Slower Traffic

What is going on with Bangor’s bus system? Three years ago this December, we celebrated the opening of the Bangor Area Transit Center, a beautiful new nexus for the Bangor Community Connector, in the perfect location. The station still looks good. There’s new electronic signage, and new software than can tell you when the next bus will arrive and where it is on its route. But in terms of basic service, it’s been one setback after another.

Public transportation is all about making connections. It’s embedded in the name of Bangor’s local bus system: the Community Connector. But the bus service recently cut one of its two Capehart routes. Where buses formerly left the downtown Bangor Area Transit center at 15 and 45 minutes past the hour, they will now only run this route at 45 minutes past the hour. This means that it is no longer possible to use the local bus to connect with the bus to Rockland. I will either n

PetCo Field in San Diego, California Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan, combined age 176, brought their Outlaw Festival to Bangor recently, and...

I thought it might be useful to rate Maine’s bus stops, using a set of criteria geared to those of us who don’t own a car.

At the very end of the peninsula is Deer Isle, which is really several islands, connected by low causeways that periodically flood during storm tides. Deer Isle’s only road connection to the mainland is a suspension-cable bridge built in 1939. I’ve been crossing (and sailing under) this bridge my whole life. It was built with an 85-foot clearance that accommodates the windjammer schooners and most larger sailboats.

I was two days and two time zones from my home in Maine. On a Wednesday morning in March, I had walked out my front door and up the street to catch the Bangor Community Connector bus to the Concord Coach station in time for the 7 o’clock bus to Boston. Now it was Friday morning, and I had an hour in Denver to find breakfast.