Maine

Cars and the Damage They Do

Hank Garfield

Two nights before leaving the country, I attended a meeting of like-minded people in Bangor concerning cars and the environment. The impetus for the meeting was a recent Congressional push to roll back rules on “clean car” standards, which require manufacturers to hit target emissions goals between now and the year 2025.

According to the Natural Resources Council of Maine, which hosted the meeting: “Transportation is a leading source of climate-changing carbon pollution in Maine and across the country. America’s most significant action to clean up the transportation sector was implementing a new set of clean car standards in 2012 to boost vehicle fuel efficiency and reduce carbon pollution from tailpipes. By 2025, these standards will have roughly doubled fleet-wide fuel efficiency to 54.5 miles per gallon.”

The legislation requires manufacturers to adopt steadily increasing fuel efficiency standards each year. But now, a group of six Republican Senators, backed by the White House, wants to “flatline” these standards after 2020. Their proposed bill would allow carmakers to miss the 2025 goals by 8-10 miles per gallon. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to figure out that this would cost the average driver more money at the pump, while increasing pollution in a state downwind from most of America’s highways.

Several states, including Maine, adopted even stronger standards. According to an April 2018 article in Scientific American, Maine has already exceeded its goal of reducing 1990 emissions by 10 percent before 2020. But that good work could be wasted if greenhouse gases continue to waft in from the west.

Slower Traffic is not, and has never been, a political blog. But it seems to me that the quality of the air we breathe ought to matter to people on both sides of our growing partisan chasm. If you can’t give up your car entirely – and many people in Maine can’t – wouldn’t you at least want to drive one that burns less gas? If there’s such a thing as a no-brainer in politics, reducing the harm caused by cars should be one.

Some fifty people showed up for the meeting, and were encouraged to comment on this proposed legislation.  These comments will become part of the public record in the hearing process leading up to a potential vote on the proposed rollbacks.

Senator Susan Collins sent a representative and a letter opposing the proposal. Bangor city council member Sarah Nichols, whose father collected and analyzed air samples atop Cadillac Mountain when she was growing up, said that emissions standards result in “healthier minds, healthier bodies, and healthier wallets for all of us.”
Studies show female cialis online that majority would answer that it sometimes can be called a routine. A man facing such sexual difficulties can use this pill to improve online viagra pharmacy their sexual performance. Young men’s rapid sexual response is not premature because they have not yet learned to control this physiological reflex. professional cialis It also offers a significant approach to avail the treatment to enhance their sexual life. viagra wholesale india
The comment that stood out most to me came from Dr. Bill Wood of Bangor. He pointed out that the only possible beneficiaries of lowered standards are vehicle manufacturers, who get to pass along the costs of pollution to “the commons” – that is, all of us. Consumers pay more at the pump and in increased health care costs, while manufacturers save money on less stringent emissions standards. Profits go up for them, while costs increase for the rest of us.

The only solution, he said, is to “get your hands dirty” in the political process. “Our democratic system needs to counter-balance market forces,” he said. “The system is corrupt, but not hopeless.”

He’s right. Market forces work well in many cases. But they don’t prevent the construction of condos in the Grand Canyon, or the increasing air pollution in Acadia National Park, whose air quality ranks among the worst in the entire national park system. Only legislation can do that. I can understand the small-government philosophy of Republicans, but I can’t understand their hostility to laws protecting our natural resources – especially in Maine.

We already have too many cars. The least we can do is mandate they run a little bit cleaner.

___

This blog is moving into a new phase. For the next eight months, I’ll be posting from Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, where I’ve taken a teaching job for the academic year. A friend wisecracked that I should rename it “Even Slower Traffic.” I’ll see if that’s the case.

It’s hazy here today, from the heat, not from any European wildfires that I know about. The mountainous landscape reminds me of inland southern California, before you get to the desert – Escondido, say, or San Bernardino, but without as many cars. I haven’t really looked around yet. One of the duties of a writer is to keep his eyes and ears open, and to report honestly before forming an opinion. I’ll try to do that.

[wpdevart_like_box profile_id=”slowertraffic” connections=”show” width=”300″ height=”550″ header=”small” cover_photo=”show” locale=”en_US”]

The Lonely Road toward better Public Transportation

Hank Garfield

I was the only passenger on the Concord Coach bus leaving Bangor at 7 one recent morning, on the scenic route along the coast.

