Living Without a....

This Google search autocomplete reinforces a general sentiment that a car is an inalienable part of people's bodies. 

Portland Society of Architects - Mayoral Questionnaire

The Portland Society of Architects, a local non-profit that promotes progress and economic development of Greater Portland by encouraging innovation and vision in design and planning,  devised a great questionnaire for the city's mayoral candidates to complete. Nine of the candidates replied and you can check out the questions and their answers here. A few sample questions include: "What is the most important thing you would do to improve the quality of the urban environment in Portland?" And "In 20 years, what would you like to see or experience while walking along Stevens, Forest or Washington Avenue?"
 

Maine Alliance for Sustainable Transportation

The Maine Alliance for Sustainable Transportation, MaST for short, will be holding a general meeting on October 25th at Peloton Labs, 795 Congress Street. Check out the poster below and this post at the Portland Green Streets website for more info and to RSVP.

Metro Bus Rider Survey

The METRO is looking at some changes to the Route 1 service, according this rider survey I came across. Nothing too drastic is planned, but they would like some feedback from riders. If you are interested in completing the survey, you can email it to dbeck@gpmetrobus.com. Route #1- South Side MunJoy Hill Survey-9.6.11 REV.

Liberate Spring Street!

The Portland Society of Architects will be hosting a (members-only) event on September 20th concerning Spring Street. Check out this page for details. They summarize the situation by saying:

The city planners of the early 1970′s, fueled with Federal money, demolished the core of Portland in an attempt to build a suburban mall downtown. Now we are left with jersey barriers between High and Exchange St and a senseless highway that, except a few skateboarders, is only used by automobiles.

It’s time to fix this six block mistake.

The section of Spring Street that they are interested in liberating is the highway-like area between High Street (where the West End starts) and Middle Street (where the Old Port starts) is highlighted below:

This slightly unpleasant stretch of street was once similar to how it still is further in the West End. This highway-like section was built around the same time as Franklin Arterial and coincided with the construction of the Civic Center and Holiday Inn but also the destruction of several buildings and smaller streets. Although this stretch of road is not as offensive of Franklin Street post-urban renewal, I applaud the Portland Society of Architects for getting the conversation started on how to improve this area. Although it is   early in the process, I look forward to hearing the ideas that they come up with. Read more about this topic in this recent Daily Sun article.

Bicycle Registration

Do you own a bicycle and live in Portland? You might as well register your bicycle with the city using this nifty website. You simply enter some contact information and information specific to your bicycle and you will be contacted in the event that your bicycle is recovered.

Go To: Gilsland Farm Audubon Center

So this is the first post in a new series called "Go To." This series will feature occasional posts looking at places to go within the greater Portland area that are easily accessible by foot, bike, and/or public transportation. Of course, you can also get to these places by car if you must.

Today's stop is the Gilsland Farm Audubon Center in Falmouth. The address you can punch into your mapping system of choice is 20 Gilsland Farm Rd, Falmouth, Maine 04105. Here is the website for the center, which is part of the Maine Audubon. The red dot on this map indicates the location, which is quite close to downtown Portland:

How can you get here? It is a nice bicycle ride up Route 1 or you can take the #7 Metro Bus which goes right by the entrance to Gilsland Farm Road. 

What is here? There are 2.5 miles of scenic trails to explore, which feel like they are much further from Maine's largest city than they really are. Gilsland Farm is also the Maine Audubon headquarters, and features their teachers' resource center and Maine Audubon Nature Store. This is a beautiful area to explore, here are a few photos:

And  look, the Portland skyline beckons! I will have to go back here on a less hazy day for photos:

Portland to Boston for $1

A tip of my hat to Broke207, where today I learned that Megabus is now offering special $1 fares for one-way travel between Portland an Boston.

Megabus is a pretty well-known operator of low-cost intercity buses in the US and UK. Concord Coach Lines, which connects Portland's Transportation Center with Boston's South Station is Megabus's partner in this low-cost venture. The $1 deals are limited to a couple of seats on each trip and require booking in advance. Megabus and competitors such as BoltBus have similar deals between other cities with special reduced fares. So the next time you are heading out of Portland via public transportation, don't forget to check out the Megabus offer. I enjoy the legroom of the Amtrak Downeaster compared to the bus, but snagging a $1 ticket is a good trade-off.

Express Bus

As part of the big development proposal at Thompson's Point,which will be known as "The Forefront at Thompson's Point," the city may be getting some additional tax revenue for public transit. Per this Press Herald article from today's paper, the city council "decided to set aside 25 percent of the money the city will receive [in taxes from the development once completed], to be used for transit projects." 

City councilor, public transit advocate, and mayoral candidate David Marshall, profiled on this blog in 2009, pointed out while talking with the Press Herald that the money from this development "...would be enough to pay for an express bus from the Portland International Jetport to the Portland Transportation Center – next to the proposed Thompon’s Point development – and then on to the Maine State Pier." Here's a quick Google maps map of the route from these three public transit hubs: 

I'm not sure of this bus route would by managed by the Metro or not, but I think this would be a good route that would kind of combine two existing Metro routes, the #5 (The Maine Mall bus) and the #8 (the peninsula route). 

The #5 currently goes from the Metro Pulse on Elm Street and out to the mall, but also services the Jetport and Portland Transportation Center. Speaking as a weekday rider of the #5, I see a decent amount of people going directly between the jetport and the transportation center. Perhaps this new route would allow the #5 to skip over those two stops and make more frequent and less-congested trips between downtown and the mall area. 

The #8 is the peninsula route bus, which stops at the Casco Bay Ferry Terminal while meandering around the rest of the peninsula. One suggestion I would make, without in-depth research on the issue, is for this newly envisioned express bus bus is to also swing by Monument Square and the Metro Pulse in order to fully connect with the rest of the bus system. Either way, the fact that public transportation continues to be on the radar of our city council is a good thing. 

Paint Your Own Crosswalk

This is a crosswalk across Elm Street, at Monument Square:

And with a bucket of high-visibility-glow-in-the-dark-annoyingly-bright yellow paint:

Of course, I wouldn't actually paint my own crosswalk. This random story from 2008 I came across details someone in Indiana who was jailed for taking matters into his own hands after the city decided not to paint a crosswalk.