🔒Daily regional bus route gets rolling

A daily bus route between Lewiston-Auburn and Farmington launched this month as part of a renewed statewide effort to improve access to public transportation.

The Western Maine Transportation service, which runs Monday through Friday, was upgraded from pilot status on May 1. It had been called a top priority in a 2017 area transportation plan.

While a primary goal is to enable residents of upper Androscoggin and Franklin counties to get to jobs in Lewiston-Auburn, it’s actually much more than that, according to Sandy Buchanan, general manager of the Auburn-based transit service.

“It connects parts of the more rural areas to the urban center,” Buchanan said. “It’s a great opportunity for everybody.” She said residents are used to calling up for bus pickup requests, and that the area hasn’t had standard busing in decades.

Connecting workers to jobs is one of the new route’s main benefits, especially after Barclayscard closed its Wilton call center in February and with many people in rural Franklin County without reliable transportation to get to call-center and other customer-service jobs.

The route “was one of the top ones on our priority list, but it became even more important when Barclays closed in Wilton,” Buchanan said. After more than 200 people lost their jobs, “it was an opportunity for people who were displaced to get an equivalent job, without the additional cost of buying a car, or buying a second car.”

Craig Zurhorst, community relations manager at the transit service, said locals are warming to the idea that they don’t have to get on a bus in Lewiston or Auburn and take it all the way to Farmington, or vice versa.

“They can get off in Turner,” he said. “They can get on it Turner, or anywhere on the route. People are beginning to realize that.”