BRUNSWICK

Having reached an agreement over the idling of Downeaster locomotives in Brunswick, a bill to ban the idling of passenger trains in Maine was shelved by the Legislature’s transportation committee on Tuesday.

That is in light of efforts by the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority to install an auxiliary power unit to shorten the times in which trains idle.

“Now that we’ve accomplished what we intended to accomplish, the bill is no longer necessary,” said state Sen. Stan Gerzofsky, DBrunswick, the author of the bill that prohibits trains from idling longer than 30 minutes.

NNEPRA plans to install a $70,000 power unit to provide power to the engine when not in use. As a result, trains will only idle intermittently in temperatures above 45 degrees. During colder weather, the power unit would allow locomotives to idle at a lower RPM, according to Gerzofsky.

Gerzofsky’s bill was in response to Brunswick residents who complained for years about the noise, vibration and pollution caused by train idling.

It may take up to 13 weeks to acquire the equipment before it can be installed.

In addition to the power unit, Gerzofsky said he will work with NNEPRA Director Patricia Quinn to find funding to purchase additional equipment, including an air compressor and battery charger.

“I’ll find the funding. That’s what my job is,” Gerzofsky said.

Gerzofsky and the Brunswick West Neighborhood Coalition said they want to see the power supply at Brunswick’s Maine Street Station, however, Quinn said that was unlikely due to use of the tracks by Maine Eastern Railroad.

Gerzofsky has often taken Quinn and NNEPRA’s board to task over idling and over issues of transparency. Last month, at the request of Gerzofsky, Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability began an audit of NNEPRA’s practices.

Both Gerzofsky and Quinn appeared to look toward putting the idling issue behind them.

“Either you collaborate with people or you spend the rest of your time fighting with people,” said Gerzofsky said.

Gerzofsky said the outcome was a “victory.” However, Emily Boochever, a member of Downeaster proponent group All Aboard Brunswick, said the bill had little chance of passing.

“I think the transportation committee was right to put the anti-idling bill out of its misery,” Boochever said. “They knew they had a conflict with federal preemption rules, and they felt they got as much value out of it as they could.”

While both sides are satisfied with the outcome, Boochever said that NNEPRA has been “forced to spend a lot of money with these delays,” noting that the train will only truly be shut off once it’s inside a planned maintenance layover facility in the west Brunswick neighborhood.

“Hopefully we’re making progress in demonstrating that we’re working to solve the problem,” said Quinn, adding that she was looking forward to starting work on the 52,000-square-foot, $12.2 million train shed.

That highly controversial project has been delayed while the Maine Department of Environmental Protection decides whether to grant NNEPRA a storm water permit.

Also on Tuesday, the transportation committee recommended the approval of a new NNEPRA board member, Ronald McKinnon, who had served on the board previously.

“He was a great board member and we’re happy to have him back,” said Quinn.

Should McKinnon be confirmed, there will still be an empty slot on NNEPRA’s board.

Quinn confirmed that former member Robert McEvoy, a member of Brunswick West whose outspoken opposition to the train shed caused an outcry among shed proponents following his nomination by Gov. Paul LePage, resigned last month after about a year on the board.

jswinconeck@timesrecord.com

ALSO ON TUESDAY, the Legislature’s transportation committee recommended the approval of a new NNEPRA board member, Ronald McKinnon, who had served on the board previously.