PRESQUE ISLE – A partnership between GO MAINE Commuter Connections, MaineDOT, the Maine Turnpike Authority and the Aroostook Regional Transportation System (ARTS) to offer new transit services for Aroostook County commuters has proven enormously popular in its first full year of operation. By years’ end, the service provided more than 100 of the region’s commuters with vanpools, an express bus service and carpool matching services.
Contributed photo
A partnership between GO MAINE Commuter Connections, MaineDOT, the Maine Turnpike Authority and the Aroostook Regional Transportation System (ARTS) to offer new transit services for Aroostook County commuters has proven to be widely popular during its first full year of operation. This Aroostook Express bus began offering commuter service to Loring Commerce Centre during the summer of 2009.
“People were skeptical when we said we wanted to do this,” said ARTS Executive Director Dan Donovan. “That changed when the rubber hit the road and our commuter bus and vanpool services began operating.”
The new commuter services are operated by ARTS and funded by MaineDOT and the Maine Turnpike Authority as part of the GO MAINE commuter services. A County Commuter Services program was launched in 2008 and quickly has grown to include the Aroostook Express commuter bus and four new commuter vanpools, according to Donovan. Plans are under way to develop a second commuter bus route.
While commuter carpools, vanpools and buses typically do not thrive in rural regions, the ARTS commuter services program has several key factors working for it, according to Carey Kish, program manager for the GO MAINE Commuter Connections program. First and foremost is a group of area employers who are interested in providing a valuable commuter benefit for their workers. The GO MAINE/ARTS program saves commuters on their daily commute by providing low cost commuting alternatives that help employees save fuel and reduce wear-and-tear on their personal vehicles.
“We have a group of about 12 different employers at the Loring Commerce Centre who have welcomed GO MAINE and ARTS and really worked with their employees to encourage them to sign up for the program,” said Kish.
Kish, working with ARTS’ Donovan, made several site visits to Loring in 2008 and early 2009 to recruit potential commuters into GO MAINE’s statewide database of commuters. The database collects routes and times of commuters interested in carpooling, vanpooling, transit and other commuting alternatives. From that data, GO MAINE is able to help match commuters with possible carpool partners, vanpools and available transit services.
“When those site visits netted us about 300-400 commuters, we knew we had the numbers we needed to make this work in The County,” said Kish.
After determining there was a demand for commuter service, ARTS and GO MAINE began to identify what kind of commuter services might work for the region. The mix has included carpools, vanpools and commuter buses.
“The first vehicle we put out there was a used school bus,” said Donovan. ARTS dubbed the bus the “Aroostook Express” – its logo is a flaming Russet potato doing a wheelie – and in December 2008 began using it for a daily commuter shuttle between Presque Isle and the Department of Defense Accounting Service (DFAS) complex at the Loring Commerce Centre in Limestone. During the summer of 2009, MaineDOT purchased a 24-passenger bus for the route, and today the bus is running at capacity.
While carpools, vanpools and transit can save commuters half or more on their daily commute, county commuters – particularly those employed at DFAS – have had an extra incentive. DFAS employees have been able to take advantage of the Department of Defense TIP (Transportation Incentive Program). GO MAINE also can work with private companies to establish “Qualified Transportation Fringe Benefits,” tax-free transportation fringe benefits of up to $230 per month per employee for transit and vanpool expenses. This can be done as a pre-tax employee-paid payroll deduction.
Donovan said with a combination of savings, tax credits and a good, reliable bus service, the Aroostook Express really has taken off.
“Once we got that bus on the road, people started paying attention and signing up,” he said.
On the heels of the commuter bus, GO MAINE launched a vanpool program with four new seven-passenger vans that have also proven popular. Four of the vans are operating at capacity and interest is building on the remaining routes. The four existing vanpools operate between Ashland and Loring Commerce Centre, Fort Fairfield and Loring, and two vans from Van Buren to Loring.
The current vans and bus are running at capacity, and Donovan said that as more commuters register, ARTS and GO MAINE will look at the possibility of adding more commuter services for county commuters.
“To think when we first started this in the summer of 2008, there was nothing, and now this is one of biggest commuter program successes in the state – it’s a real case of ‘build it and they will come,’” said Kish.
For more information about ARTS and GO MAINE Commuter Connections, visit www.gomaine.org or call 1-800-280-RIDE.
