By a 5-4 vote, the Bangor City Council on January 27 affirmed plans to build a hub for the Community Connector bus system in Pickering Square downtown. The vote was the culmination of an eight-year discussion that was at times rancorous. But barring a petition drive by entrenched opponents, the city will finally move forward with this sensible course of action.

Councilors Clare Davitt, Sarah Nichols, Angela Okafor, Gretchen Schaefer, and Laura Supica all spoke eloquently in favor of the Pickering Square hub. Dissenters Rick Fournier and Susan Hawes declined to state reasons for their opposition; each uttered just one word during the two-hour meeting: “No,” when the vote was called. Dan Tremble said that the city had not adequately explored alternatives, and that he represents all Bangor residents, not just bus riders. Ben Sprague delivered a long soliloquy about the merits of public transportation before casting his “No” vote.

Much of the public opposition came from an organized group of downtown merchants, residents, and property owners. The gist of their argument is that a bus hub would be “in the way” of future development, including a pedestrian mall or extended green space in the center of town.

It’s difficult to understand their continued resistance, as they are among the people who stand to benefit most from an improved bus system and a downtown hub. And the plan preserves much of the square for open public space.

A modern bus hub in Pickering Square will emphasize the centrality of public transportation in Bangor’s future. Everyone who ventures downtown will see it. Some of them will decide to use the bus on their next trip.

But perhaps we need to take a harder look at the issue of “classism” that was raised during the debate. Why does the impression linger that the bus system is there to serve primarily lower-income people who can’t afford to own a car? Why don’t more professionals ride the bus? Why is a downtown hub so often seen as an obstacle and not an asset?

In many other places in the world, including parts of the United States, bus ridership cuts a wider demographic swath. Lawyers and businesspeople take the bus to work alongside janitors and cashiers. Enlightened municipal governments recognize that reducing the number of cars downtown results in a friendlier streetscape, filled with customers happy to spend money at curbside establishments.

But Maine remains married to the automobile. This is due in part to the state’s rural ethos. There’s no tradition of public transportation. Riding buses is something people From Away do. In my adolescence in Blue Hill, the kids had a name for such folk: “straphangers.”

Decades of car-first public policy have cemented this perception in the public consciousness. Why take a bus when you can park virtually anywhere for free? Proposals for paid parking in downtown Bangor, which might steer some people toward the bus, are met with howls of protest. It takes a year to put up a parking garage, but eight years to make a decision on the location of a bus hub.

Former Councilor Gibran Graham, owner of the downtown Briar Patch bookstore, pointed out that the buses have been in Pickering Square longer than most of the businesses surrounding it. Why aren’t the businesses taking advantage of their proximity to the bus hub, instead of lobbying to move it? Why can’t the Bangor Children’s Museum, for example, run a promotion for families who bring their kids into town on the bus? Why can’t the downtown restaurants do the same? Get a coupon on the bus; get a half-price meal or free dessert. Opportunities abound.

But the perception persists that the sole beneficiaries of the bus hub are bus riders, and that the standing-room-only attendance at recent Council meetings does not represent the community as a whole. In fact, better public transportation benefits everyone. A central, accessible, visible hub will attract new riders, and extended evening hours will attract even more. Every passenger on a bus represents a car not driven, a parking space left vacant for someone else.

I launched this blog five years ago. At the time, I likened it to tossing a pebble in a pond and letting the ripples spread outward. In those five years I’ve seen support for public transportation in the Bangor area grow. Current City Council members ran and won on platforms espousing better bus service. Many more people have tossed many more pebbles. The ripples have become waves. And a big one washed ashore last week.

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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.

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I’m often the last person to get off the last bus back to Bangor from Orono. The route terminates at Pickering Square, but the drivers will let me ride with them up Union Street on their way to the garage to retire the bus for night. When they let me off, the front of the bus reads “Not in Service.” It’s seven o’clock in the evening.

The bus is only running this late because the Veazie-Orono-Old Town route (VOOT, for short) is a nearly two-hour loop that began at 5:15. It’s the last bus back to the station. From now until 6:15 in the morning, Bangor will be a city of 32,000 without public transportation.

The last Community Connector buses of the day for anywhere leave Pickering Square at 5:45, and they don’t return. This is too early to meet passengers from the 6 pm buses arriving from Portland and Boston at the Concord Coach depot. It’s too early to grab a bite to eat downtown after work. It’s too early to attend a city council meeting, or a play, or a music performance.

Public transportation is much on the public mind in the greater Bangor area these days, as the community charts its 21^st-century course. We’ve had yet another study, and just recently, a new grant to build a central bus terminal. Pickering Square is being reconfigured. So are the bus routes and bus stops. Big changes are coming.

But we’re still at least two years away from extended hours. It’s what everybody wants, and we’ve been talking about it for a long time. I’ve been a regular bus rider since 2006, and it was what everybody wanted back then. Successful city council candidacies have been centered on the issue. And still we wait.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m an incrementalist by temperament; I understand that things are often more complicated than they seem. Later hours mean more service time for the buses, leading to more maintenance time and the need for newer and more reliable buses. More drivers will need to be brought on full-time and paid decently. Costs will rise up and down the system.

 But that’s all it is, really: a question of money. Would the city rather spend public money on more parking, or on a more effective public transportation system that will reduce the need for parking? Maybe it’s case of picking the low-hanging fruit first. Designated stops are all well and good, and I guess it would be nice to locate your bus on your cell phone in real time, but it’s frustrating that these lesser issues have leapfrogged the obvious and longstanding need for later hours.

My message to the Bangor city council and the governing boards of the other participating towns (Brewer, Hampden, Orono, Veazie and Old Town): Find the money. Extend service by two hours, across the system. This would mean that the last buses leave Pickering Square at 7:45, instead of 5:45, as they do now. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

But it has to be done system-wide, and for the long term. No more “pilot projects” dangling on the edge of cancellation if they don’t produce immediate results. You can’t cherry-pick routes, because many people rely on more than one of them to get home. If ridership ticks upward – and it will – bump the whole schedule up another two hours. That would keep buses running until almost 10 pm. People could go out at night without their cars. Working late would no longer mean missing the last bus home.

It’s an investment that will pay for itself in the community within a short number of years. People not driving out of habit have more money to spend elsewhere in the economy. They will spend much of that money at local businesses. Everybody wins, even people who don’t go near a bus.

Public transportation is the future. And as Slower Traffic enters a new decade, it’s gratifying to see other, younger writers taking up the cause. We are living in the Late Automobile Age. It’s time for something better.

But wheels turn slowly. The Community Connector does not have the infrastructure to extend the hours immediately. Plans and preparations must be put in place before the first late buses roll. I’m told this is a two-year process. We’ve been talking about extended hours for ten times that long. Now is the time to commit.

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