How Do We Get the Franklin Street Portland Deserves? 

Markos Miller

Dangerous by Design 

55 years ago, Franklin Street was a tree lined neighborhood street, similar to most streets found on the Portland peninsula. Residents walked to work, local businesses, churches, schools, and parks. With decades of disinvestment brought on by the Great Depression and WWII, the neighborhoods of Franklin Street, home to immigrant and minority communities, were easy targets for city leaders’ plans of “urban renewal”. The destruction of Franklin Street’s historic neighborhoods was, perhaps, the most severe blow in a program of demolition that lasted over a decade in Portland. Low-income housing loans incentivized white middle-class families to uproot themselves and move to the newly built suburbs. Fueled by cheap gas (secured by newly found military might), and our infatuation with highway construction, we then built highways and urban expressways through these same neighborhoods so the new suburbanites could quickly drive back to the city for work.

Today’s Franklin Street is a relic from this bygone era. It was not designed to be a place. It is a sewer for cars. It presents a physical and psychological barrier to the historic fabric of the Portland peninsula. The wide median is not a park or a public space; it is a place holder for more lanes of traffic. Franklin Street was designed solely to move cars into and out of town as fast as possible. This very design makes it unsafe for people driving, and deadly for people walking or biking. We’ve known this for decades, but have taken almost no steps to make the street safer or more efficient. As recently as November of last year, a driver killed a woman trying to cross Franklin.

I have been working with fellow community members for nearly 20 years to heal the scar that is Franklin Street. We envision a Franklin Street that is reknit into the historic fabric of the Portland peninsula; a street fronted by buildings and public spaces, like an expanded Lincoln Park, where people live, work, and play. People will be able to walk, drive, bike, and use quality transit safely and efficiently. The value of the land will enhance the prosperity of the local community. We envision Franklin Street as a great place to be, not just a place to drive through.

The City of Portland is finally poised to make this vision a reality. We better get it right.

Restoring a Shelved Plan 

The Portland City Council unanimously adopted the Franklin Street Redesign Master Plan in 2015. The plan, based on a highly public planning process that spanned from 2008 to 2015, sought to better integrate the Franklin Street corridor into the traditional street grid. By pushing the travel lanes together, the recommendations created land on either side of the roadway for high quality bike and pedestrian facilities, housing, and other economic and community benefits. Safety and mobility challenges were to be corrected with redesigned intersections, and the restoration of cross streets that had been severed by urban renewal. As described in The Portland Townsman, newly hired City Manager John Jennings, who opposed most of Portland’s moves away from fifty-year old auto-centric roadway designs (i.e., Franklin, State and High) made sure the plan did not move forward.  

When Jennings departed in 2021, the community reached out to city councilors to revisit the 2015 plan to create a vibrant, safe, “complete” street. Then-Councilor Andrew Zarro, who had worked diligently to advance the plan, placed Franklin on his March 2023 agenda for the Sustainability and Transportation Committee which he chaired. At that meeting, the City’s Traffic Engineer, Jeremiah Bartlett, reported that the city was preparing to release a Request for Proposals (RFP) later that summer. This would begin the process of onboarding a consultant team to advance the Franklin Street work,- ideally with the ultimate goal of having a ‘shovel-ready’ project that would be eligible for funding opportunities.  

This article is based on input the Franklin Reclamation Authority (FRA) offered regarding the critical issues to address in the scope and sequence of the Request for Proposals (RFP). Past experience has proven that setting the scope of such efforts is just as important as who is hired to perform the work. This input was shared with the city later in the summer of 2023.  

The Portland City Council later held a workshop on Franklin Street in September 2023. The RFP had still not been issued. The proposed study was to be financed through the Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) Village Partnership Initiative grant. The city was waiting for MDOT to sign off on the agreement, which had not yet been made public. At that workshop, seven of the 8 members of the Council in attendance expressed support and enthusiasm for Franklin Street. Then District 5 councilor (and now mayor) Mark Dion shared concerns about the costs and the fate of trees in the median.  

Later that month, members of an FRA working group, focused on identifying affordable housing opportunities in the corridor, met with City Planning and Public Works staff. That meeting confirmed the City’s interest in advancing Franklin Street and was an indicator of how far along the city was in preparing for this work. 

