I'm Christina Egan. I'm the executive director of the Greater Portland Council of Governments. Today we've got the Stupendous Tournament of Transit where we have teams racing across the region using public transportation, ferries, buses, and trains in order to win fabulous prizes and learn about our transit network. Well, we've been telling our members, city counselors and transit agency board members and people that make decisions about transportation funding, that we want to help them understand how the system works, what needs to be improved so we can improve the transit experience for all of our riders in the region. So this morning we are at the Soco train station and they can either take the train or they can take Shut Up Us Zoom to get north and then we're going to be ending in downtown Portland after people have gone out to the islands, have gone west, have gone north and come back down to Portland for a celebration. I'm Greg Jordan, general manager for the Greater Portland Transit District and I'm here joining GP Cog's Stupendous Tournament of Transit. The purpose of this event is to bring elected officials, staff from around the region, residents, citizens, riders to really experience the region's transportation system and ride services they may not have written in the past and see how the whole system kind of works together or actually maybe doesn't work together. The point of this whole thing is to really expose how we can be organizing our system, managing it, scheduling it, integrating it better so it's more seamless for riders and this exercise is really going to help people who make policy on transportation understand how it can sometimes be really hard to get around in this region. Kevin Sutherland, city administrator in Soco. I am participating in the Stupendous Tournament of Transit. So unfortunately I'm not actually starting in Soco. I have to take a taxi up to Portland to get my route started. So I'm heading to Westbrook. I have an appointment there. Then I have to head to a whole bunch of different locations before trying to get back to Portland. So it should be interesting because I've never tried any of these particular routes. Oh my God, you and so do I. I don't know my son. He's working for him in a way to rank. So evidently they walk in and go well to work in although I'm almost wishing that we could go over there. Save you. Sigh, we're not going back. We're standing at the crow's nest all day. On the shipyard. That's good. Now it's I think that in start with like what worked awesome. Like what was great about today. What did you say? Connections. All right. And that means that they were described. Like. Timely. Timely, you didn't have to wait that long? Navigated off. Okay. Awesome. What else? Bus drivers are great. Bus drivers are great. They are great, aren't they? And Rebecca, tell me what was particularly great about bus drivers today? They were friendly and they were helpful. And we had one of the biggest in Canadian. Right. A Canadian. Awesome. I think our passengers are great. Nice. The passengers and the people that are riding the trains every day are really willing to help. Yeah. For a lot of us it's our first time on certain things. And we would, I'd be, where's the next, oh here. Here's the schedule. So it's really refreshing and nice. Yeah. And we really wonder what people that are taking all of our different transportation. Friendly and helpful. Yeah. Awesome. Great. So I think even though we have a lot of work to do, I think a lot, maybe people learn you can actually navigate this region. Yes. Can navigate the region. That's great. What else? As long as we have you folks to help us get that schedule. Yeah. Yeah. We'll come back to that. I think generally speaking, for our part anyway, all of the transportation, train, buses, et cetera, were very clean and really good shape. Clean vehicles. Great. The transit app worked well. The actual transit app, right? Yeah. Transit. And I think it's just two weeks, right? Yeah. We were able to modify our transit because of that. Yep. Retirement. Good modify. That's good. Not only because of transit app work, but people actually use it. We saw several people waiting for vehicles and we said, what are you looking at? Oh, just saying what is a bus. Yeah. Great. Thank you. I see another hand over here. Kevin. There were definitely times when there were, but if people wanted to get on the bus or asking where does this bus go or that actually slowed down some of the process. So we were late getting to places in part because so many people were asking the bus driver. Asking. Yeah. So. There's some sort of application that we've done for the bus drivers or information they can hand out, particularly. Yep. My name is Sarah Kishman. I'm a transportation planning consultant and I work with GoMeme, the statewide commuter assistance program. So we got to be on one of the teams today. I love riding the bus anyway. So this was extra fun to have a group and get to pop on different routes and different providers together. And so we had a blast. It was great. And it was actually really much more seamless than I thought because we had to jump so many routes. We did two different providers and two different routes or four different routes and I just couldn't imagine them all lining up. But we got here early. We were medical salespeople who needed to hit main met offices in Scarborough. We also needed to get to Westbrook. We started in Soco. So Soco, Scarborough, Westbrook, and then Falmouth. So back into Portland, back out to Falmouth. And back to Portland. Four hours. Yeah. Not four hours on the bus. Four hours total to all those spots. Oh, we had a hilarious number seven Falmouth Flyer bus driver who I said, by the way, we're taking the scenic route. Meaning I wanted to know if we needed to pay twice because we were going to do the whole route out and back. And he said, no, you're taking my route. I don't know anything about the scenic route. So anyway, lots of watching folks help each other out with baby strollers and just some sweet, funny conversation among the men. The community piece, I think, the most fun. It's very helpful when they announce the upcoming stop. Yeah. Stop announcements. My comment was going to be that many of them do not announce stops and you would have no idea where you were or what the next stop was. Yeah. So I'm going to put this on the Delta because it's a little inconsistent. No, it's like some, I think our team was only on one bus that had announcements. We screwed seven buses today. