By mile four of my walk home from a recent event in downtown Brunswick, I really wished I’d done more research on transportation in the area.
I live in neighboring Harpswell, and we’d used the app Lyft to get a ride to the event. But knowing that such services are limited in the midcoast, my partner and I had figured we could get a ride home by calling a local taxi company that — according to its website — would be open until 1 a.m.
At midnight, though, when it was time to go home, there were no Lyfts or Ubers. And 10 calls to the taxi service over a half-hour went unanswered. We set off on foot instead, walking a total of seven miles and finally arriving home after 3 a.m.
Our dilemma that night was not unique. The midcoast, like the rest of Maine, is mostly rural. And for those who don’t have access to a personal vehicle, or would prefer to leave theirs at home, there are few other options for getting around.
It’s a particular challenge for some employers, whose workers may not have cars but also can’t afford to live in the increasingly pricey midcoast. For that and other reasons, a group of state and regional agencies are now working together to develop a plan for improving transit from Brunswick to Belfast.
As part of that effort, which kicked off in July and could go for two more years, they’re establishing what transportation options already exist in the region and what more could be added.
“In the greater midcoast, there are some smaller transit systems that are trying to fill a need, but the need is greater than what they can provide,” said Emily Rabbe, executive director of the Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission, which is one of the groups involved.
Lincoln County, Rabbe noted, is a “public transit desert.”
The issue of transportation is ultimately linked to the housing crisis. With so little affordable housing in the midcoast, employers struggle to hire workers, said Mathew Eddy, executive director of the Midcoast Council of Governments, another group involved in the study. That means they must sometimes recruit people living away from the coast to fill their jobs.
There are at least two employers in the midcoast that have played an active role in developing new transit options specifically for their workers who live farther away.
Bath Iron Works, the state’s fourth-largest private employer, works with Western Maine Transportation to offer bus routes from Lewiston and Lisbon Falls to Bath, according to its website. The shipbuilding company also offers shuttles to and from remote parking lots outside of downtown Bath and priority parking to carpools and vanpools, according to BIW spokesperson David Hench.
And since Gagne Foods in Bath faced worker shortages in 2020, owner Michael Gagne has also worked with Western Maine Transportation to help shuttle workers on a new bus route from Lewiston to his food production facility. Many of those workers are recent immigrants to Maine who lack personal vehicles.
About 15 of his day shift employees and 10 or 11 of his night shift employees depend on the bus, which is free for them to take, said Gagne, whose business makes frozen dough products.
“It’s been a great partnership,” Gagne said.
There have been challenges to starting the bus route. It’s open to other passengers, as well, which has been a good thing for transit access in the region. But they must pay a fare, and it has taken work to ensure they aren’t getting free rides by posing as Gagne workers. Also, it would give the business even more flexibility if the bus could run more frequently, providing more options for workers to come and go.
But for the agencies that are now taking a look at transportation in the midcoast, it’s not enough to just provide rides into and out of the region. They also hope to eventually provide better transit services within the region as well.
For now, Rabbe said there’s no comprehensive system that can reliably get people to where they need to be.
“Having transportation options other than just vehicular, it allows people to stay in the community as they age, or even younger generations who might be starting in the workforce,” she said.
Among other benefits, having a more robust transit system would provide more ways for residents to get around after destructive storms like the ones that washed out coastal roads last January, according to Laura Graziano, a community resilience planner at the Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission.
To complete a regional plan, the groups are initially studying the feasibility of transit from Brunswick to Belfast and alternatives to using Route 1. They’re identifying areas of congestion and considering the mobility needs of older riders. Eventually, they’ll identify what transit methods would be most useful to add, whether it’s buses, vans, trains or other means.
However, while the Maine Department of Transportation is looking for a new operator to expand passenger rail in the midcoast, doing so could be challenging since the closure of Dragon Cement’s manufacturing in Thomaston has caused the operator of the area’s freight lines to pull out, according to Eddy.
Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.
