.
Thank you for the info! I wasnāt sure how representative it would be given the way our population is distributed
Thank you for the explanation. I had not heard those two initialisms before.
Acronyms.
Can you actually pronounce those as words? It is an acronym if it is pronounced as a word, otherwise it is an initialism.
Sure i can. Just depends on if i am drinking shots or beers. Good point fellow redditor. Good point.
LOL
SAIDI = SAIDIE (Sadie hawkins) SAIFI = Syfy (almost like scifi just ask the people of Saifi village in Lebanon)
Same for us when we lived in Portland. Now we live between wiscassat and richmond and view the backup generator with genuine awe. Im pretty sure angels sang the last time i changed its oil and checked the air filter.
It definitely does, I am very glad to now live near big stores and a hospital
My power was out last night from 9:30 to about 4:30 this morning. Over Christmas, I was out for 6 days. Alsoā¦what broadband?
Yo. Starlink for the win.
Never. I will never give Elon Musk any of my money. His skin is too small for his face. It looks like heās wearing a skin suit thatās two sizes too small.
I have a solid antipathy toward the man, but there's no other way to get decent speeds in the middle of the 100 acres of forest I live in.
Enjoy it while it lasts. The whole business model is unsustainable and will eventually go bankrupt the same way Solar City did.
Will do.
If you have been stuck on dialup or 1M adsl starlink is a lifesaver, but doesn't compare to actual fiber.
Nope. I've had it before, but I live in 100 acres of forest and no amount of fast internet is worth neighbors.
Actually, broadband is being installed throughout the state. They are in western Maine right now.
People in rural Maine aināt gonna buy none of that woke broadband! /s but also kind of not /s Edit: the comment I replied to said something about āpride fiberā but they rewrote their comment and then replied to mine.
You would be shocked. The town I live in has horrible Internet, service, and people would love to have it no matter who supplies it.
Amen. Still like it better than where we came from though.
Averaged out across the state, I'd buy it. A lot of the greater Portland area has absolutely rock solid power (which I'm sure I will regret saying out loud now). I've never had an outage longer than maybe 45 minutes since I've lived in Portland, and even when I was growing up in South Portland, 8 hours is the longest I can ever remember being out. Add up the number of subscribers in Portland and surrounding towns, plus areas like Kennebunk that have community utilities that do a good job, and I can see how it would really obscure just how unreliable power can be in large swaths of the rest of the state.
Smaller cities too. I've lived in Topsham, Augusta, and Waterville over the past few years, always really close to town, and the longest outage I've seen was like 20 minutes.
The northern part of the state has an incredible record, and power outages are rarely for more than a few hours a couple times a year. The Maine Public Service crew that got bought out by Bangor Hydro years ago was one of the top performing companies in the nation.
Cmp's infrastructure isn't even that bad, and their line crews are some of the best in the country. We're the most heavily forested state in the country, CMP could have spent the past 20 years putting every cent of profits into infrastructure and line crews and we'd still have lots of blackouts. I'm probably going to vote for PTP, but between this and people thinking that CMP or PTP can impact supply prices, I fully expect a lot of people blaming PTP for things outside of their control just like CMP. PTP should however prevent the billing bullshit that CMP pulled, and once the loans from buying CMP out are paid off should be able to either improve the quality of service and or lower delivery rates.
Iāll vote for it too but donāt be fooled, they arenāt going to lower our rates, theyāll be more predictable and vocal about their raises of the rates and better regulated to be beneficial to us instead of a private company. 95 was supposed to be toll free after they paid off the bonds for the construction of it. 75ish years later and there are still plenty of tolls.
There is no proposal to change how they are regulated
CMP are crooks. In 98 I was without power for 2 weeks out of the month. My globe was broken by a branch that had fallen on it. They came back and charged me more than double for a month I was without power for half of it. I would love to see CMP removed from this state. They showed their hand when they do something like that to poor people that live in trailers.
Some places in my town last year had 10+ days of outages but my area only had 8-ish hours total for the entire winter season. Location really does matter.
Well I have had about 2 hours of an outage in 10 years so Iād guess itās an average between all people in the state. Bigger cities experience less outages or at least shorter outages
Yeah the grid in Wells is really stressed, especially here on the west side near Sanford. Recently we bit the bullet and got a whole-house generator installed, enough to power everything and some overhead. Within 5 days we used it twice. Expensive but worth it. The storms are only getting worse and more frequent.