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yep. That's right. Okay. What else? Good. Yeah. Here again, that can distract the driver a little bit. But like we were talking about it, they were able to carry our schedules. So we were on one transit and they were asking about the connection to the shuttle bus. And the driver says, I don't know. That's not our bus. That's not our service. But if they would have had a schedule. Yeah. And same thing vice versa. We had some of metro schedules with some of the other schedules. I think communication is a key. And I know I've been switching this for two years now. But it'd be really nice if we could get together and have a meeting with all the transits and talk about that. Yep. So I'm noting here, Parian, the drivers don't know the other systems as well. But the positive is there's a lot of communication that's happening between passengers and riders. Great. Yes. I'd like to offer that Bitterford and Freeport because that was our experience. There are people on the ground at the transportation centers. Information centers were very helpful, very friendly, and unfortunately knowledgeable because we didn't like what they said. But they knew what they were talking about. But they were right. Yeah. That's right. All right. Great. I could have had one thing. The people I found most helpful were the people that are regular riders of the system. Yeah. Those people, they know their stuff. And they're like, oh, no, that bus to this and this and that. I'd do that one first. Yeah. But they should be rewarded in some way. Like riders of the month. They were helping navigate the own system more than I think a lot of... That's great. I'm going to start a third one here just to... So, Parianne, you had a couple of suggestions on how to move forward. So I'm just starting a fresh sheet. So you're talking about riders of the month. And Parianne, you talked about kind of a driver's circle, like the agency drivers would know each other. Is that what you're talking about? The agencies being able to communicate. The agencies to... I know a lot. I will get phone calls from Metro and I will even call Metro and, you know, say, hey, we have somebody that needs to get in point A to point B. Yep. I get people dead or coming down from the bus to try to make a trip down to one place. It's nice to be able to have that information together. Okay. So that we can work together. Great. My name is Sarah Zagraphis and I'm the Transportation Director for the Greater Portland Cross. It was so much fun. My group, we were the day trippers and our challenge was to get from Socco to the Casco Bay Ferry to go to Peaks Island. It's a beautiful day for it. So we started on the train and we transferred to the Metro bus and we encountered a lot of folks. Everyone was super friendly, very helpful. We learned about some of their own challenges using transit that we can take back to our lives and our work. And it was so fun. It was the best day. My most memorable event of the day was on the Metro bus when I was sitting next to a woman with all her groceries and she was telling me that today was her day to go get her groceries. And she got on the bus this morning around nine and it was about twelve and she was coming back with her groceries and then at her bus stop she had another half mile walk with her groceries. And she was just telling me though about how reliable and helpful it is to have the bus service because if not she would either have to walk the entire way or use a taxi or Uber to get her groceries. Alright, what else was great? I'll add one myself which I had a very good customer service experience with South Portland Bus. I called and they were terrific. Of course I did have a little hint to call. But it was good customer service. Yeah, I know, I know. So that was great. Anything else? Okay, oh Casey. Even though I wasn't able to use cash at the Downeaster it was a very smooth process for me to purchase with a card. It took like a minute for me to get my ticket and board so but that process was smooth but anyone who would only have cash would have been stuck. Would have been stuck. Let's talk let's go to the next because this is what Jennifer was actually noting is that Jennifer smoothed the way for the Downeaster drivers today. Thank you Jennifer. And Jennifer do you want to share what the issue is there? Sure, happy to. So on the Downeaster you can purchase with cash and it cost you $5 more but you have to have your ticket booked in advance so it's not ideal so we always recommend that people book in advance but to your point the kiosk is very easy and so in reference to like a little bit once I found out that cash was the only option for today I did need to make some arrangements to make sure that our drivers on board were aware there would be more people that were trying to pay their cash and I know there was a mixed bag so some of those did use the kiosk and some did use cash on board but yeah it's good thing they required I have to have ID which is some people don't feel comfortable with that so that and to that point you know it's an Amtrak national reservation service so you need to have it you know I always tell people they should have an ID on that when they're traveling but I also hope you need to have an ID and from a costume you know so really also you know we reward people for booking in advance you're going to save money if you booked earlier so I apologize I had to cheat I did not I think everybody's glad you did it's good that's good and Rob you want to share that you were a senior today yeah so the nice other thing on the other side is if you use the kiosk you can save money when you have limited funds by going to the kiosk and bringing a student or a senior or something else for a slightly lesser rate nobody cares apparently we do but I make a call in advance there you go the down Easter was very scenic it was it was they got the money back they can take it up with these people alright so what else did you see yes