In Belfast, where I disembarked, two passengers got on, and additional riders would board in Camden and Rockland and points farther south. But it’s weird being alone on a 57-passenger bus, with no one else but the driver. And it wasn’t the first time.

Many of the people who use this bus are traveling outside of Maine, as was the man who boarded in Belfast, headed for Boston’s South Station. But I’m still surprised at how few people think of it for more local trips. For example: how many people from Bangor attended the recent Rockland Lobster Festival? How many of them thought about doing it by bus?

During the summer, Concord runs two morning buses down the coast from Bangor, and two evening buses coming the other way. Fares are cheap, and you don’t have to worry about parking at your destination. The schedule, sad to say, doesn’t do much for a Rockland resident who wants to take a bus to the Bangor Folk Festival. There’s no way to do it without an overnight stay.

But, baby steps. The difficulty with establishing public transportation in an area where it isn’t already a way of life is akin to the “bootstraps” problem of space travel. It takes large initial investments to get off the ground, and it isn’t going to be profitable, or even popular, right away.

People see an empty bus and decry the waste of money, while cars whiz by all around them with nothing in the back seat but last week’s junk mail. Some say they would use public transportation if there were more of it: more frequent trips, later evening hours, better connections between services. I find it annoying, for instance, that the Community Connector stops running fifteen minutes before the 6 pm Concord bus from the coast gets into Bangor. I can’t get a bus back downtown.

But this isn’t about me. It’s about the world. A motor vehicle spews its weight in carbon compounds every year of its operation – and that doesn’t count the costs of manufacturing it and disposing of it. Acadia National Park is suffering under the dual automotive curse of reduced air quality and increased traffic congestion. Maine has too many cars. The United States has too many cars. The rest of the world seems all too eager to follow us on this highway to Hell.
The sufficiently long effectiveness of this medicine makes it one of the effective and powerful natural remedies for sexual weakness problem in men. viagra ordination On the whole http://deeprootsmag.org/2016/08/06/bringing-it-all-back-home/ cheap cialis in canada is more popular among people for the quick results that it provides. generika viagra It is prescription medicine and taken under strict instructions of physician. As and when the disorder was seen in many people and there were so cialis online friendly and hospitable I fell in love with the country immediately.
Given this over-abundance of exhaust-spewing vehicles, doesn’t it make sense to lure people out of their cars? Sometimes it’s better to ride a bus. If the bus is clean, reliable, and runs on a convenient schedule, why, as Concord Coach’s slogan says, would anyone drive?

I think most people drive because they are used to it, as we are used to thinking in miles, and feet, and inches. But if the United States were to join the rest of the world and adopt the metric system, it would take at most two generations for Americans to adapt. I think we also could adapt to a way of life in which the car isn’t always king.

There are small signs that this is already happening. Last month, I wrote about the new local bus service in Rockland. Since then, a similar service has begun in Belfast. As yet, there isn’t a local bus connecting the two, save for the twice-a-day Concord. But as I said, baby steps.

Were I to be Maine’s next governor, I would appoint a commissioner of public transportation, someone whose job it would be to facilitate connections between all of Maine’s bus and passenger train services, to look where new routes and schedules could be added, to make sure that Mainers and visitors can get there from here without a car. A website would enable travelers to view connections and plan trips. Eventually, the hodgepodge of public transportation services in Maine will be woven into a single, easily navigable network, like the highways are now.

When it’s easier to take a bus than it is to drive, more people will take the bus. But the bootstraps problem is real. People need to use public transportation now, when it isn’t easy, to demonstrate the demand for more and better services in the future.

The return bus that afternoon carried almost a dozen passengers beyond Belfast. At the Bangor depot, I retrieved my bicycle and pedaled down Union Street, waving to the driver of the day’s last Community Connector, headed in the other direction.

[wpdevart_like_box profile_id=”slowertraffic” connections=”show” width=”300″ height=”550″ header=”small” cover_photo=”show” locale=”en_US”]

Rockland’s got a brand new bus

Hank Garfield

Rockland’s got a new local bus system.

I used it the last time I was down there. It’s called the DASH bus, and the acronym stands for Downtown Area Shuttle. Though it doesn’t exactly dash around town, it makes possible errands without a car in the spread-out Rockland commercial area.