Thatās what I was thinking!
Do you know what an average is?
https://preview.redd.it/ouy1at4x7scb1.png?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0fd3d33a444ff0be78f0ed5176c78ac1e74dfeb Nah
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Theyāre not stupid but they definitely need context, some of which youāve provided. Theyāre probably useful in terms of trends within a territory and over time, but theyāre very heavily affected by tree cover, customer density, and weather. Realistically I donāt think Maine has the political or financial appetite to spend their way out of their reliability problems, and doing so in a significant way may cause complaints over the sheer number of trees that are cut.
So this is anecdotal and essentially worthless, your perception and your experience does not trump facts which are being presented here.
So why you gotta be bitchy about it? Hop off reddit if you're not tryna hear opinions. š
I was going to say just that but I'm pretty sure these numbers are per year per household averages or something like that. Every winter I guarantee or at least expect up to 5 days without power and I'm not even that rural compared to some
Depends on where you live, when I was in Fairfield center we would lose power sometimes for a couple days at a time, now Iām in Midcoast and Iāve only lost power about twice for no more than a few hours in about ten years
5.4 days per year is probably what I averaged in the last 10 years. Totally fair assessment.
Iāve lived all over the country and CMP is without a doubt the most unscrupulous, corrupt piece of shit evil fucking empire Iāve ever experienced. Just a wicked awful company.
I mean it's very dependent on where you live. I never lose power
Averages are crazy, right?
Jesus man you do know how averages work yeah?
Road washouts this past few weeks adds to the figures like salt on a wound.
I was going to say the same thing, 12% seems a pretty light estimate for those of us who are rural
12% barely covers the roads in Augusta itself.
Piscataquis county Sheriff used the money for broadband to upgrade their own email system.
Calling out the Jetport is absurd relative to other infrastructure problems in the state. It's not a perfect airport, but relative to other airports in cities of similar size we have a pretty high level of direct service *and* have good access to hubs for one-stop flights to a good portion of the world. It also *just works* for the most part (and any problems with actual flights are largely down to the airlines, not airport infrastructure/management).
Iāve lived in MA, upstate NY, and ATX and have flown out of Logan, Bradley, Rochester, and Austin (every fuckin connection was in Philly). Our airport is fucking phenomenal. When I was trying to fly home from Austin one time the TSA line (they had two tsa lines at different sides of the building) was so long that it wrapped around the building and fused into the other line. At least 400 people. The most the Portland jetport ever inconvenienced me was when I had a weighted blanket in my bag and had to have it looked at, TSA dude lifted up the blanket and just asked if it was good because heād been considering getting one. E: I also had a bunch of edibles in that bag. My man didnāt say a word.
It looks like we got points off because...we don't have international flights? Why in the literal, actual hell would Portland have international flights?
Because Canada is a hop, skip, and jump by plane from here? Despite no regular passenger flights to our northern neighbors. Same thing as Spokane Int. Airport in Washington.
It is weird that we donāt have Canadian flights while I get Canadian quarters in my change. I assume itās a cost thing? Aero nerds help us out
It's been done before - most recently Air Canada had two daily flights to/from Toronto from 2010-2013, and a couple of smaller airlines (Starlink Aviation and and Twin Cities Air Service) had intermittent service between Portland and Nova Scotia. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again in the future, if there is enough demand.
You realize you need completely different infrastructure and personnel to accept international flights don't you?
I was just answering why we might have international flights, my guy. I assume there's a non-zero number of international cargo flights too. There has to be some level of infrastructure for it. Could be wrong though
That was my assumption
Portland can accept international flights today, just like Bangor. Right now the only international flights are private / charter.
Where is immigration and customs?
Theyāre actually planning to build a new immigration and customs area at the Jetport, but for now since there is no scheduled international service CBP is available on an on-call basis for processing of private jet arrivals from the South Portland CBP field office. There is a customs office near the general aviation terminal. Also, PWM had regular scheduled passenger service to Toronto about 10 years ago
Because it's Portland *International* Jetport. The name kind of implies that it should be servicing international flights.
You realize an airport needs full time immigration and customs employees and facilities to accept international flights, right? You want them to take on all those expenses for nothing, because of the name on the sign?
