Get on the Bus Passengers Find Island Explorer System to Be an Easy, Environmentally Friendly Way to See Mount Desert Island
By BILL TROTTER; OF THE NEWS STAFF
If you want evidence that the Island Explorer bus system is having an impact on the Mount Desert Island area, checking the numbers is a good place to start.
Over the first three weeks of its operation this summer, Island Explorer buses carried a total of 73,000 passengers, according to officials who have helped create and maintain the system. It has 37 propane-powered buses that operate on eight different routes, including one on the Schoodic Peninsula. And since its inception in 1999, it has transported more than 2 million people on Mount Desert Island, even though it operates just four months every year.
Officials connected with the seasonal free bus system, which is funded by private sources such as L.L. Bean and through government taxes and fees, have been vocal about its benefits. It helps cut down on traffic congestion, it eases the crunch on parking in Acadia National Park and the seaside villages that surround it, and it reduces the amount of carbon that gets pumped daily into the atmosphere, they have said.
But if you are still not sure what to think of the Island Explorer buses, just ask somebody who rides one.
“It’s terrific because you don’t have to worry about making a loop,” Eric Henderson said Saturday of the hiking routes he takes with his family. They can take any turn they want, he said, and end up someplace where a bus can take them back to their campground.
When the weather wasn’t so good last week, Henderson said, he and his family rode the bus to familiarize themselves with the island’s geography.
“It’s what you do on a rainy day and you’re curious,” he said.
Henderson, a high school administrator from Howell, Mich., said he likes the fact that the buses run on propane, which is considered more environmentally friendly than gasoline or diesel fuel. He said that at home he drives a sport utility vehicle out of necessity and hates it, but that he, his wife and their three children make sure to produce only one bag of trash among them each week.
“It’s huge,” he said of the low environmental impact of the buses. “It’s a big one.”
Holly Mauro of New York City took an Island Explorer bus Saturday to Sand Beach with her family. Mauro, a real estate investment banker, said she also likes to ride the bus.
“It reduces traffic in the park. I like it because I can hike wherever I want and don’t have to worry about getting back to my car,” she said.
Mauro was critical of the decision this year to change the Sand Beach route, however. She said that by adding a leg to Blackwoods Campground, it takes a half-hour longer to get back to Bar Harbor from the beach than it used to.
But Mauro said her grandparents seem less concerned with the amount of time the ride takes. They use the Island Explorer just to see the sights.
“They won’t actually get off the bus,” Mauro said.
Mauro’s mother, Lynn Cote of Mount Vernon, N.H., owns a summer home in Bar Harbor. She said she comes to Bar Harbor frequently throughout the summer and rides the Island Explorer bus nearly every day she is here. She puts a dollar in the bus donation box every time she arrives back at the Village Green, the downtown Bar Harbor park where most of the bus routes converge.
“It’s good that people use the bus,” Cote said. “I like to see it crowded, that people take advantage of it.”
And it’s not only tourists who do. John Kelly, Acadia’s park planner, said Friday that ridership surveys show that 22 percent of the people who ride the bus are either local residents or seasonal workers. Of the 73,000 people who rode the system this year between June 23 and July 15, about 57,000 are estimated to have used the buses to visit the national park. With each private vehicle that enters the park carrying an average of three people, he said, 57,000 people riding the bus saves about 20,000 vehicle trips into Acadia.
One private vehicle trip onto MDI was saved Saturday courtesy of Ali Gray, 15, of Trenton. He had his father drop him off at the Trenton IGA supermarket, the terminus of the Campgrounds route, so he could catch the bus into Bar Harbor.
A student at Ellsworth High School, Gray said he rides the bus into town to meet up with friends and hang out. He said that on hot days they like to pile onto the bus to go swimming at Echo Lake, on the opposite side of MDI.
The bus is fun and convenient, Gray said, but that’s not the only reason he likes it.
“When this thing is packed, it’s like 12 cars that aren’t on the road,” he said quietly, holding his skateboard while sitting in the back of the bus. “There should be more like it.”
BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY KEVIN BENNETT
Island Explorer bus driver Galen Ireland waves to a fellow Explorer bus driver as the two pass while covering the campground in Trenton to the Village Green in Bar Harbor.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY KEVIN BENNETT
Brianna Homan (left) and her mother, Lori, of Stewartsville Minn., were in disbelief to find out it was OK for their dog, Daphne, to join them as they ride on the Island Explorer bus. Joining Homan on the inbound trip are local youth Ali Gray (right) of Trenton who uses the bus service to get to Bar Harbor to skateboard and hang out with friends.
HED: Get on the Bus
Subhed: Passengers find Island Explorer system to be easy, environmentally friendly way to see Mount Desert Island
(c) 2007 Bangor Daily News. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.