When I began using Bangor’s public bus system, shortly after I moved upriver from Belfast in 2006, it wasn’t called the Community Connector, but the BAT, for Bangor Area Transit. A few of the big red buses sported big black bat silhouettes on the sides, which looked kind of cool but made it hard to see out of some of the windows.

“Community Connector,” though a bit bland, is a fine name for a fine bus service. The bus does connect the greater Bangor Community. I liked “BAT” for its brevity and superhero connotation. Given the size of the area and the population it serves, what the bus service does is truly heroic.

A comprehensive survey of the bus system is now underway, as part of a study of how it can best serve the Bangor area in the coming years. Whether you use the bus frequently, occasionally, or not at all, it’s important to realize that it is an asset to the entire community, and that even non-riders benefit from it, in the form of less congested streets, more available parking spaces, and employees who can get to jobs on time without the hassle of a car.

I have always found more to praise than to criticize about Bangor’s bus system. Around the country, I’ve seen cities twice our size with bus systems half as good, or no bus system at all. These car-dependent communities tend to lack the sense of community that comes from a vibrant, pedestrian-oriented downtown. They tend to be unfriendly places in which to ride a bicycle. They tend to sacrifice green spaces for parking lots.

One of the challenges of this young century is to enlarge the network of support for public transportation, in communities large and small. It seems clear that we cannot continue to use cars the way we did in the last half of the last century. The global ecosystem won’t stand for it, and neither will the economy. Public transportation is a long-term investment that benefits all of us.

I filled out the on-line survey that’s circulating, and in the spirit of improving an already decent bus system, I offer the following suggestions:

Evening hours: Everybody I’ve talked to on the bus agrees on this. More people would ride if the buses ran later. Extending the hours beyond six in the evening would enable many more commuters to get to their jobs and home again without driving. It would allow non-drivers to patronize businesses after work, to attend events without contributing to traffic jams, to participate in city council meetings.

Pickering Square: It’s crucial that the bus hub remains in a highly visible and centralized location. Pickering Square is the logical place. Any renovations to the square should begin with the fact of the bus hub, and be built around it. Visitors to Bangor should see visible evidence of the bus system’s centrality to the community.

Frequency of service: I didn’t know that until 1986, the Old Town route that serves the University of Maine ran every half hour rather than every hour, as it does now. More frequent service would encourage more people to use the bus in their busy lives.

Employer buy-in: The University of Maine is the most enlightened employer in the region, in that it incentivizes bus ridership by providing bus service for all students, faculty, and employees. I’d like to see other employers in the area follow their lead: the hospitals, Cianbro, the businesses on Outer Hammond Street, the stores and restaurants out by the Bangor Mall.

Connections: Currently, it takes two buses to get from downtown to Husson University. It’s impossible to get to the Greyhound bus stop via the local bus, and on Saturday mornings, the first Concord Coach buses leave before the first Community Connector passes the depot on Union Street. I’d like to see some effort made to connect all the area’s public transportation options so that passengers can more easily transition between them.

Expansion: It’s criminal that Hampden canceled the Saturday bus route, and it’s unfortunate that the Odlin Road route didn’t survive. Other areas, such as Outer Broadway and Outer Hammond Street, remain beyond the reach of the bus.

Wish list: I hope to live long enough to see regular bus service between Bangor and outlying communities including Orrington, Holden, Hermon, Bucksport and Winterport. But these are long-term goals. The Bangor area already has the foundation of a good public bus system. It’s something to be proud of, and to build on for the future.

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Last week I got into a Facebook argument with someone I consider a friend, about parking at the University of Maine. I hate on-line arguments. The nature of social media encourages pithy, cut-and-run comments, and I made one along the lines of: “The University provides free bus service, so quit whining about parking.”

Full disclosure: since 2007, I have worked as an adjunct professor of English at said university, and, as regular readers know, for the same period of time I have not owned a car. I’ve never paid for a parking permit. I can count the number of times I’ve driven to campus on the fingers of both hands and still have fingers left over to pull out my bus pass. But my comment was rude, and I’m sorry I succumbed to the temptation of posting it.

My friend’s opinion was that the University (and universities in general) charge their students too much in tuition and fees as is, and that paid parking is an added burden on already stressed budgets.

I’m going to try to be nice. I can empathize with someone working a low-paying job, just trying to make ends meet. I’ve been there. Fifty dollars a year can seem like a lot in those circumstances.

But the ongoing proliferation of cars is a threat to the global ecosystem. As leaders in scientific research, educational institutions have a special responsibility to lead the way out of the Late Automobile Age into a more benign and sustainable future. The University of Maine has been nationally recognized for its green initiatives. One of them is the program that provides free access to the local bus system for all students, faculty and employees.

Because we’ve spent the seven-plus decades since the Second World War building up car infrastructure and tearing down public transportation, many Americans, including those who attend and work at universities, have structured their lives around a culture of car ownership as necessity. We live in outlying towns and drive to malls and movies and supermarkets, and most of us drive to work. It’s a habit that’s hard to break.

The University of Maine’s approach is part carrot and part stick. The carrot is free transportation anywhere within the Community Connector bus system, an area stretching from Old Town to Hampden and across the Penobscot River to Brewer. The stick is a $50 annual parking fee, and a few restrictions on who can park where at what times.

But this doesn’t work for everyone. Evening students, employees with small children, long-distance commuters and others will still drive, and will continue to complain about paying to park. But even they reap the benefits. Every time someone decides to take the bus instead of drive, it frees up a parking space that would otherwise be occupied. The University of Maine does not have a problem of not enough parking. The University’s problem – shared with schools around the country and the world – is that too many people still want to drive.

Increased parking fees might persuade more people to ride the bus. But that approach will engender even more ill will from people stuck in a car culture they didn’t create. I would rather advocate for the carrot of extended bus hours.

Decades of advertising and infrastructure design have done their damage. Parking lots dominate campuses and suburbs, and still the public cries for more. Driving and car ownership are still seen as ubiquitous requirements, not just in America, but all over the world. A recent surge in gas prices brought Bulgarians out of their cars in anger, blocking roads and disrupting commerce all over the country.

Why should parking at your place of work be free? One might argue that most people have to drive to their jobs – but most people have to eat lunch, too, and few companies feed their employees for free in the middle of the day. If you bring your lunch, you can save money by not buying food at the company cafeteria. The same should be true of coming to work without a car – an incentive not to drive.

Indeed, a few employers offer “parking offsets” – small stipends in the paychecks of workers who don’t park at work. In practice, it amounts to the same thing as saving the $50 on the parking fee, but the employee perceives it as a reward rather than an expense.

Attitudes change slowly, but they do change. The long, slow work of undoing the damage wrought by the over-proliferation of automobiles is underway, in Orono and other university towns, one parking permit and one free bus ride at a time.

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