If you are one of those who use Downeast Transportation this winter to get to Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, you soon will find yourself boarding a warm bus for a change. And that’s only the beginning.
Among the improvements in the 30-year-old system, a dozen of the buses soon will be stored overnight in the new bus maintenance and operations center in Trenton. Until now, they have spent the night outside. The building also will provide office space, a bus washing station, a place for drivers to wait their turn, a bunk room and restroom facilities instead of the present portable toilets.
The Trenton building, access road and a huge commuter parking lot comprise the $14 million first phase of the Acadia Gateway Center, which will serve the transportation needs of visitors to Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park.
The next phases will involve construction of a national park welcoming center and a multimodal transportation hub where air, bus and automobile visitors can board the free seasonal Island Explorer buses that shuttle people to campgrounds, Thunder Hole, the summit of Cadillac Mountain, Jordan Pond House and other sites. Greyhound and Concord Trailways could also serve the new hub.
Island Explorer buses already are alleviating parking problems in the park. Automobile congestion is worst at Jordan Pond House, where a plan is under way to limit parking to one side of the approaching road and encourage more use of the buses.
Automobile traffic in the park reaches its height in the last week of July and the first two weeks of August. The record peak came this year on Aug. 17, said Charlie Jacobi, who specializes in visitor numbers. He explains that it rained all day on Aug. 16, so the 17th brought a double dose of visitors. Oddly, the annual number of park visitors has never yet reached its 1995 record of 2.8 million. After a lag, the total reached 2.5 million in 2010 and slipped to 2.3 million in 2011.
Downeast Transportation, founded in 1979 with just three buses, now has 41 buses and two vans operating throughout Hancock County, with year-round service between Ellsworth and Bangor and in-town shuttle service for Bucksport, Ellsworth and Bar Harbor.
Tom Crikelair, Downeast Transportation’s first manager, continues planning for the system and operates his own consultation and planning business. Looking toward the future, he says that Downeast Transportation’s present system, with mostly propane-powered buses, could be expanded to serve emergency needs in case of an unexpected skyrocketing cost of gasoline.
Iran’s new threats of closing the Strait of Hormuz, where one-sixth of the world’s oil transits, are a reminder of what could happen to the price of gasoline. If commuters should ever find it too expensive to drive, there will now be a bus to take.
If Greyhound comes – they have an onerous $18 gift ticket fee. Learn more at:
http://www.change.org/petitions/greyhound-eliminate-the-18-gift-ticket-fee
Greyhound comes where…Are you joking?
Pretty sure he was referencing this line in the article:
“Greyhound and Concord Trailways could also serve the new hub.”
Service from Boston/Logan to the Island Explorer without having to change companies (or even buses) sounds like it would be a pretty good deal for a lot of tourists.
I remember not that long age grayhound did go to Barharbor
This story omitted one very important fact. All these buses, and the facilities are of course “wonderful” as are all the “free bus rides” to Acadia.
I have been around the planet long enough to know that money does NOT grow on trees. So perhaps the BDN will add a paragraph to the story telling us just who “pays” for all of this, and how much from each source of money.
Somehow I expect to find “the taxpayer” as a heavy part of that explanation!
I think that US & Obama energy policy is a greater long term threat to the possibility of higher gas prices than Iran is. We have a chance to expand our production of gasoline and home heating oil but the President panders to his base regarding the Keystone pipeline project.
I know what you mean, we are now exporting gas and fuel oil. This admin. is the first in 40 years who is trying to do something about our energy. I also wonder how much of the Keystone’s crude oil is actually going to the US? There is nothing in any agreement that says it goes to the US.
Another thing, the dam Republican gov. in Nebraska is trying to mess up the whole thing by wanting a re-route of the pipeline. He is like Obama in the Gulf of Mexico wanting to change things that might hurt the enviroment. The nerve of them.
As people like to say, oil is a priced at a world market price. Gasoline is one of those things that we produce a lot of that places in the middle east don’t. Iran for instance produces, if any at all, very little domestic gasoline. (That is why the current proposed sanctions will hurt.) My understanding is that most of the over production of gasoline is going to South America.
RE: Keystone China has rapidly filled the void created by a lack of coherent US energy policy. This is not a good thing for us in either domestic jobs nor oil availability and will be a governor on our economic growth should the economy ever get turned around. Besides I feel a little uncomfortable giving China that much power over us.
Hey guess what — the National Highway System has never turned a profit either, doesn’t make it a stupid or wasteful investment.
We don’t want any of that Federal money here in Millinocket. This type of development would cause our property value to go up. Of course I am being ironic. Yet when anybody talks about federal money coming to Millinocket we have a town manager and town councilors who actually say things just like I just said. I Quote one of them here ” We do not want any houses that cost $900,000 around here” When we live in a town that has property values that are 1/4 of the rest of New England maybe it is time to take a different look at how you see the other side of the mountain.