Recently I rented a car, and temporarily rejoined the American car culture. I needed to get to Waterville, Augusta, and the Blue Hill peninsula, all within the span of a few days. I picked up the car at Bangor International Airport at noon on Monday with the promise to return it at the same time Friday.
Every time I pull out of a rental car lot, I realize that most of the people I know do this every day. They get in the car and go somewhere. Driving is as much a habit to most Americans – and certainly most Mainers – as my morning coffee is to me.
But this time around, another thought kept vying for attention, and it was this: “Why do I have to do this by car? Why aren’t there any other options?”
Waterville is 60 highway miles from Bangor, Augusta 20 miles beyond that. Why isn’t there a train? Why is there hardly any bus service at all? (Waterville is served by Greyhound, and Augusta by Concord Coach. Trips are infrequent. It is not possible to travel round-trip between Bangor and Waterville in the same day.)
The Blue Hill peninsula is made up of small towns connected by rural roads that I know intimately. It’s where I grew up, and where I survived my teenage driving adventures (not everyone was so lucky). There was no public transportation then, and there’s precious little now. We lived like the characters in Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H Goes to Maine:
Laurie’s niece, Nancy Barnes, knew that it’s quicker to drive four miles in the area of Eagle Head than to make a phone call, so she jumped into her car, drove to the home of Tony Holcombe, found him mowing his lawn and gave him the word. Tony responded by mounting his station wagon and driving to Nancy’s house with all the enthusiasm, if not the skill, of Stirling Moss.
That’s the Maine I remember from my childhood (though I had to Google Stirling Moss.) In Blue Hill we had a name for new arrivals from larger places: Straphanger. Sometimes it was shortened to just “Strap.” But the reference was clear: people on public buses sometimes stand, and hang onto a strap. Blue Hill had no public buses.
Maine once had much more robust public transportation than it does now. The Automobile Age killed most of it off. But consider this: the roots of the car culture don’t go that deep. Interstate 95 north of Augusta is younger than I am. It hasn’t long been possible to blast from Bangor to Waterville in under an hour. Now people do it every day, to the point where the proliferation of cars and trucks threatens the ecosystem, the economy, and our quality of life. But it’s going to be hard to convince the lifelong car owner that maybe there’s a better way. It took a lot to convince me.
Nonetheless, it’s imperative that we try. Cars are choking the planet. The average worker, when liberated from the obligation of car ownership, has thousands more dollars annually to spend on more sustainable and economically beneficial goods and services. But public transportation always faces the same Catch-22: More people would use it if service were more frequent, but governing bodies don’t want to ramp up service until more people use it.
I turned in the car on Friday and took the bus home. You have to call the dispatcher because the airport isn’t on the Community Connector’s regular route. Still, I was glad to be free of the car – a white Kia with a sloped back and blind spots that could touch 90 miles an hour on the Interstate before I even noticed. Everyone was going at least 75. We live such frantic lives.
It had rained on the coast and I brought back the car filthy but full, sixty dollars and change for all the gas I used, at four-something a gallon. People are grumbling about gas prices. What they should be upset about is not having the choice to spend the money on bus or train fare instead.
