Maine

The Dying Year

Hank Garfield

In these dying days of 2022, I find myself thinking of people who didn’t make it through the year. Famously: Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), and Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher); the first ballplayer to steal 100 bases (Maury Wills), and the last leader of the Soviet Union (Mikhail Gorbachev); the Queen of England (Elizabeth II), and the queen of country music (Loretta Lynn). This year, mortality hit close to home: my mother, my girlfriend’s father, my sister’s boyfriend – and my college friend Martin Wooster, a writer and thinker of some note, and one of more than seven thousand American pedestrians killed by automobiles this year.

Martin wrote a column called “First Principles” for the Beloit College newspaper while I was its co-editor. He went on to be an editor and frequent writer for Reason magazine, and a contributor to many other respected publications. He sent me a note several years ago when I had a story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He was brilliant and provocative and funny. And he didn’t own cars.

That last part I didn’t know until he died, and I read it in one of the many on-line tributes from people touched by his singular wit. But I remember the frequent sight of his tall figure walking along the campus paths with a book in front of his face – the same thing that almost got Stephen King killed along a rural Maine road. Martin was run down while attending a convention in Williamsburg, Virginia and walking from one event to another. The person who hit him drove off and has not been found.

He died alone, but he was not alone in the manner of his death. Sadly, pedestrian deaths on America’s roadways have been rising, even as total driving miles have decreased in the pandemic’s wake. In 2021, an estimated 7,485 people on foot were struck and killed by motor vehicles in the United States. This year’s total could be even higher.

What can be done about these avoidable tragedies? 

Drivers are quick to point out that pedestrians can be hard to see. But they say the same thing about bicycles. Yes, people out walking at night should wear brighter clothing, and yes, cyclists should exercise caution. But the onus for safety has to be on the operator of the lethal weapon that is a car. Perhaps one reason that drivers have difficulty seeing pedestrians and cyclists is that they aren’t looking for them. 

But the necessary attitude adjustment goes farther than that. Until pedestrians and cyclists are treated as equal users of the public right-of-way, they will continue to die in unacceptable numbers.

For whatever reason, I’ve witnessed more belligerent behavior behind the wheel this year than in years past. I’ve had close encounters in crosswalks, where drivers are required to stop. I’ve seen people running red lights, speeding, and taking dangerous chances in congested areas. I’ve seen people pull in front of the bus so suddenly that the driver has to slam on the brakes.

I don’t know why people are in such a hurry. But perhaps it has something to do with an economy that wants us rushing to and from work so that we can make our car payments so that we can drive to the store and our gigs and our night jobs. An economy that extends little incentives to drivers, like the widespread expectation of free parking, and the tacit “right” to drive up to nine miles an hour over the speed limit. 

The long task of steering people away from cars must employ both carrots and sticks. Carrots include well-maintained sidewalks, expanded bus service, and cycling infrastructure. Sticks include correcting ingrained bad behavior. When a downtown speed limit of 25 miles per hour means just that, and police ticket drivers for going 28, maybe there will be fewer close calls in crosswalks, and fewer senseless deaths like my friend’s.

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.

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.