In November 2023, Mark Dion narrowly defeated Andrew Zarro to become Portland’s next mayor, after four rounds of ranked-choice voting. Zarro, who campaigned on issues of housing and transportation, had been a champion of Franklin while on the Council; Mayor Dion, while not vocally supportive of Franklin Street during the campaign, did agree to meet to discuss the project. In our December 2023 meeting, Mayor Dion seemed genuinely engaged in the discussion and asked questions that indicated an understanding of how city government might engage a project of this complexity. 

A Portland City Council vote to approve funding for the next phase of the Franklin Street planning process was scheduled for February 2024. However, Maine DOT had not yet signed off on the planning agreement. Nor, without a public release of the draft RFP, were there any details about what the study would entail. FRA successfully engaged city staff and elected officials for release of the draft of the Franklin RFP, and the City Council voted to approve the local funding for the next phase of the study, $125,000, to be matched by Maine DOT. Months would pass before Maine DOT signed off on the final draft of the RFP. In August 2024, the finalized document, was made available through the Portland’s Purchasing Department.  

Decades in the Trenches 

I have been working on Franklin Street since 2006, first working with councilors to stop the Peninsula Traffic Plan’s proposed widening of the roadway, and then working with community members to craft a community-based vision of Franklin as a vibrant urban street that contributed to the vitality of our city, socially, economically, and environmentally. Together we formed the Franklin Reclamation Authority, which worked to advance this vision with elected officials and staff at the city, state, and federal levels, resulting in the visioning and feasibility studies that produced the 2015 Franklin Street Master plan. 

I co-chaired phases 1 and 2 of the Franklin Street planning process from 2008 to 2015, along with former State Legislative Transportation Chair Boyd Marley, and then City Councilor Kevin Donoghue, respectfully. I sat on the Study Team with City and State representatives. I’ve seen the process up close, and have seen the resistance points to change, opportunities to make progress, and have navigated the labyrinth of city and state planning and decision-making processes. Redesigning a roadway of Franklin’s significance is tough work in the best of conditions. It took over a year just to get the RFP to the City’s Purchasing Department. Consultant teams had 6 weeks to submit applications. At the time of this writing, the city and Maine DOT are in the process of vetting candidates, ideally identifying a team with the proper skill set and urban orientation to conduct a high-profile study that integrates land-use and transportation planning. Hopefully, the final study phase begins in early 2025. Here, the collection of data, analysis, recommendations, and final decisions are all informed and influenced by the level of courage, competence, and imagination brought to bear by city and state officials, the consultants, political leaders, and engaged community members. All this is framed by the RFP and the project management of the study team. 

Portland often sets lofty goals, but then builds a ladder of policy and “action -plans” which reaches only halfway there. It's easy to feel excited and self-satisfied with the aspirational vision statements at the front of the policy document; but those visions must be supported by the recommendations that follow. It's this work in the trenches that brings our aspirations to light. Staff, consultants, and policy makers all have competing demands: multiple masters and finite resources. What distinguishes today’s Franklin Street redesign effort from the 2006 plan to widen Franklin? Based on my experience, I will say it's the ongoing, dedicated involvement of members of the community members that adds value to projects like Franklin Street. This is the critical difference between another roadway project, and a project that helps transform our city towards our vision for the future. 

I have identified seven critical issues that need to be addressed in order for this next (and hopefully final) phase of the study process to produce the guide to fully realize Portland’s vision for Franklin Street. The mayor, City Council, city staff, and Maine DOT all have a role to play in the success of Franklin Street. However, it is you, the reader, and the public at large, that perhaps has the most critical role to play: making sure all these players are doing their best to create the Franklin Street which Portland deserves. 

1. What Has Driven Us Here: Traffic Projections 

 Traditional traffic planning models project ongoing, steady growth in the number of cars on the road. This consistently results in calls for more lanes and wider roads. The ensuing road-expansion then incentivizes more people to drive. This process is called “induced demand.” However, that demand is not always quite as much as the traffic models predict. This graphic from the Frontier Group  shows projections of national traffic increases over a 15+ year period. Each colored line stretching northeast is based on a projection of traffic growth made in the corresponding year. The thick black line shows the actual change in traffic. The predictions have been wrong consistently for at least the last twenty years; the models used project more traffic growth than there has actually been. Yet, traffic planners continue to use these inaccurate models.  