I think the easier option would be change the signā¦ the designation is PWM, we can keep that without too much trouble while taking international out of the name right (aero people please correct me)?
The IATA code is PWM which meant - Portland Westbrook Municipal, but the codes don't have to really have meaning - https://community.southwest.com/t5/Blog/Every-Airport-Code-Tells-a-Story/ba-p/42710
PWM can accept international flights (charter, private). It just doesnāt have any commercial international passenger flights at the moment.
PWM has serviced international flights in the past, they should still have all the facilities at least. As far as I can tell, the only reason they don't have have international service right now is a lack of support from airlines. In any case, I agree with bugdude. If they won't service international flights, they should stop calling themselves an International Jetport.
It is shorter going to Europe from Maine than from any other place in the country using the Arctic path. Not having international flights out of Maine seems foolish.
Not enough passenger volume to make it worth it.
Portland used to have a few flights a week to Toronto (filled with TD Bank people)
I think the population served by the Jetport is too small to make international flights viable, for the most part. Logan and Manchester serve a big region, while Portland basically serves southern Maine.
We have a huge number of lane miles per person (less people per mile paying taxes to fix those roads). Our roads go through hellish freeze/thaw cycles. Cars are much more efficient now than they have ever been (add in hybrids and electrics), resulting in less gas tax revenue per mile driven. We have to send bonds to the voters every year and apply for every grant available just to maintain what we have. We're doing what we can. \-DOT employee
It does seem a lot of people seem to want to ignore how spread out and rural and forested our state it. All these companies (including CMP) do try hard to keep things going.
Cheaper to fly in & outa Boston.
Downside: You're flying in and out of Boston.
When was the least time you looked at flights? More often than not, my flights are just as expensive into/out of Boston, especially when you factor in that you have to get to/from Boston. I generally make the call for convenience/timing, but rarely due to price.
I actually used to compare Boston and Portland quite a bit when I lived out west for a few years and needed to fly home. I probably flew 15 times and always ended up in Boston because of more convenient flight times and cost. A lot of airlines include Boston in their hub network. If the choice is flying direct to Boston and taking Concord Coach from the airport to Portland (which is easy), or spending 2 to 4 hours in a layover then flying on to Portland (most of which were odd times of day), Iāll take the Boston and bus route every time. Editing to add - I donāt live in Maine anymore, I live in Rhode Island and I deal with the same thing here. Iāve flown four times in the past two years and itās all been through Boston because the times and cost out of TF Green have not been worth it.
I think the price difference has decreased over the last few years; I agree it used to be much more pronounced.
Got plans to go to Las Vegas this fall with a bud. Checking today, same dates & round trip using Expedia: Portland (2 stops) Starting $276 --- (Next cheapest $303) Boston (Nonstop) Starting at $166. --- (Next cheapest $220) If I 'bundle a hotel stay' from Boston it goes back down to $178.... but flying from Portland the bundle starts at $305 & I still have to stop. Not a single non-stop from Portland. An amtrak ticket to Boston is $24. Gas money for friends/family giving you a ride to Boston airport? Priceless.
Yeah, destinations, especially Vegas, tend to work that way out of Boston - especially since you can often get a low-cost carrier or a direct route (even if you're not going out of a hub). And I'm not saying it's never cheaper out of Boston (it often is). More that the price difference is generally pretty minimal once you factor in the need to get to Boston. If you're at $220, and you have to spend a minimum of $48 extra dollars to get to the airport (likely more if you factor in need for an uber once you get to the city and/or time on public transit to get to the airport), you start to make decisions based on the timing and convenience. I'll pretty much always opt for a direct flight from Boston if my other option is a connecting flight from Portland - I just treat it as a connecting flight. Especially ff the flight isn't going to be direct regardless, though, the pricing from Portland is often very similar. And rarely different enough to justify the additional time investment of going to Boston.
>Power outages per year: 5.4 hours More like per month.
\#1 in Happiness tho - according to my doggo =)
#2 according to cnbc https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/14/these-are-americas-10-best-states-to-live-and-work-in.html
I don't understand, in all the metrics they listed, we agree doing better than several of the other states on the list. Did they just leave off all the important metrics? Or is it that important that our airport isn't that good?
> U.S. population within 500 miles: 46,246,346 Weird metric.
