By David Harry

Staff Writer

Getting there from here is both a passion and profession for South Portland resident Greg Eppich.

Eppich, a transportation planner with Portland  Area Comprehensive Transportation System, commonly known as PACTS, said getting around the area from Brunswick to Standish and Biddeford will become much more difficult in coming decades unless the region collaborates to plan transportation systems.

“We can change from an auto-centric culture,” Eppich said.

Eppich and other PACTS officials hosted a series of meetings and workshops entitled Moving Greater Portland to illustrate potential problems and encourage residents, business and government leaders to talk about what needs to be done.

The program is a combination of presentations and workshops. At two sessions last Thursday and Friday in Westbrook, transportation experts Geoff Slater, who helped redesign bus routes in the Pittsburgh, Pa., area, and Thomas Brennan, who helped guide development of mass transit in Portland, Ore., spoke about the need for a regional strategy in southern Maine.

Strategies they considered to create a regional transportation plan include developing straightforward bus routes, timely service, involving private business in transportation strategies and creating zoning laws that inhibit sprawl.

Slater and Brennan both work at Nelson/Nygard, a San Francisco-based transportation planning firm with offices throughout the country. They were joined at least week’s workshops in Westbrook by David Taylor, a vice president and national director HDR Engineering of Tampa, Fla.. 

Taylor said transportation plans do not mean the end of car travel.

“The car is always part of the equation,” he said.

A visible lesson on the need for a regional collaboration came when officials, including South Portland Planning and Development Director Tex Haeuser, traced potential mass transit routes on paper taped over maps of existing roads and pondered how to make routes efficient and attractive to riders.

Slater warned against viewing mass transit as a total solution, because transportation systems can quickly become too large to effectively serve the public and ultimately lose riders.

“It is expensive and efficiency is the key,” Slater said.

Slater, who formerly worked for the Massachusetts Bay Transit   Authority, redesigned mass transportation systems in Pittsburgh and reduced 187 bus routes to 125. While reducing the number of routes, bus service was kept direct, visible and short and allowed the quality to improve, Slater said.

“People are not naturally inclined to take the bus,” he said. “Transit can’t be all things to all people.”

Slater said a route initially designed for an hour-long trip can quickly become less efficient if too many stops are added or the route is changed to accommodate new businesses or developments. More stops can mean more buses and fewer passengers willing to take longer rides.

Creation of a bus pass that allows riders to use Portland Metro and South Portland buses is a small step to make mass transportation more seamless and attractive to riders, but Brennan and Slater said the area has a long way to go.

“We are absolutely at the baby step age,” Brennan said.

Census data released last week pegged Cumberland and York counties as Maine’s fastest growing regions, and South Portland’s population has grown 7.2 percent in a decade. 

More people means more congestion on roads and Eppich estimated 30- to 35-minute commutes from Portland to Gorham could take 45 minutes in the next couple decades.

Bus lines for commuters run between Biddeford and Portland and there have been efforts to establish service along Route 302 as far north and west as Bridgton.

The Maine Department of Transportation is restoring freight rail service on the former Mountain Division Line from Westbrook to South Windham, and the Amtrak Downeaster service is expected to expand to Brunswick in 2012. 

However those individual efforts are not overseen by a regional entity such as the Maine Turnpike Authority, which Slater said he found surprising.

Brennan said the success of mass transportation in Portland, Ore., where streetcar lines were reintroduced about a decade ago, is the result of almost 40 years of planning and partnerships between local government and the private sector.

Eppich, who commutes to work with his wife, rides his bicycle or takes the bus, said results from planning now will take a while to see.

“We are not going to see things happen in five or 10 years,” he said.

Inducing the public to use buses and light rail will require showing them unconsidered costs of commuting alone in a vehicle. That can be gas prices, taxes spent on road repairs or infrastructure costs created by suburban sprawl, Eppich said.

“These are lifestyle questions,” he added.

Two PACTS workshops will be held at Merrill Auditorium rehearsal hall at Portland City Hall, 6:30 p.m. on April 7 and 8:30 a.m. April 8.

The workshops are free and open to the public, but registration at pactsplan.org is encouraged.