Past traffic growth projections (multi-colored) versus actual growth in traffic (black). 

History shows otherwise. Traffic volumes on Franklin St. have not changed significantly in the last 40 years. 

It's obvious how off-base projections of traffic growth are, and yet we keep building roads to meet these inaccurate projections of non-stop traffic growth, no matter the cost, instead of basing our planning on the historic data of what has actually happened, or our goals for how we want people to move around our city. State DOTs, and those steeped in car-culture, may struggle to embrace this. Until then, we must be asking critical questions about the assumptions and choices that take place inside the ‘black box’ of traffic projection “analysis", demand real responses and dialogue, and work with professionals to correct the course of transportation planning.

A Home Run for Franklin: Housing and Economic Development   

The city and its consultant team should be the stewards of this effort, stewards for the community, where the will and energy for Franklin Street are derived from. The next phase of the redesign process must honor this relationship and build partnerships with the community stakeholders to best realize the vision for Franklin Street.  Trust and communication must be restored.

All traffic studies related to Franklin Street since its urban renewal reconstruction have been required to assume that traffic will continue to increase in perpetuity (as has been the case with most roadway projects across the city, state, and country). This was the case with the 2015 Franklin Street Master Plan; Maine DOT required that a new design be able to accommodate projected traffic growth. The ‘complete street’ design, which better integrates bicycle and pedestrian activities into the roadway while creating a more active streetscape, does accommodate this assumed growth in traffic well, but it comes with costs. Computer modeling showed that the 2015 design would handle projected traffic growth much better than the current design — in some cases, up to a 50% increase in traffic. However, the assumption that traffic along Franklin must increase is not based on any actual data for the road, or historical patterns. This ‘expected’ increase in traffic is a policy choice, required by Maine DOT, and baked into an algorithm premised on the assumption that regionally, traffic will continue to grow, and thus, traffic on Franklin Street must increase also. 

Graphic created by the author, using Maine DOT data. 

The 2015 Franklin Street Master Plan frees up 6 acres of underutilized public land for community benefits. It also unlocks development opportunities of other adjacent private parcels. Housing, more than traffic, must be at the center of the next phase of the Franklin Street planning process. The Franklin work must fully explore the development opportunities found on the public land reclaimed in the redesign of Franklin St. We have a housing shortage, most severely an affordable and workforce housing crisis.  

A new Franklin Street must be aligned so that it maximizes the developable parcels along the corridor. The proposed 2015 alignment was based on a superficial analysis of development opportunities. Siting the roadway too far to one side or the other could mean the loss of dozens if not hundreds of units of housing. Additionally, to understand the opportunities and challenges of development along the corridor, we must look to Portland Housing Authority’s recent development on Boyd Street, and their plans for renovations of Franklin Towers. 

The next phase of the Franklin Street work should include evaluating the value of reclaimed land, tapping expertise in urban housing development to estimate how many units of housing can be created on this land, and to recommend the creation of development parcels to maximize housing development.  (Relevant zoning changes should largely be addressed through the city’s ReCode updates, which are being workshopped at the city council level at the time of this writing.) The evaluation should include estimates of revenue generated through property sales in a range of redevelopment scenarios (affordable/workforce/market-rate housing). Similarly, we should have estimates of future tax revenue once the land is developed, and a projection of how much revenue the Franklin Street redevelopment will generate for the city over a 30-year period.  

Members of the community have already jump started this work. 

During the summer of 2023, the Franklin Reclamation Authority organized an analysis of the housing opportunities along the corridor. The team included local architects, an affordable housing consultant, and former City staff. This work showed that nearly 1000 units of housing could be constructed on land reclaimed by the 2015 plan, under 2023 zoning. Based on a 100% affordable housing development model, this would yield over $15M in land sales, and an estimated $3M in annual property taxes. The study also showed that narrowing the right-of-way by reducing travel lanes could add hundreds more units of housing; zoning changes would further increase opportunities for housing. 