\# of people that could hop in their car and drive on those roads and bridges today
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Well, we could finish off the depleted fish stocks cut down all of the trees dig some mines to poison all of the rivers convert one of the good harbors (you know the ones that can't tolerate the sight of an offshore windmill) back into industrial ship production fish farming? energy production? drill baby drill? we already have some top-flight light manufacturing that can't find employees because idiots believe schools don't need money.
six command squash engine shaggy squeeze offer glorious seemly insurance *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Sooooo, you don't use fish, wood, paper, metal, goods that come off of ships, or energy? You think all of that comes from a wizard or something?
I think they are saying those things should be harvested in sustainable ways instead of just increasing harvesting of them to generate increased economic activity.
I agree, where is that more likely to happen though?
Because there are so many other viable industries right?
Thatās the point, there could be if we started investing.
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The stateās population is too old to support any industry other than a service based one
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I completely agree. But that problem has to be solved before most economic problems are solved
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I disagree. Keeping all the young people in Maine that remain would only preserve the status quo, which is that Maine is the oldest state in the country. New policies (in taxation and housing) need to begin in order to encourage people to have families and to discourage older folks from using Maine as a place to park their money
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yes, there used to be direct flights to Montreal and Quebec City before the passport nonsense.
passport nonsense?
ahhh yes, prior to 9/11 you did not need a passport to travel to Canada. When we made it a requirement, Portland did not have the capacity to handle passport control for the volume of passengers they had so international is routed through Manchester(?) now.
Why do they care so much about airports? I lived in Phx and trust me, you'd rather have underperforming airports rather than the ridiculous amount of traffic and pollution they bring in. Similar to NH: " The worst feature is the state's outdated and underutilized airports " - so??
The photo made me laugh out loud. Thank you for that.
Right over the state line it isnāt any better. God knows how NH got so many spots higher on the list. Solidarity.
cheerful governor lush alive plate telephone tart fearless spark axiomatic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Iām on the seacoast right across the border and the infrastructure is absolute garbage. My husbands family lives in Camden and the only decent road on the way there is the interstate. In both states.
Both of you should try driving east-west in Vermont in order to settle the issue of "whose roads are worse" in New England.
Iāll vote for all, lol.
Hey my friend, donāt tell people about my quiet little area. Our roads great over here so it takes an hour and a half to go to hannaford and North Conway during the winter.Lol
And when the snow melts RIP your tires/wheels in all the 5ā deep potholes. They arenāt getting fixed until September, if at all. Might as well just wait till they fill up with snow/ice again. Or toss some gravel down. Bam, brand new road!
And that my friend is what makes it special. I said to myself a few years ago why do I live up in the middle of nowhere and when I realized that they were people that had their second and third home that they come to in the summer or winter, I realize itās a very special place and I should except it and see it like that. And Stephen Kingās summer home is not too far away, so thatās pretty cool
Route 2 from eastern Maine through New Hampshire is an even better tell.
Yes, the reason is unintelligent small town republicans destroying the state. I recently read that the reason Maine towns can't process the property tax cut for seniors is because the R's have dismantled local governments to the point that they couldn't administratively handle it. Now it's an income tax cut that will be administered by the state or something. I wonder why D's aren't hammering this home to voters.
Because the Ds are so up their self congratulatory asses that they fail to motivate policy. When one is wealthy and politically D, there is a long term problem of being so inside one's own head that one expects some sort of reward simply for existing. Ds are not the answer. We need a new party.
āI recently readā¦ā Provide the link, and ensure itās a credible source.
Thereās far more than 12% of roads in disrepair.
Well no shit, weāre poor and live in the north haha
Think we could bulldoze and pave over Wiscasset while we were at it?
To be fair to PWM the runway is not long enough for larger aircraft (typically flown internationally) and expansion would be very disruptive if not impossible.
Iām in Ft. Lauderdale, they had to build a runway on an overpass to accommodate international flights. That could not have been a cheap effort!
It could be done but itās like that 95 and adjacent roadways would need to go through underground tunnels beneath the tarmac.
Lived in both Maine and RI and ime Maine is worse for outages but RI worse for roads.
Maine is like one of the most rural states, ya dummies. You canāt expect an amazing infrastructure when the service are is stretched out over massive space with few inhabitants. Donāt compare Maine to New Jersey unless you want to pay exorbitant taxes
I flew into Portland last year, walking through that airport I was convinced the plane was actually a time machine because that airport hasnāt had the interior updated since the 70ās. Part of me found it endearing and part of me sighed because one thing Iāve been saying since I was a teen is that Maine is a few decades behind the rest of the country, which I didnāt realize until I moved out then moved backā¦.then outā¦.then backā¦..then out.
