PPH Give yourself a $10,000 raise! Take the bus in Portland. Glenn Fenton OpEd 5-29-2026
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Give yourself a $10,000 raise! Take the bus in Portland. | Opinion
- Glenn Fenton is executive director of Greater Portland Metro.
As gas prices in Greater Portland climb toward $4.55 a gallon, the real “gas pain” isn’t just the price per gallon; it’s the structural cost of being tied to a personal vehicle.
Parking downtown is a hassle and it’s expensive. Traffic is a stressful way to start or end your day. Overall, owning and using a car to commute to work, school or for shopping and appointments is getting more expensive every single day.
The math is startling. According to 2025 AAA data, the average cost to own and operate a new car has surged to over $11,500 a year. When you factor in Greater Portland’s specific pressures — downtown parking rates reaching $200 per month, Maine’s notoriously high maintenance costs from road salt and frost heaves and insurance premiums — a personal vehicle is often a household’s second-largest expense.
Compare that to Greater Portland Metro. At $2 per ride or $60 for a monthly pass, a year of transit costs just $720. Even with the potential increase to $2.25 per ride or $65 for a monthly pass, $780 per year is a bargain. For a commuter willing to trade their keys for a DiriGo pass, the annual savings can exceed $10,000. In a city where the “affordability gap” is widening, that is the equivalent of a massive, immediate raise.
Despite the logic, a stubborn barrier remains: the myth that “buses are for people who can’t afford cars.” We need to move past this urban legend. In the world’s most functional, high-income cities — from London to Manhattan — public transit is viewed not as a last resort, but as the best choice. In those cities and others, it is an economic driver that complements housing density and choice for workers.
When we frame the bus as a “charity” service, we underinvest in it. When we frame it as a solution to traffic congestion, parking shortages and creating new housing density, it becomes a common-sense infrastructure priority. Every person riding Metro is one less car clogging the Maine Turnpike and one more available parking spot in the Old Port. It is also more money in the local economy, with national sources showing for every $1 invested in transit, $5 is returned to the community.
Cars were sold to Americans as a key to “freedom.” With the high cost of car ownership, it’s hard to associate anything about owning a car with being free. Using Metro provides freedom from gas price instability, the freedom from the search for a legal spot during a snow ban and the freedom to reclaim your commute time for reading or resting instead of white-knuckling it through traffic.
It is the freedom for teenagers to get summer and after-school jobs or to meet friends without needing a family car. It is the freedom for seniors to age-in-place, continue to be independent and engage with their community. No hassle, no searching for parking, no overly expensive fill-ups, just safe, reliable public transportation.
Making transit a habit doesn’t require selling your car tomorrow. It starts with taking the bus downtown to skip the parking headache, commuting to work twice a week to save money, or riding it to the Jetport before your next flight. It’s time we stop treating Metro as a secondary option and start treating it as the valuable solution to the increasing cost of car ownership.