Winter is the time of year I’m most thankful that I don’t own a car. It’s also the time of year I’m most grateful to friends willing to give me rides when the temperature drops below zero. This includes the lovely Lisa, who refuses to let me walk the half-mile or so to the downtown […]
Writers should avoid using the word “should.” It’s easy to tell people what they should do. It’s also presumptuous, and often counter-productive. People don’t like to be lectured. This blog has always been centered on my personal experience of living without owning a car in Bangor, Maine. It works for me. The same decision might […]
On Interstate 19 in Arizona, which connects the city of Tucson with the Mexican border at Nogales, the signs are in kilometers. According to CNN, America’s only metric highway is a remnant of the Jimmy Carter era, when the idea of adopting the metric system in the United States was briefly taken seriously. Every country […]
Ride the Bus Month in Bangor is winding down. November featured two free Tuesdays and a handful of events designed to raise awareness of the Community Connector and the essential service it provides to area residents without cars. But one does not need to live without a car, as some do by choice and others […]
I’m going to continue to say nice things about Ride the Bus Month in Bangor, and the Community Connector in general, throughout November. Those big red buses (some are white and others are wrapped in advertising) continually make me feel good about living here. They are one of the area’s unheralded assets. Regular riders must […]
Ride the Bus Month is underway in the greater Bangor area. Halloween afternoon blew cloudy and cold into Bangor, but people gathered in Pickering Square nonetheless, to eat, compare costumes, and talk about public transportation. Since I ride the Community Connector bus about 300 times a year, I thought I’d go express my support (and […]
Which comes first: extended hours or increased ridership? It’s a chicken-and-egg problem as old as technology: the tension between supply and demand. Extending Bangor’s Community Connector bus hours later into the evening will almost surely increase ridership, but some officials want to see better numbers before approving longer hours. And thus we come around again […]
November is Ride the Bus Month in the greater Bangor area. I’ll be writing a series of pieces on the Community Connector bus service. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, there’s another event in November we’ve all been anticipating for some time now. The Community Connector will provide free service on November 8, all day, to anyone. Make […]
In 1960, two years before winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck drove his camper/truck up the coast of Maine, accompanied by his dog, on their way around the periphery of the United States. He wrote a book about the trip: Travels With Charley (in Search of America). In it, he observed that the […]
I’m going to plunge back into this argument with both feet – on the pedals. A recent article by Tom Babin in the Los Angeles Times suggests that laws requiring bicyclists to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, as cars do, should be amended. I agree. We all do it anyway. I […]