The upcoming analysis should also include a range of development frameworks to consider including how the project can be funded, and how public (City, State, PHA, County), and possible private, entities can best partner to achieve the vibrant housing-abundant corridor that our city envisions.
 

FRA rendering of possible housing on a redesigned Franklin Street.

Rebalance the Scales: Social Justice 

Franklin Street's history of displacement and destruction of minority and disadvantaged communities by urban renewal must be given weight in decisions about the streets future character. Even today, Franklin Street disproportionately impacts low-income and minority residents in East Bayside. The vast roadway and excessive surface parking lots have turned the neighborhoods into a heat island. Vehicles emit pollution, harm the local environment, and present challenges to public safety. The road is a physical and psychological barrier between local residents and jobs, goods, services, and transit. The disruption of the street grid has resulted in a significant level of isolation of some of Portland’s most vulnerable communities. The Franklin Street project must be a restorative act, righting some of the wrongs of our past. 

The most significant of the many benefits of a redesigned corridor is the opportunity for much-needed housing. Who will this housing be for? We may not be able to directly redress harms done to the individuals and communities displaced by urban renewal, or those who have resided next to the urban highway that Franklin has become, but we can prioritize making a place for low-income and minority communities in a more livable Franklin Street. There should be room for alternative models of homeownership that produce equity for residents while still preserving affordability. Mixed-income neighborhoods provide a home for diversity and help to create vibrant, stable, and prosperous communities. We can make this a reality on Franklin Street. 

The Franklin Street planning should utilize the full range of federal and state tools to evaluate the project through a social justice lens. The federal Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool is a valuable instrument to help frame the project in this way and enhance the project for funding opportunities.
This social and climate framework sets the Franklin Street project apart from other state transportation priorities. Franklin Street can add this unique quality to Maine's portfolio of transportation projects seeking federal funding. The City and PACTS, the Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation System, which helps set regional transportation priorities and direct funding, can work with Maine DOT to build a strong federal application for transportation funding built around Franklin Street as a social, economic, and climate justice project that will address historic wrongs, create housing for disadvantaged communities, and further our goals of climate resiliency. 

 Urban Design  

Portland's 2015 Franklin Street Master Plan transformed the thinking on Franklin Street from solely a way to move more cars onto and off the peninsula, to an opportunity to reweave the corridor into the urban fabric, advancing housing, climate, and sustainability goals. The next phase of the redesign process must produce a road map that guides us to successful implementation of this vision.  

This work must be led and executed by a team with the philosophical approach and experience that prioritizes urban land use in developing design solutions, and places transportation planning in service of overall land use goals in an integrated manner. The team must have demonstrated an understanding of urban design concepts and have a proven track record of stewarding them through the design and pre-engineering processes successfully. They must also have the social skills and disposition to foster collaboration and partnership with a variety of stakeholders, some of whom may be unfamiliar with urban design principles or be more accustomed to suburban/highway design approaches. 

The RFP issued by Portland and the Maine DOT gets this backwards, calling for the land use plan to align with the transportation plan. This runs the risk of letting the proverbial camel get its nose under the tent, allowing traffic concerns to drive the program. A good consultant, and smart staff can navigate this misalignment for a successful outcome, with community support; but it is not a given. In an urban area, transportation should be in service of land use; we decide what we want people to do on the site, and then we make a transportation system to facilitate their movement to, from, and around the site. 

Revisiting transportation design choices along the corridor in the context of future dense urban development will be paramount. Crosswalk design and turning radii should be guided by pedestrian accessibility and natural human walking patterns. Travel lanes should be weighed against development opportunities and other public benefits, and not be considered for car storage at stop lights. Greater Portland Metro now uses Franklin Street, and we should be designing for greater transportation choices, like future Bus Rapid Transit or light rail, along the corridor. Active transportation must be a core principle in this work, with safe and accessible biking and walking facilities integrated into the design and function of the street, not just ‘tagged’ on to the side of the roadway.  