From 7:00 a.m. to 4:50 p.m., two buses run opposite routes on the hour between the Wal-Mart in Thomaston and Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport. They often cross paths at the Custom House Place parking lot in downtown Rockland. Other stops include the ferry landing, Harbor Plaza, the Salvation Army, and the Maritime Farms convenience store on south Main Street. The bus will also stop for you along the route and let you off where you choose.

This is welcome news. It’s relatively easy to get to Rockland without a car, but less easy to get around without a car once you’re there. Residents without cars have had to use local taxis, bicycles, and their own two feet. Like many Maine cities, Rockland has favored the car by locating necessary services (like City Hall) outside the convenient reach of non-drivers.

The DASH bus is not a panacea for all the problems associated with the overuse of automobiles in mid-coast Maine, but it’s a solid start. Trains and long-distance buses can help alleviate some of the summer tourist traffic, but most of the excess use of cars comes from what traffic planners call “trip-chaining” – or in the vernacular, running errands. This is why businesses outside the immediate downtown are compelled to maintain large parking lots, free to park in, which in turn encourages more driving. But the local bus offers an alternative.

Steffanie Pyle is a community engagement facilitator with Mid-Coast Public Transportation, the Belfast-based organization that runs the bus. The DASH bus began operations in May, with little fanfare. There will be an “official grand launching” sometime in the fall, she said.

“Anecdotally, I can tell you the reception’s been good so far,” Pyle said. “We’ve had some positive feedback from riders and people in the community.”

The two buses can each carry 12 passengers and are wheelchair accessible. They’re comfortable and air-conditioned. They do not carry bike racks, but Pyle said plans are afoot to add them eventually.

Bile from the liver consistently moves in the network of the bile best price sildenafil ducts that join into the common bile duct. They provide good alternatives to synthetic medical remedies and have fewer side effects, which make cheapest cialis without prescription them safer. With every tablet, a man can achieve bliss pfizer viagra online more easily. https://unica-web.com/wmmc2006films.pdf cialis price online It is made from herbs without any side effects and drug resistance. The buses will run during the day Monday through Friday, year-round. As for the future, Pyle said, “We’ll see what we can do with it.”

Fares are comparable to Bangor’s Community Connector. A single ride costs $2 in Rockland versus $1.50 in Bangor; a monthly pass on the DASH is $50, five dollars more than a monthly Community Connector pass. You can purchase a 12-punch card that gives you dozen rides for the price of ten; the Community Connector offers a string of six tickets for the price of five rides. But the Rockland bus service offers something Bangor doesn’t: a five-dollar day pass that allows you unlimited rides on the day you buy it. This is perfect for someone like me, in town irregularly but often, usually without a car.

I had to look up the Community Connector prices; I haven’t paid for a ride in years. The University of Maine is a pioneer in promoting public transportation. Unlike most employers, they do not provide free parking at the job site. Instead, they give away de facto bus passes, and Husson, EMCC, and Beal College have followed suit.

Could employers in the Rockland area do the same? Penobscot Bay Medical Center and Wal-Mart, the anchors of the route, employ many car commuters. If even a few of them became bus commuters instead, the roads would be a little less crowded, and drivers might be a little less inclined to treat crosswalks like yellow lights, racing to get through them ahead of pedestrians.

Like many small cities, Rockland is struggling with the transition from the Age of the Automobile to a mixed-use transportation future. Pyle described bus service in Maine as a collection of small services “all Frankensteined together – as is the funding.” Money comes from sources including federal grants, local matching funds, donations, and fares paid by riders. “The ultimate goal is to connect all these services together,” Pyle said.

I agree. It should be possible to take the Community Connector to the Concord Coach depot in Bangor, get on a bus to Rockland, meet the DASH bus at the ferry terminal, and reverse the process at the end of the day – in either direction. We’re not quite there yet. But it’s coming.

Public transportation serves older people aging out of cars, but it also helps to keep young people – the post-automotive generation – in the state and in the work force. People want human-scale, pedestrian friendly communities. Buses are a big part of that picture.

[wpdevart_like_box profile_id=”slowertraffic” connections=”show” width=”300″ height=”550″ header=”small” cover_photo=”show” locale=”en_US”]