you have a plus yep we went through Kennebuck and by all the beaches and the Mike who was our tour guide tour guide slash bus driver yeah he was awesome but he explained how much the houses were a little bit of history about how Kennebuck became separate from Kennebuck port and it was fun and very pretty it's a great ride it's a good ride for one dollar one dollar you can get off if you want to and then get back on shop around Kennebuck if you want to and then get back on so hop on hop on is that the your county community action service right yep excellent awesome I will charge you another dollar still worth it alright so let's switch gears going back to that one and I'm jumping sort of of the down east here with the extra five dollars there is a I think a profound lack of information misinformation and lack of signage across the board starting with no one in the world knows that you have to have an extra five dollars getting on the train or ID to her point but even when we got off as I mentioned we had very informative people but if those offices were closed or anything else you'd be lost yep okay good thank you other things that you think we can work on to improve the system Mike and then Allen one point about it was kind of mentioned about other systems but there's no regional transit guy on other buses right and so we ran into one person and he was very honest with us and one of the things he said to me which will not shock everyone is that he wished that everything was one system so that he had one map and one guide and all the routes were in sync and things like that that was unique that that individual told us that just when he was asking us about a regional transit guide we fortunately had one that we gave to him Henry Henry Henry Henry Henry and piggybacking on that we had an experience coming off the breeze trying to connect to the metro which we missed so epic fail we didn't actually make it but it was back by eight minutes and we would have been an hour later the other side of it though as I overheard someone getting off asking about how to get to Bitterford and the driver's response was that's a different system I don't know anything about that yep where the driver is not we got the same thing you got that same thing I think that we should all as all the transit providers look at having uniform signage so when people are looking the sign looks the same on any of our systems and it will help the tourists greatly but at the same time it will help the locals that want to expand their you know ridership further away from their home base Amy Guerin a program director at Portland Downtown well we were the we named ourselves the colossal collegiates we were assigned a task to complete as SMCC students so we had we started in SACA with everyone else at the M-Track station down-easter we took the down-easter to Portland and from the Portland transportation center we took the metro bus route number one to downtown knowing that that's where it all starts we figured we would end up there to begin with and then go from there to South Portland so we had a really quick transfer we were a little nervous we weren't going to make it but we made it to the South Portland bus just in time we stepped off our number one metro bus and immediately got on the bus number 21 over to South Portland and went all the way over to SMCC where we had a picnic lunch provided by GP Cog today and played a little volleyball and then we got on another bus the 24 bus 24A going to back to the center of town in South Portland and we had intended to take another bus from there our next stop was to go to the recreation center the community center in South Portland we were going to have to wait an hour and 45 minutes for that bus though so we thought we would walk the mile and a half by way of the green belt in South Portland so a nice multimodal transportation service over there and so we walked over stopped in stopped off at a coffee shop for some refreshments and used the public restroom that were available there went to the community center in South Portland where we caught a bus back downtown and then we stopped off at the downtown offices to debrief about the meeting and talk about what we did and made sure we filled out our sheets I hope we win a prize today because of our adventure and all that we learned and everyone we talked to most memorable part of the day let's see I would say the beautiful scenery at SMCC we got to enjoy ourselves there like I said play a little volleyball that was enjoyable the bus systems were all running really smoothly all I want to say exactly on time we were able to text with the southern main transit track we were happy to see all the buses arriving just as anticipated so that was good that's great Casey I guess it was more of an overall comment but I was surprised the first bus that we got on the folks were coming from California they had been staying in Boston and they were day tripping up to Portland and just trying to explain to them how to use multiple systems to get from downtown out to a lighthouse and it was very complicated and it made it sound clunky for us to try to explain how to get around and eventually we were just like you probably just want to take an uber to the lighthouse but what I loved and appreciated was that these folks came from very far away they came up from Boston and were dedicated to taking transit to see all of these things they wanted to go to a restaurant in Scarborough they wanted to go to a lighthouse they wanted to see downtown and I was like wow that is a lot it's a lot to do public transportation yeah good people are trying they want to use transit great similarly we had folks from down Easter from Boston and from Texas and some other places and they were coming up and they were all excited to be using the train but the takeaway was the trains either didn't come up here early enough or leave late enough that they could get a fuller experience but the takeaway was they would take the train more often they would stay longer and spend more money if there was longer hours if they could do that we had wet seats on our bus yeah we did we had three people get wet on our second bus didn't we so wet seats yeah and they weren't marked so soggy bottoms as Mary would say on a