‘Next stop’: A look inside Concord’s bus system
Published: 01-03-2025 2:57 PM
Modified: 01-14-2025 4:16 PM |
Every morning, Zoe Vigneault takes two buses to get to work.
She grabs the Heights bus coming down Loudon Road and exits in front of the State House, one of few bus stops in Concord with a bench and shelter. She catches the Crosstown bus about five minutes later and rides for four more stops, just over a mile. The whole process takes about 40 minutes.
This particular morning was frosty, one of the first properly cold ones of the year. The driver reached down to crank the heat a little higher as the mini-bus pulled away from downtown.
Vigneault, 25, sold her car more than a year ago — it needed repairs that she couldn’t afford and that would have cost more than it was worth.
“Which tells you how old it was,” she said.
She could walk to her last job, but Vigneault enjoys what she does now, working at Meals on Wheels through the senior center at Horseshoe Pond Place. She lights up when she talks about it: the work is rewarding, and the commute is calm.
As Vigneault explained the different ways the program helps local seniors, mist rising off the marshy, u-shaped pond came into view through the windshield.
“Next stop, please,” she said.
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Vigneault is one of hundreds if not thousands of people who use Concord Area Transit (CAT) to get around the city. The bus network tracks the number of rides, but not individual riders. It is one of only a dozen public transit systems in the state, and one of only two that are completely free to ride.
As the service helps more and more people get to work, run errands and make it to medical appointments, those who oversee it want to modernize it, improving the rider experience and making it more like larger, more sophisticated systems in places like Manchester. To materialize those hoped-for upgrades, though, it faces the headwinds of looming funding challenges and job competition.
Ridership on the bus has been steadily rising over the last few years, reaching peaks higher than pre-pandemic levels when it charged a fare. In the 2024 fiscal year, the bus system provided more than 106,000 rides, plus another 9,000 on its door-to-door service — in total about 10% more trips than the previous year.
In a two-day series, the Monitor will explore Concord’s free-bus service and its role in the community.
Over the last several months, The Monitor interviewed people making up those hundred thousand rides on each of the four fixed routes, at different times of day, in different seasons. All either didn’t own a car or shared one with others. Their stories are told below.
Concord Area Transit first launched in 1989 as a largely city-funded system owned and operated by the county Community Action Program. The fare was 75 cents.
Now, similar to then, CAT has three main in-town lines, which all intersect at two downtown stops — one in front of the Statehouse and the other at Eagle Square — for transfers. The system has 10 drivers and one substitute, who work morning and afternoon shifts.
New Hampshire has 12 public bus systems. The largest four — the Manchester Transit Authority, the Nashua Transit System, Wildcat Transit in Durham and the Cooperative Alliance for Seacoast Transportation or COAST — are self-managed “urban” systems. All others — including Concord — are considered “rural” systems and report to the state.
“It’s a modest patchwork,” said Fred Butler, public transportation administrator for the Department of Transportation. “Ours is very much a skeleton framework…we’re really trying to focus on at least providing a minimum connectivity for folks.”
Concord runs a modest commuter-oriented system, with routes rolling on weekdays, excluding holidays, from just before 6 a.m. to around 6:30 p.m. Each route has one bus and takes a little over an hour to complete a cycle.
The Heights Route stretches East-West from downtown up Loudon Road, with its farthest stops at Walmart and near Perley Street on South Main Street.
The Penacook Route moves mostly North-South, stretching from Penacook Village along North State Street to downtown before making a turn to Concord Hospital at the other end of the line.
The Crosstown route winds through the city from stops near Memorial Field and Concord District Court toward NHTI, down Fort Eddy Road and out near the airport.
In addition to these city-center lines, the Concord-Laconia Connector runs from Penacook to downtown Laconia, with stops in Boscawen, Franklin and Tilton along the way. It debuted in early 2024.
For any transit system, even those that don’t charge fares, ridership means everything.
Public transportation in New Hampshire gets money largely from the federal government, but gets critical support from local governments, private donations, the state and, in most cases, riders.
Even systems like CAT that are fare-free pay close attention to their “butts in seats” numbers. To win grants, or to convince local business owners to donate money, for example, proof that people use the service is key. Clearing the 100,000 ride threshold last year meant Concord’s bus service was eligible for a greater share of state funds.
The economy probably has a good deal to do with rising ridership in Concord, said Terri Paige, transportation director for the Community Action Program of Belknap and Merrimack Counties.
Making rides free during the pandemic — and keeping them free after emergency aid ended — continues to boost ridership, Paige said. Beyond the cost, being fare-free is faster and easier for both rider and driver: no one has to fish around in their pocket for a pass, a token or the $1.25 cash.
The fare may not seem like a lot — but for those using public transit for budgetary reasons, it stacks up, Paige explained.
“Going fare-free made a significant difference in our ability to provide service, because it literally opened the doors for everybody,” she said. “It really leveled the playing field in a lot of ways, because people didn't have to worry about whether they were going to be able to get on. They just knew that if they were at the bus stop and the bus rolled up, they could get on and go where they needed to go.”
The addition of branding to the outside of the buses just before 2020 has also made them more visible and identifiable as a public transit system while they crisscross the city.
“As buses are going through the community, individuals are recognizing that it’s there and the phone number is right there on the side and they can give it a call,” said Cindy Yanski, mobility manager at the Community Action Program.
The strongest pull, though, comes from the cost of living. As everything, especially housing, grew increasingly pricey in the last few years, car ownership became out of reach for more and more people, especially young adults and seniors.
“There's a lot of folks who are, really particularly younger folks, trying to get into the job market and who, I think, are struggling with rental costs,” Paige said.
Michael Wirchansky is among them. Like Vigneault, Wirchansky, 26, uses two bus routes to get from where he lives on Bog Road to his retail job on the Heights every day.
After a living situation in Manchester didn’t pan out, he spent three years trying to secure his own housing in Concord.
There’s a sense of freedom that comes with having a car, he noted. On the weekends, or if he’s going somewhere not reachable on the fixed bus, he’ll call on a friend or pay for a cab. That’s not ideal, but he spoke highly of the CAT system and its customer service.
“This’ll get you most places that you’d need to go,” he said, “If there’s ever a problem, you can call and they’ll help get you where you need to be.”
Coming Monday: Examining the Concord Area Transit system’s challenges and how it wants to improve in the future
Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com. You can follow her on X @cat_mclaugh and subscribe to her Concord newsletter The City Beat at concordmonitor.com