While most everyone drives to get around as long as they can, seniors, individuals with disabilities and some members of the general public, including the Amish, all use the Aroostook Regional Transportation System.
Like other publicly-funded bus services, the Aroostook Regional Transportation System, or ARTS, is a service that is not widely known nor widely used. But for some it is a crucial way to get around, offering round trips at least one day a week from every town in Aroostook County to service center communities like Houlton, Presque Isle, Caribou and Fort Kent.
“It’s a wonderful system,” said Fran McCluskey, a retired teacher who lives in an apartment in Presque Isle and pays the discount fare of $2.50 roundtrip to go to the grocery store, doctor’s office or pharmacy. “They carry the food in if you can’t; they help you down the stairs.”
Although McCluskey has a car, a two-door Scion, she doesn’t like driving in winter or bad weather, and her chronic fibromyalgia, leg pain and kidney problems can make driving hard physically.
“Getting in and out of the car hurts a whole lot. If they ever get rid of that, people will suffer. I hope it never goes away.”
ARTS is not going away, although the rural transit service is looking for ways to improve its service and transport more people on a limited budget, said Dan Donovan, ARTS executive director.
“This the first year in four years that we’re starting with a balanced budget,” Donovan said at a recent public meeting on rural transit in Presque Isle. ARTS operates with about $1.5 million in revenue, according to Donovan. About $956,000 of that is from the federal and state government, $474,000 is from contracts with private sources and $46,000 in fares from riders.
The fleet of 16 buses run regional and in-town routes, including from Danforth, Patten and Stacyville going to and from Houlton. Elderly and individuals with disabilities pay half of the general public’s fare, which from Fort Kent to PI is $7.50. Riders have to call a day of ahead of the scheduled route and list where they’ll be picked up and where they’re going.
“The Amish use our service quite often to come in to Presque Isle from Easton or Fort Fairfield to Presque Isle,” Donovan said, adding that some request through a neighbor’s phone and some through mail, which doesn’t always arrive in time.
In its 2015 fiscal year, ARTS made more than 68,000 trips, though Donovan estimates that those are by the less than 2,000 individuals who regularly use the service.
While it has been subsidized since it began in the 1970s, Donovan said he thinks the transit service is a good community investment. Maine’s rural transit systems receive about $8 million, all but $500,000 in federal funding, out of the Maine Department of Transportation’s $500 million annual budget.
“We seem to have a lot of people in central communities who want to use the service. We could run from 6 in the morning and 9 at night,” Donovan said.
“There are some wonderful things to do in Aroostook County. I wonder how much of our population would even know of the Francis Malcolm Science Center? It would be a wonderful field trip for someone from The Valley,” he said.
Donovan has worked for ARTS since 1974 and seen ridership ebb and flow with demographic changes (the first wave of riders were elderly women who never had a driver’s license) and gasoline prices, which he noted probably won’t always as low as they are now.
The growing population of seniors may be drawn to car-pooling and ride services like ARTS as they age, but many seniors are also continuing “to drive for a long time,” Donovan said.
“My mother-in-law is 88. She still drives,” he said. “People come up to meetings and say, ‘You know, in a few years, when I can’t drive anymore and my retired daughter can’t take me, I’m going to use your service.’ The last thing any of us want to give up is our vehicle.”
