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”]