Bangor Area Transit

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A BAT bus rolls through the University of Maine campus. (Close-up of the bus)

Bangor Area Transit is a bus system connecting Bangor, Maine, with outlying towns, including Veazie, Orono, Old Town, Brewer, and Hampden. The system is known as BAT for short, and the city of Bangor also calls it the BAT Community Connector.

In actuality while the BAT is colloquially known as the "Bangor Area Transit", "BAT" in fact does not mean that or anything else officially despite it implying an acronym by being in all capital letters. The citizenry have inferred a meaning from it none the less. The managers of the system did not want to identify it with any one city or town. ^[1] The official name is Bangor Area Comprehensive Transportation System (BACT) (which probably hints at how the unofficial name came to being). Despite this, "Bangor Area Transit" caught on and many websites referring to the attractions of Bangor, Maine and how to get to them often refer to this public transportation system by its fictitious name.

The buses, which number 15 in total, are distinguished by their bright red color, usually decorated with a large stylized bat on their exteriors.

The Old Town line of the bus runs through the University of Maine and ferries students to and from Bangor and the outlying towns. In the early 2000s, the University of Maine struck a deal with BAT allowing students to ride for free, in an attempt to discourage car usage and help ease the limited parking space on campus.

The schematic of the bus map is organized so that it looks like sort of like a spider: The central hub of the buses (called the Bangor Depot), and the point where most transfers are made, is located in Pickering Square in downtown Bangor. Each of the lines (with the exception of the newly-added "Mall Hopper" line) then emanates outward into the outlying areas. The bus schedules are well-coordinated so that when a bus arrives in the Bangor Depot, one can pick up a connecting bus leaving about five minutes later.

Schematic diagram of the Old Town line of the bus

The Old Town line is shaped like a lasso with the loop of the lasso going around Old Town and the rope of the lasso pointing in to Bangor. This structure has the additional, although confusing, feature that the buses go around the loop of the lasso in alternating directions every hour. Thus one needs to wait for the bus on one side of the road on even hours and the other side of the road on odd hours. This has caused some confusion for riders who have not read and understand the schedule and schematic carefully.

The BAT system is structured to make it easy for riders to reach points of interest in the Bangor area and serves two Wal-Marts (one in Bangor the other in Brewer), the Bangor Mall, several other shopping centers, and Husson College. In 2004, the Mall Hopper line was added to facilitate easy connections between the Airport Mall, the Bangor Mall, and the Broadway Shopping Center. The Mall Hopper is also the first line not to go through the Bangor Depot.

Several of the newer buses offer plush seats and air-conditioning which is used relatively infrequently due to Bangor's comparatively mild summer climate (but 85 degree Fahrenheit summer days are not at all unusual) as well as low floors designed to make it easier for wheelchair passengers to board the bus without having to use a wheelchair lift.

One of the unique things about the BAT system is that riders are allowed to get on and off at any point along the road, without having to use designated bus stops. As of 2004, the fare was 85 cents anywhere in the system, with one transfer to another line allowed. A pack of five tickets offers significant savings at $3 total.