British baking show it was interesting at first I had talked a little bit with the group about headway and one of the fears the whole time was oh shoot we don't have a lot of time if we miss that we're cooked we got to wait another 45 minutes but one of the saving graces was a couple of the places we were at you could do South Portland or Metro you might wait only half the time if you grab the South Portland bus so at least having that duplicity or that could save some of that but headways headways can be tight continue to be a problem for people who want to use the systems we had one big cheat on our team which was in Bitterford Soco our first bus was late and we needed to make another Bitterford Soco connection and I think Tony arranged the bus to wait for us so yeah yeah well we didn't do it he did it naturally for us because he knew it was late but you could take points if you wanted to that's one bus one bus is running late it needs to make a connection especially where that particular bus was making the connection I try to do communicate very well that's one of the things that when I go out and I teach people about transportation I tell them communication is the biggest key when you get on that bus you need to let the driver know where you're going and stuff like that so if there is a breakdown they either wait for each other they're allowed 10 to 15 minute window to wait or we'll actually send out a ban yeah it was good flexibility conversations happen between the different bus transit systems today in general does that happen so GP COG and PAX has a transit committee and that's where most of the conversation happened all seven transit agencies are there plus Portland downtown Maine Turnpike Authority and DOT and a couple others Maine Med thank you and that's where a lot of the conversations happen those meetings happen twice a month and we oh the day to day I'm sorry yeah that I'll ask the managers do managers talk to one another regularly on special projects initiatives you know planning I would say the day to day needs to be improved significantly and certainly from an operational standpoint the systems are all in different radio systems there's no way there's no current way to we can communicate with your county community action especially with their WAVE program so that if the bus is running a little behind schedule we can make sure we can make those connections or if shuttle bus is running a little behind schedule if shuttle bus is running a little behind schedule so it sounds like it happens come on so it sounds like there's some radio connections between different systems but not consistent throughout the region so I wanted to spend two minutes brainstorming real quick what are the most important things in your minds that we need to do to make the system more seamless easier one of the biggest things I think is trick planning being able to know how you're from point A to point B whether it's taking metro or whether it's your county community action or any of the other ones it's just being able and that's why I said if we had those meetings where we could get a representative from each group together and talk on a regular basis we would have updated information thank you Perry Ann, Kevin frequency of trips in order to if there is a late bus or there's a late transit you can catch the next one great isn't an hour or two hours later so more buses running more per hour I would have better communication between the systems better communication between the systems we would be there but the other bus would leave in two minutes great two minutes is not enough time for us they're not communicating can you hold the bus for a moment thank you Greg yes longer hours longer service hours alright any others to answer that one as well is longer office hours I know we may have availability of 9 to 5 430 and I don't know what metro is we talked with the gal at the metro station so more communication for the riders to call after hours well it was phenomenal so we started in Portland and we had to get to Westbrook and unfortunately we missed our first bus I had no idea so where the pulse is and where we actually get on the bus so when we realized like we need to go to the end of the block I was sprinting down the street with the wig on running just straight down I crossed an intersection with the light changing I wish we had videotaped that so I missed the bus so we waited for another bus and we actually met some incredible characters of course wearing this attracts some interesting characters and we got on the two we took a ride back to Portland we went to South Portland to stop at City Hall and then we took a ride out to the main mall we went to the arcade and played some games we got some coffee and then we got on another bus to get here so I've had a lot of caffeine and a lot of fun I learned that it can be very it can be very difficult if a bus is running late to make a connection and there are options they're not ideal but there are options for a bus or another service to get to where you need to go I think we're finally to a point where we really need to have a conversation about a unified system one that's easy to transition to from one system to the next or actually one system that you can get from one point to another with fluid and easy transitions the most memorable part was Steve on the route 2 said to me are you running for office are you ready for office with that do and I said no he said well if you were I'd vote for you we're gonna announce the top three teams the team in third place we wish you all could win well you already are winners already so the third place team who I'm sorry does not get any additional prizes simply recognition is the day trippers it was close I don't want to say okay and then this is the second alright the team in second place who does receive additional prizes the stupendous travelers friends so you can therefore okay you can trade once you open sure sure we'll go over here so okay and then alright and in first place with an impressive win with only two people on their team the lady in the tramp thank you very much congratulations just to clarify just to be very clear it was because we missed our connection and never actually accomplished that that mediocrity has its place