Bangor Community Connector

The New Bangor Transit Center

Hank Garfield

The new downtown bus station in Bangor’s Pickering Square is almost finished. I’ll be writing more on this soon, but to celebrate, I’m revisiting a post from January 2020, just before the city council vote that set this all in motion, interspersed with photos from the construction process. This is proof positive that positive things can happen when a determined group of citizens makes a concerted effort to improve their community.

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It’s coming down to crunch time for those of us who ride the bus. The Bangor City Council will vote on Monday, January 27 whether or not to build a central depot for the Community Connector bus system in Pickering Square.

I’m in favor of it, and so were three-quarters of the attendees at a council workshop on January 13. The importance of the issue was underscored by the overflow crowd, which could not fit into the room.

Those in opposition tended not to be bus riders, and I will repeat the invitation I offered at that meeting: take a day, or a week, or whatever time you have, and use the system before trying to redesign it.

Opponents of the Pickering Square hub have put forth a series of shifting positions. There was the so-called “Joni Mitchell option” proposed a couple of years ago to pave the square and put up a parking lot. Some of the same people are now advocating for a green space and pedestrian mall. Others want to wait years and possibly decades to build a multi-modal transportation “hub” far from the center of Bangor’s radiating street design.

And despite two commissioned studies that affirmed Pickering Square as the optimal spot for a bus hub, a minority of those in attendance, and a minority on the council, continue to call for more information before moving forward.

This should be recognized for what it is: a delaying tactic, until some hypothetical future study, at further cost, yields the recommendations they want.

The idea that the city should gather more detailed information on current ridership, for example, seems reasonable on the surface. But it is somewhat beside the point. Any plan will need to include not only the people who ride the bus now, but also those who can be convinced to ride an improved bus system in the future. Later hours – the next big hurdle – will help with this. But so will a central, comfortable, and above all, visible downtown bus hub. It’s time to get it done.

Cities all over the world have found that reducing the number of cars in their downtown areas improves the business climate as well as the physical climate. Bangor needs to join this growing movement.

I was glad to see at the recent meeting that many business owners in downtown Bangor get this. The bus is a built-in delivery system for customers and employees. One bus can obviate the need for as many as 30 parking spaces. A bus makes less noise, takes up less space, and creates less pollution than the number of cars required to transport an equal number of passengers.

I’m not against cars. A certain number of people need to have them, for various reasons. What I am against is the unchecked proliferation of cars, the official encouragement of driving at the expense of other forms of transportation, and the tendency of municipalities to design and implement infrastructure for the near-exclusive benefit of drivers and car owners.

We are living in the Late Automobile Age. Many Americans, especially the young, are beginning to realize that individual car ownership is not the necessity we have been told that it is. But the drumbeat from the automobile and advertising industries has been so relentless over the past several decades that it is difficult for some people to imagine a different future.

It will take time to loosen the grip of the car culture on the American way of life. But lasting, fundamental change happens in increments. It happens in small steps, like electing representatives to city councils who understand the liberating potential of public transportation. Building a bus hub in Pickering Square is but one small step in an ongoing process. But it is a step in the right direction.

Hopeful

Hank Garfield

This year Spring arrived all at once, over a weekend that rolled Good Friday and Easter, the Kenduskeag Canoe Race, four day games at Fenway Park, and the Boston Marathon all into one four-day package. The Red Sox are playing as I write this, and it’s not even noon. My bicycle has a new chain and fresh air in the tires. The sun is shining. Today is Try Transit Day in Bangor, and the already low fares for the Community Connector buses are halved, in an effort to attract new riders.

I’m having trouble finding the necessary focus to write about all this, so please forgive me if this entry seems to be about a lot of things. I usually write a baseball piece around Opening Day, but I’m sad that the inevitable has finally happened and the designated hitter will now be standard across both leagues. This follows the election of David Ortiz, the greatest DH the pro game has yet seen, into the Hall of Fame. Never mind that he was half a player – if you’re going to have a DH, it might as well be someone with an outsized personality who repeatedly rose to the occasion, and happened to play for your favorite team.

But if pitchers (except Shohei Ohtani) aren’t going to hit anymore, they should at least be allowed to pitch. Someone needs to tell this to Dave Roberts, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. I’ll always love Roberts the player for The Stolen Base Heard ‘Round the World. But Roberts the manager has pulled a rookie from a no-hitter in progress in his first major league start, and earlier this month he removed Clayton Kershaw from a perfect game. Insanity.

Baseball is no longer America’s game. We prefer the belligerence of our brand of football and its obvious military underpinnings. Television buries the World Series at night to accommodate the fall football schedule. The Super Bowl is our big annual sporting event, and it happens in February, the bleakest month of the year.

I’m old enough now to let most of this stuff go. Easter is a time to celebrate, not to whine. Baseball will survive. In the first inning I caught on TV this year, the Red Sox started a six-run rally with a walk, a single, a sacrifice bunt, and a sacrifice fly. Three straight doubles followed, but small ball opened the door. It put a smile on my face when I went to pick up the bicycle from the shop, in preparation for cycling along the course of the Kenduskeag Canoe Race two days later.

This year I had friends in both the canoe race and the Boston Marathon. I’ll never run a marathon, but I’d like to do the canoe race before I run out of “one of these years.” I suppose what I like best about the canoe race is that it’s first time all year I see a bunch of boats on a body of water. My own boat has a mast and two sails, and requires a bit of preparation before it floats in the spring. But the canoe race tells me that it won’t be long.

Maine is the best place to live in the United States. Having lived in several other places, I’m convinced of this. Sure, our winters are long, but they’re not that stressful if you don’t have to drive in them. Spring, summer, and fall are magical. And Maine is mostly filled with friendly, reasonable people who care about their community and quality of life.

Try Transit Day is an example of this, as public transportation slowly bounces back from the pandemic. The skeleton of the new bus terminal is rising in Bangor’s Pickering Square. When it is completed later this year, it will be a centerpiece of the downtown. Everyone who visits Bangor for an event will see it, and will know that Bangor is committed to a future in which public transportation is a fixture, and not something to be “tried.” We did that, fellow Bangorians, and we should be proud.

More challenges lie ahead, as we navigate the Late Automobile Age in our mostly rural corner of the country. But after an Easter weekend filled with buses, bicycles, boats, and baseball, it’s hard not to be just a little hopeful.