Public space, including plazas, parklets, and the restoration of Lincoln Park, must also be considered for accessibility, functionality, and aesthetics. Street trees should help humanize the corridor, bringing a pleasant rhythm to the street, and casting a cooling shade that is accessible to people. Creation of new developable lots should be guided by traditional downtown lot sizes and scales, encouraging varied building types and sizes. Guidance must be provided so that we can achieve the diverse development of multiple lots on each block, as found on Congress Street, and avoid the more recent monotony of full block developments found on the more desolate Eastern Waterfront, or the suburban strip development along Marginal Way. The new Franklin Street ought to look and feel like an integral part of the Portland peninsula. There is no reason this is not possible. 

Show Us the Money: Federal Grants and Other Funding Solutions 

In September of 2024, the Portland City Council unanimously voted to allocate $250,000 as a local 10% match towards a federal Reconnecting Communities grant to support final engineering work upon the completion of the upcoming Franklin Street redesign work. This is a strong sign that the city is serious about rebuilding Franklin Street. 

The Franklin Street planning process must explore a range of funding options, including local, state, and federal funding models. This work should include the collection and organization of data necessary to apply for federal grants, such as the Reconnecting Communities program. The consultant team should have demonstrable experience putting together successful federal transportation grant applications, ideally, including recent Reconnecting Communities grants, and should understand a full range of funding opportunities.  

FRA’s 2023 study of housing development opportunities in a redesigned Franklin Street corridor indicated that there is considerable value to be captured in land reclaimed by a redesign. The sale of this land is estimated to generate at least $15M in a 100% affordable housing scenario. Mixed-income and other uses would generate even more. These funds can be used to offset the cost of reconstruction. Furthermore, redevelopment of the corridor can place acres of land back on the City’s tax roll. Our housing study suggests this would generate a minimum of $3M annually in annual property taxes, under a 100% affordable housing program. These funds can be used to help pay off loans or bonds for reconstruction, especially with tax increment financing (TIF) tools, which allow municipalities to direct increased tax revenues to specific projects (in this case, the roadway reconstruction). TIFs could also be utilized to support affordable and workforce housing and improved public transportation around the corridor.  

Franklin Street will be ripped up in the coming years, regardless of the outcome of the Franklin Street planning process. A key connection in the City’s efforts to separate stormwater runoff and sewage systems runs underneath Franklin Street, from Back Cove to the Waterfront. This is work required by the Federal EPA, which may also unlock other funding sources. Will we rebuild the road to restore the status quo, or leverage these funds to propel us towards a new Franklin Street? 

The consultant team should also be able to assess local and state institutions, tools, and resources which can be called upon for successful implementation of the final Franklin Street plan. They should be able to draw upon the experiences of the numerous other communities that have successfully embarked on similar projects for potential funding options and strategies to rally resources, expertise, and institutional enthusiasm for project success.  

Low-Cost Experimentation: Tactical Urbanism 

Over the last ten years, we could have been running low-cost tests of some of the 2015 recommendations, to learn how Franklin Street could best be made safer and more efficient. It is not too late. The City of Portland can and should begin conducting low-cost trials of specific design solutions along Franklin Street immediately. This strategy, known as tactical urbanism, can quickly and inexpensively turn unnecessary travel lanes into linear parks, bike lanes, food truck plazas, or on-street parking on a trial basis. Using tactical urbanism, we can experiment with crosswalks where they are lacking, modify faulty intersections, and turn under-used public land into vibrant public place. So many ideas from the Franklin planning process have been left dying on the vine, but they could easily be revived and implemented through tactical urbanism. This manner of trial and error allows communities to experiment, collect data, and tweak or completely alter designs for improved outcomes. This is basic learning that cities and communities can easily do before spending tons of money on permanent hardscape investments. 

In light of the November 6th, 2024 fatality of a pedestrian crossing Franklin Street, it’s clear that we, collectively, have been negligent in not taking steps to make Franklin Street safer. Now it is time to start. 

The City, in partnership with Maine DOT and local residents, can take these steps right now, giving the future design consultant team an opportunity to learn from what happens on the ground in real time. This should be a topic of discussion at all Franklin related meetings, and could also be a worthy task for a Franklin Street focused public advisory committee. This would be a fun and easy way to get people thinking critically and creatively about Franklin Street and other Portland streets. 