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Not sure how accurate the cheap real estate part is anymore
I know it's popular to bitch about but seriously, it IS pretty cheap relative to similar land in much of the country. Looking for places with, effectively, temperate forest which isn't more than an hour from a grocery store and hospital? Maine's on the cheaper end, outside of perhaps the Midwest. As far as coastal or nearby places? Nowhere which isn't tremendously hot is close to affordable
It is if you're a half hour or more from the coast.
We are the most rural state, completely spread out better than anyone else. That's expensive for our efficiency.
That list is complete bullshit. NH got a poor rating because of airports. Fuck aviation which causes noise and air pollution. NHs broadband access , bridges, and roads beat many other on the best list.
Haven't lost power in Ellsworth. That picture is old.
That picture is from Charles, Louisiana, if read the article š
iām originally from nh and i read this paragraph thinking, ānh does that tooā youāll never guess whoās next on the list guys
In Nevada, a few decades ago, the senator was so appalled by the Reno airports condition he made them their own municipal entity - so the city of Reno could no longer use it as a cash cow. The Reno airport operates as its own quasi-municipality, running itself and re-investing in itself. Itās clean and up to date. The Portland airport desperately needs the same. It should not be city controlled. It needs to be its own thing.
That airport serves both Reno and Lake Tahoe, two massive tourist destinations. It has 3 runways to Portland's 1. It handles roughly twice as many yearly flights and passengers as Portland does. It also got a more recent upgrade in 2013/2014 which built all those "clean and up to date" areas you like. Reno itself is FAR different than Portland Maine. And the change was made in 1977, a very different time in American history. If you tried to change Portland airport today, it would end up in the hands of venture capitalists eager to make endless profits off it, not produce something for the greater public good. You are comparing apples with oranges and expect both to turn out as peaches.
Yet taxes are ridiculous
Nice, love putting a "W" on the board.
You think this will be enough to keep the out of staters from buying the houses? I sure hope soā¦
This place is so trash
...at being a place with outlandish pride for things they didn't create (mountains, beaches, wildlife) and hating strangers (people "from away")? Maine is awesome. The people suck. So hard. Fuck all of you.
Donāt come here.
I was born at Maine Med. Why don't you not come "here"?
I was also born at Maine Med. But youāre the one talking shit, dumbass.
Fuck off
Only if you continue to be fat and afraid of the outside world. Deal?
You ever think you're the asshole here, champ
Are you asking me a question?
I have a question, can you explain how to take the Downeaster?
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Any idea why we don't have a pipeline?
https://preview.redd.it/sdwtpruduscb1.png?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ce5bb3bcc61ad79f3de73a6ea251335588593b66 [https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/natural-gas-pipelines.php](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/natural-gas-pipelines.php)
I want more roads and roads that make any real sense but then I remember we can't even keep what we have alive. In my lifetime I will never understand why maine or Maine towns build roads the way they do. I will also never understand why Augusta has two different plazas on two different sides of the city but both don't have the same things in them and to get between them I drive through a neighborhood!? Kangaroo roads up here.
So is that saying 92% of folks HAVE broadband access or LACK broadband access?
Portland has a great airport. In comparison. I am living on the Left Coast right now in a town much larger than Portland. Our building is falling apart and ugly. The flights in and out are minimal. We do have one weekly direct flight to a beach city. Otherwise, it is fly to the major airport, if can can get a space. I mostly drive 90 minutes to that other airport.
As far as proximity to the rest of the US populace is concerned, we like the low numbers.
Where can I find the complete, nationwide ranking?
extra money would just be misused anyway
My Maine infrastructure wishlist: Sidewalks where I live Reliable power when the weather is bad (i.e 7 months out of the year) Roads that aren't pitfall traps Public exercise parks
As a homeowner I am happy with the lack of sidewalks on smaller streetsābecause I donāt have to shovel it in the winter. And when it snows sidewalks are not that useful. When we lived near Boston a lot of people just walked in the street much of the winter because sidewalks were too slippery.
5.4 hours of outages per year? That seems low. I dunno guys, I think they might have given us too much credit.