Buses and Trains

The Bangor Community Connector, and others

Old, Entrenched Attitudes Die Hard in Car-Centric California

Hank Garfield

This is what we’re up against. 

Fox News recently gave the top of its Web page to an opinion piece by San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, under this screen-spanning headline: “San Diego wants to tax people out of their cars and into public transportation.”

My first reaction: It’s about time.

Desmond lives in Oceanside, California. I used to live there. He came to North San Diego County in 1984, a year after I did. Companies were investing in new business parks near freeway ramps and surrounded by parking lots. The area had a decent bus network, and a commuter train along the coast. But little effort was made to integrate the outlying business parks with public transit, giving all those employees little choice but to drive, and exacerbating already bad traffic congestion.

After sixteen years, I gave up on California and moved back to Maine, a place with much less traffic but also fewer options. In both places, the so-called choice of driving is, for many people, hardly a choice at all.

The language Desmond uses is telling. He charges that San Diego’s most recent regional transportation plan is “designed to make driving so expensive that you succumb to public transportation.” I’m sorry, but “succumb”? It’s usually the other way around. People who want to use public transit are forced to reluctantly buy a car. For most of my adult life, I “succumbed” to the idea that car ownership was a necessity of modern American life. Every government transportation incentive over the past fifty years has encouraged driving and discouraged the development of alternatives.

Desmond trots out several dated and debunked arguments to prop up his position:

Desmond: “Government agendas should not be used to change behavior by taxing us into fixed-rail trains and buses. Instead of changing behavior, government entities should incentivize technology and innovation.” 

Slower Traffic: When Maine passed its returnable bottle law in 1976, people stopped throwing bottles from car windows. The bottles and cans that lined many roadways disappeared within months. Littering was already illegal, but sometimes people need a nudge from government to do the right thing. 

History abounds with examples of this, from civil rights to workplace safety to smoking in bars and restaurants. Governments pass laws, which in turn influence behavior. It’s ridiculous to argue that government should not and cannot be an agent for positive change.

Desmond: “Government should embrace what most people are already choosing, and make it cleaner, safer, and more efficient.  The people have spoken, they choose freedom of movement and not broken promises or additional taxes.”

Slower Traffic: This is a classic circular argument. People choose cars because government transportation policy encourages this choice and punishes others. Car owners are, as the late Jane Holtz Kay documented in her 1997 book Asphalt Nation, “responding to a rigged market… price supports for ring roads, beltways, and free parking… taxes and infrastructure that promote far-flung highways and suburban homes.” If the nearest grocery store is more than a mile away, and your job is in a business park surrounded by parking lots but nowhere near a bus stop, are you really making a free choice, or bowing to a de facto requirement? The people have not “spoken.” They’ve obeyed.

Desmond: Who will this affect the most? The lowest income earners. The math is simple, those that earn less will pay a disproportionately higher percentage of their income to get to where they need to go.

Slower Traffic: Lower earners already pay a larger percentage of their income on transportation. This has been true for decades. It’s still cheaper to take the bus than to own a car. Shifting money from the car system to public transit via taxation can help level the playing field. But this is exactly what Desmond opposes. 

Our motor vehicles and their ancillary services are a cumulative environmental disaster. Cars aren’t going away anytime soon, but doesn’t it make sense to soften their impact, on both the climate and our overall quality of life? I don’t know anyone who enjoys the stop-and-go freeway traffic I lived with every day in California. San Diego has, to its credit, expanded its trolley system, and built a downtown baseball stadium that replaced the one in the conglomeration of freeways and parking lots of Mission Valley. (Full disclosure: I voted for the ballpark, which passed 60-40% in 1998.) 

Public transportation is the future. But people like Desmond seem determined to stand in the way. 

Snow Day

Hank Garfield
The Bus must go through.

23 January 2023

Snow Day. Schools closed, government buildings closed, along with a lot of restaurants, bars and retail businesses. Cars buried in driveways, streets unplowed. My dentist’s office called early. Several appointments had opened up before my scheduled afternoon time. 

A quick Internet check confirmed that the Community Connector buses were running. I pulled on my boots and trudged down to the new, indoor, heated Transit Center, got on a warm bus and rode it out Stillwater Avenue and disembarked half a block away. Soon, I was reclining in the chair, enjoying a deep gum cleaning and some pretty good anesthesia. 

I could have canceled the appointment, like most of the patients that day who had probably planned to drive. But thankfully I live in a town with public transportation. Thanks to the drivers, and thanks to the City of Bangor for recognizing the bus as a vital service, and keeping it running on a day when most of us would have rather stayed home.

One Giant Leap… the new Bangor Transit Center opens

Hank Garfield
Before…

I’m super excited about the imminent opening of the new bus depot in downtown Bangor. The Bangor Transit Center in Pickering Square will have its official opening at 1 pm on Friday, December 9, and Slower Traffic will be there.

Nearly three years after the City Council gave the go-ahead for construction, the Transit Center opens a new chapter in the annals of Bangor area transportation. It’s a shining example of what a small but determined group of citizens can accomplish in the face of occasionally lukewarm official support. We did this, fellow bus passengers and advocates. A pebble thrown into a pond makes but a small ripple. But many small ripples make a wave.

It was never a sure thing. Various visions for Pickering Square were floated, including the so-called “Joni Mitchell option” of building a parking lot right next to a parking garage. Some people wanted the bus depot out by the airport, or atop a vacated gas station near Shaw’s supermarket on Main Street, or other outlying locations. But Pickering Square, at the hub of Bangor’s wheel of radiating traffic routes, was always the logical choice. On January 27, 2020, the City Council, by the narrowest of margins, agreed. I like to think that the several dozen supporters in the room that evening had something to do with the outcome.

The central location is important for several reasons. First, it’s convenient for passengers. Second, it brings people – potential customers – directly into the downtown business district. And third and most important, the central location sends a powerful message, to everyone who visits or spends time in downtown Bangor, that public transportation is central to the future of the greater Bangor area.

Those still married to their cars should be happy about it, too. Every bus passenger represents one more available parking space, one less car to wait behind at a traffic light, one less opportunity for an accident. The proximity of the parking garage makes it convenient to use the bus system in combination with your car, further reducing traffic congestion.

Of course, it’s only a beginning. I envision an extension of evening hours, restoration of Saturday service, and expansion of routes to nearby areas including Hermon, Orrington, and Winterport. I hope the new terminal will become a centerpiece of a wide, interconnected network of bus services that can take passengers just about anywhere they want to go. Bangor can be a model for small cities in rural states looking for a way forward from the Late Automobile Age.

But this Christmas season, let’s stop and celebrate this one momentous step. Let’s use the new Transit Center, and treat it with the respect it deserves. Put trash in containers, interact courteously with drivers, staff, and passengers, and honor the hard work of the many people who made it possible. See you on the bus.