 Public Participation  

The vision of Franklin Street as a vibrant, urban corridor springs from a community workshop held by neighborhood organizations in 2007. It was held as a direct reaction to the City’s failed Peninsula Traffic Study of 2006, which called for further widening of Franklin Street to 8 lanes of traffic. This community vision was reaffirmed in both Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the City’s redesign study, which went to great lengths to share information, include diverse voices, and explore a range of perspectives and solutions generated by the local community. This process relied on an ongoing feedback loop between the public, the public advisory committee, and the study team to test ideas, evaluate a wide range of approaches, and seek consensus whenever possible. The study, stretching over a 7-year period, included dozens of public meetings, including a community design charette, numerous public workshops, and broad outreach to targeted members of the community.   

It is, in part, due to such an extensive approach to meaningful community engagement that the Franklin Street vision has withstood the LePage administrations axing of state planning projects, the indifference of the previous City Hall administration, and the ever-shifting priorities through ongoing local issues, Covid, and staff and councilor turnover.  

While this level of engagement may not be needed for the next steps in the Franklin redesign process, this feedback loop must be restored and maintained as this work goes forward. Few staff or elected officials remain from the prior Franklin planning phases. Much of the ‘institutional knowledge’, as well as the evolving thinking about how to best achieve the community’s vision, resides in members of the local community. The planning process must harness these resources. 

The City/Maine DOT RFP includes new design concepts for a redesigned Franklin Street. These were not discussed in the 2015 study process, nor have they been shared with the public. Back in 2016 former Portland City Manager John Jennings unveiled a gutted version of the 2015 design- emphasizing design components that facilitated automobile traffic without any of the pedestrian, bicycle, or land use components. There is, unfortunately, a history of staff and consultants working outside of the public process to alter roadway designs or advance concepts that are incongruent with the community’s goals. 

Final Issue: Political Will 

I have long been motivated by the Margaret Mead quote “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” The Franklin Reclamation Authority has advanced the vision of Franklin Street, established through direct community engagement, for almost two decades. The faces of elected officials have changed, as have those among city and state staff, but relationships are still key. Our local community has changed also. Many residents are not aware of the local history of this work. 

Recent efforts to reconsider the role of I-295 in downtown Portland, and the proposed extension of the Maine Turnpike Authority’s spur to Gorham are directly connected to Franklin Street and the future of how we plan our communities in the region. The proposed Gorham spur is not a new idea; early transportation planning documents indicate it has been around as long as the plan to construct 295 has been, preceding urban renewals destruction of the historic Franklin Street neighborhoods. The MTA’s Gorham spur will bring more cars onto 295 and Exit 7 at the top of Franklin Street. It will encourage more development in the forests and farmlands to the west of Portland. Are we going to continue following the post war development fantasies fueled by a romanticized automobile and suburbia? Or can we turn the page and look forward, and begin finding solutions to the housing and climate crisis that are only getting worse? 

Discussions of housing, social justice, and climate security should not be happening in theoretical policy silos, but integrated into the processes of policy creation and implementation. Franklin Street gives us the opportunity to put our money where our mouth is; to be sure a future Franklin Street best represents the city and region that we aspire to be, and which can best be prepared for the challenges the future holds. That is what planning is for.  

If you care about these issues, you have a role to play with Franklin Street. FRA has Facebook and Instagram resources about the history of Franklin Street, the redesign plans, and how other communities across the country are healing the scars of urban renewal roadways. Other valuable resources can be found at Greater Portland Landmarks and the Portland Room in the Portland library. Contact FRA to join our mailing list so we can let you know about important milestones and opportunities for public input.

Your voice is needed. Share your vision for Franklin Street, and safer, saner city streets, with friends, family, and colleagues. Contact councilors and communicate with local and state officials. Elected leaders and other officials need the support of the public to understand challenges and make the best design choice. We need to connect the dots between transportation, housing, and economic development for them, and support their efforts to advance these goals given institutional barriers. Reach out to people, take time to listen, and explain how your vision for safer, more walkable streets and communities will help Portland achieve shared goals of more equitable prosperity, a sustainable economy, and a built environment more respectful of our place in history and the natural world. 

2025 is the year to heal the scars of urban renewal along Franklin Street. Let’s do it right.