Much has been made, these past few weeks, of the fact that the Concord Coach Bus Company has decided to remove Manchester from its schedule as of November.
The company says the lack of parking at the Queen City station makes the stop unprofitable.
That news will likely please some commuters who will appreciate the express bus to Boston.
But the decision is going to leave others high and dry
People who don’t drive are going to have to find new ways in and out of Manchester.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s David Darman has more.
When Concord attorney Sheila Zakre heard that the Concord Coach would no longer stop in Manchester she began to worry.
Zakre is legally blind, so she doesn’t drive.
And she frequently takes the bus to Manchester as part of her job.
The social security administrative appeals office is in Manchester so if I have a hearing there, I have to go there. On occasion if I have a parent who has an issue with the Manchester school district, I go to meetings there. That’s generally involving kids who have disabilities.
Zakre says she doesn’t know how she’s going to get Manchester once the schedule changes, short of taking a taxi or asking colleagues for a ride.
Sandra Morin is also sight impaired.
She lives in Manchester and frequently takes the bus to places like Montreal or New York.
Morin says she would feel isolated if she could no longer catch a bus to get out of town.
And she can’t understand why the state’s largest city may soon have no outside bus service.
We have all these you know the Verizon and all these sporting teams and so forth but forget about getting here. We have a major airport the Manchester airport, but we have no busses. So, you either need to drive a half an hour to Concord or drive a half an hour to Londonderry. It’s just, it’s just stupid.
Concord Coach officials say they decided to remove the stop in Manchester because the station lacks parking and other amenities.
President Harry Blunt says the lack of parking results in fewer passengers.
As an example this morning there were about 90 commuters heading to boston. How about the Londonderry station? There were over 300 this morning….because there’s a place to park.
The newly built Londonderry station will replace Manchester on the Concord Coach schedule.
The company has also won the state contract to run express buses to Boston beginning in November from Londonderry, Salem and Concord.
These will feature 16 new buses, costing about 6 and half million dollars.
State officials say they bought the buses with a mixture of federal and state money to try to pry commuters off I-93.
Kit Morgan of the Department of Transportation says the state did not put together the Express buses to take the bus out of Manchester.
Well the plan was not to eliminate any service by adding new service. So…our intent is to add more service and add more choices.
In that vein, Morgan promises that folks who use the bus will have it come November.
If people need the bus and are using the bus today from either downtown Manchester or concord to Manchester that one way or another they will have service. We’re still working on it, we don’t know how we’re going to make it happen but we’re definitely aware there’s a need.
State officials say they hope to have a solution for an in town Manchester stop resolved in the next few weeks.
I heard that Concord Coach had sold the parking area that was next to them and created this problem themselves?
Why don't they build a new bus station? They could have worked with the highway dept. and put something in one of the Mill Buildings that are right near the new roads going through downtown.
And why don't they spend a little money on an ad campaign so that people even know about them and where they go? I've never seen a commercial on TV or a good sized ad campaign in the local papers. That could even be done outside of Manchester to bring people into town to revitalize the area also... work, entertainment, etc.
Let's work together people.