Maine

Recent Adventures in Public Transportation – 2

Hank Garfield

To get from Bangor to Rockland without a car, I use the Concord Coach bus, which leaves Bangor at 7:00 every morning. On weekdays, Bangor’s Community Connector bus gets me to the depot on Union Street in plenty of time for a cup of coffee and a doughnut.

I remember a time when coffee and doughnuts, along with orange juice and the Bangor Daily News, were available to bus passengers at no extra charge. Sadly, in part due to inane expectations that public transportation should somehow “pay for itself” (as if cars do), those small perks are no longer available. But there is a Dunkin’ Donuts within easy walking distance of the bus station, and on a recent morning after buying my ticket, I sallied forth.

The usual line of cars idled at the drive-thru. But the lobby was closed. A hastily scrawled sign apologized for the staffing shortage, assuring me that the drive-thru window and something called “on the go” were still available.

“What’s “on the go?” I asked the man in the car leaving the drive-thru

“It’s an app. You have to download it on your phone.”

“To get a cup of coffee?”

Now, I may not own a car, but I’m not a Luddite. I do own a smart phone, and it even has a few applications on it. (No one uses the full word, much as Dunkin’ Donuts has become simply “Dunkin’”.) But I had cash in my pocket and a bus to catch. In disgust, and with the faint beginnings of a caffeine withdrawal headache, I walked back to the depot.

What a sad commentary on these impersonal times in which we live. Service was available for cars and for cell phones, but not for human beings without a vehicle or the proper electronic accessory.

I don’t really have to point out a moral here, do I? Why not close the drive-thru when short of staff and require customers to use the lobby? It might take them a few more minutes, but so does walking or riding a bus to work, yet both are eminently more pleasurable that driving. And why are we all in such a hurry, anyway? Slow down and smell the coffee.

Recent Adventures in Public Transportation – 1

Hank Garfield

One of the nice things about a small-city bus service like Bangor’s Community Connector is that you get to know the drivers – if not by name, at least by face and personality. And they get to know you, and where you need to get to, and when.

Thus I found myself on a recent morning waiting for the Old Town bus on Exchange Street to take me to an appointment at the University of Maine. It’s not a regular stop; it’s one of those intersections where you can flag the bus down (a system soon to change). I had a bag of books and didn’t want to walk to the temporary depot by the pocket park near the Sea Dog restaurant. 

The Old Town bus is first to leave. (A detour during the month of August has made this temporarily untrue.) It usually turns onto Exchange Street and then turns right to go up State Street hill. It’s followed closely by the Mount Hope bus, which turns left on Broadway at the top of the hill, while my bus continues up State Street to Orono and Old Town.

On this day, for whatever reason, the first bus didn’t turn at Exchange Street. The Mount Hope bus did, though. I waved and the driver stopped. We recognized each other. “Is the Old Town bus behind you?” I asked him.

“Nope. That was him that just went by the other way.”

“That’s my bus.”

“Get on,” said the driver. “I’ll see if I can catch him.”

I boarded, and he called the Old Town bus. At the top of the hill, both buses waited as I crossed State Street from one bus to the other, and greeted another familiar driver. I don’t know either of their names and I doubt that they know mine, but through a series of light conversations and interactions over a span of time, we’ve come to sort of know one another.

The upshot of this escapade is that I made it to my appointment at the University on time after all, with help from two helpful bus drivers. I suppose designated stops will put an end to this sort of thing. The new system will surely be more efficient and reliable. But there’s something to be said for the neighborliness of our earnest bus system, which may have been what someone was thinking years ago when they changed the name from the BAT to the Community Connector. At first I didn’t like the new name, but I’ve changed my mind. It really does connect the community, in more ways than one.

They’re looking for drivers. Who knows? You could be the anonymous hero of some future blog post.

Use What’s Already Here

Hank Garfield

One thing I haven’t done in the 21st Century is finance a car.  My Ford Aerostar van was already paid off when I hauled two kids, a dog, a cat, and a U-Haul trailer from California to Maine in 1999, and moved back to the state where I grew up. There was one more vehicle: a piece of junk I bought from my son when he went to college and for which I handed him $600 in cash. For my six hundred bucks I got about three months of driving. That was in 2006; I haven’t owned a car since.

Thus I have no personal experience with what it costs to buy and keep a car today. I suffered a bit of vicarious sticker shock recently when I picked up the AAA Explorer magazine and read an article about car loans.

Apparently, there’s something called the 20/4/10 rule. Make a 20% down payment, pay off the loan in four years, and keep the cost of payments and other car expenses below 10% of your monthly household income.

According to the article, the average price of a new vehicle is now north of $47,000. Part of this is because Americans love to drive big pickup trucks and SUVs even as they complain about the cost of the gas they guzzle. Financing a $47,000 vehicle by the 20/4/10 guidelines would mean a down payment of $9,400 and a monthly car payment of $846 at 3.85% interest for 48 months.*

Yikes. Several years ago, AAA estimated the average annual cost of owning a car at $9,000 per year. It has surely gone up since then, as these numbers would seem to indicate. Giving up car ownership is like earning a $10,000 raise. So why aren’t more people doing it?

“I couldn’t live without my car.” You will hear variations on this theme whenever you present the idea that car ownership is a choice, not a requirement. “How will I shop for groceries, or take my dog to the vet, or get my guitars and amps from home to gig and home again? How will I get to work? What if one of my kids gets sick, or my aging parents have an emergency?” All these and more are valid concerns for individual car owners who have bought into a car-dependent life. It’s not a question of money; it’s a feeling that there are no alternatives.

But when you peel back the assumptions underlying our mass car culture, you begin to realize that it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t all need cars all the time. Why can’t cars be time-shared, like condominiums? Why do veterinarians have to set up practice on the outskirts of town? Why can’t employers incentivize carpooling and the use of public transportation? Why can’t we use the gas tax to finance more buses and bus drivers? Why can’t we build walkable, interconnected communities instead of strip malls, suburbs, and parking lots?

Maine is rural, and rural residents balk at paying taxes for public transportation they don’t use. But city taxpayers finance roads so that rural commuters can drive thirty or more miles to work. 

Yes, Maine needs more public transportation. But the political problem is that the majority of Maine voters don’t use it. That’s why it’s important to use what’s already here, even if it’s inadequate. Think of your car as a last, not first, choice. Go to that Sea Dogs game by Concord Coach bus and skip the parking. Use their once-a-day coastal bus service to attend one of the many summer events in the Rockland area. Take the Community Connector to work, especially if your employer incentivizes it, as mine does.

There is a huge groundswell of people who want to throw off the yoke of car payments and car ownership. But many of them feel trapped by the infrastructure we’ve created that caters to the automobile rather than the human beings who, often reluctantly, drive them.

By establishing that people will use public transportation even when it’s difficult, we can demonstrate the demand that will make it easier in the future.

* – All figures are from Drive Smart: The Perils of Protracted Loans, by Peter Bohr, AAA Explorer, page 10, July/August/September 2022 issue.