Dawn is a time for people with purpose: flight catchers, marathon trainers, first-shift workers, long-haul truckers. On a recent Monday, Dan Doolan joined those early risers as he headed from Burlington to visit his sister-in-law in Essex.
Doolan, 68, doesn’t own a car. He hasn’t for 20 years, ever since he lost a finger in a work accident at the now-defunct Specialty Filaments plant, where he made bristles for brooms and toothbrushes. The pain medication Doolan took made him drowsy, so, a couple of close calls later, he decided to stop driving.
He relies instead on the region’s public buses to get around, conforming his schedule to the timetables offered by that financially failing system. Green Mountain Transit service, as of this particular morning, had just become even more infrequent.
Under the new timetables, a bus would stop along the busiest routes in Chittenden County every 30 minutes at best during the summer. They would travel even less often to suburban Essex, where Doolan’s sister-in-law lives. For Doolan, that meant he could either squeeze in a brief visit before the 8 a.m. bus back to Burlington — or wait until the next one at 2:45 p.m., which would turn his trips into full-day obligations. Several other scheduled runs on the route had just been eliminated.
“I used to have time,” Doolan said.
So Doolan slipped his arms through the straps of a backpack he’d mended with duct tape and walked from his home at Cathedral Square Senior Living to the nearby Downtown Transit Center to catch his first bus. He took a seat on a slatted bench at the outdoor terminal, where nearly every Green Mountain Transit bus begins and ends its route. A digital display overhead showed the date, June 16, and the time, 5:43 a.m.
The transit center, a conspicuously metropolitan bit of architecture, was still only half awake. At one end of the glass-and-brushed-metal overhang, an indoor ticket counter was still locked. A woman, head on a pillow, slept at the other end of the concrete platform. Doolan sat in the middle of the terminal, hands on his legs, his salt-and-pepper hair poking out from beneath his U.S. Navy cap.
Since his brother died in 2022, Doolan has visited his sister-in-law several times each week. The journey, roughly 25 minutes by car, takes him an hour and 20 minutes each way, including a transfer to a second bus in Essex Junction.
His trips are getting longer; the June service cuts weren’t the first and likely won’t be the last. The cost to provide urban-style bus service in Vermont has been soaring for years, and revenues from taxpayers and fares haven’t kept pace. After several years of free service during the pandemic, Green Mountain Transit restored fares last year — but they aren’t enough to offset multimillion-dollar budget gaps. Now the transit authority is figuring out how to operate within its means.
Vermont, with its civic-minded and climate-conscious citizenry, allocates a larger share of state and federal dollars toward public transit than any other rural state. Each year, the City of Burlington contributes roughly $45 per resident to Green Mountain Transit, far more than any other Vermont municipality. Yet fewer people board the big blue buses today than in 2012, when ridership peaked.
Planners had once intended for Green Mountain Transit buses to serve as the connective tissue for Chittenden County and beyond. Today, officials are simply trying to assess which reductions will be least disruptive. The transit authority risks becoming trapped in a vicious cycle: service cuts that lead to fewer riders, which leads to even more cuts.
Who should the bus serve? That’s a question the transit authority’s general manager, Clayton Clark, wants local and state leaders to help him answer.
“The soul of GMT is going to have to be decided,” he said.
Doolan was the only passenger on the bus when it approached his stop in Essex. Taking a trail he’d blazed through the woods, Doolan arrived at his sister-in-law’s house, grabbed a pile of letters from her mailbox and went inside to greet her. Over the next few minutes, he lugged bags of trash and recyclables out to the garage.
He walked back to the bus stop 20 minutes before his 8 a.m. departure, erring on the side of caution. If he missed his bus, he’d have to walk 3.6 miles to the Amtrak station to catch a different one.
As Doolan rode back home, he expressed ambivalence about the state of the bus service. He wished Green Mountain Transit had reinstated fares sooner instead of cutting routes. On the other hand, Doolan said, he felt lucky that he could ride as far as Essex at all.
Catching a Ride
Diane Stewart nearly missed her bus that morning. As the No. 2 rolled along Main Street in Winooski with Doolan inside, the slight, 79-year-old woman dashed up a hill, swinging her arms wildly.
The driver opened the doors and explained to Stewart where she needed to stand to catch the bus. Stewart didn’t seem to hear; she was too busy expressing relief.
“Thank you so much,” she said before stepping inside. “Oh, thank God!”
A construction-related road closure had forced the transit authority to relocate a stop, and Stewart hadn’t seen the memo.
Overall, bus ridership across the transit authority network has been sagging for more than a decade.
She takes the bus each weekday morning from her Winooski apartment to the Hannaford supermarket at the Essex Experience, where she stocks shelves. She’s worked for the grocery chain for 27 years, she said, and has always ridden the bus to her job. Her shifts stretch from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., five days a week. That’s a long day for a septuagenarian. “But I have to work,” Stewart said. Her day had started with her sprinting to catch the 6:15 a.m. bus, already wearing her maroon Hannaford polo shirt.
The No. 2 follows the main thoroughfares out of Burlington, with stops at the University of Vermont Medical Center, Winooski, Fort Ethan Allen in Colchester and along Route 15, ending at the Amtrak station near Five Corners. The early morning run also stops on the campus of GlobalFoundries, the semiconductor chip company that is Vermont’s largest for-profit employer. The route is one of Green Mountain Transit’s most popular, with about 500,000 rides annually.
Overall, however, bus ridership across the transit authority network has been sagging for more than a decade. The urban division handled about 2.3 million rides between July 2023 and June 2024 and is on track for a slightly higher number this past year. That’s down from a peak of 2.7 million trips in 2012.
Ridership has fallen even though Chittenden County’s population has grown by 10,000 residents; the annual cost of car ownership has increased by $3,300; and Green Mountain Transit has expanded its footprint in the region. Beginning in 2011, the former Chittenden County Transportation Authority, which operated local and commuter routes, combined with the regional provider, Green Mountain Transit Agency, to create a unified rural-urban bus system for northern Vermont.
Public transit, despite its benefits, has faced headwinds in attracting riders, even when fares were free. Some climate-conscious Vermonters have opted for the convenience of e-bikes or electric vehicles to reduce their personal fossil fuel emissions. Telehealth appointments have chipped away at trips to the doctor’s office. The rise of remote work — especially among state employees — has landed a significant blow. Before the pandemic, Green Mountain Transit’s LINK connector between Burlington and Montpelier used to pack Greyhound-size coaches to standing-room-only capacity, to the tune of 124,000 rides per year. That figure had shrunk to 53,000 by fiscal year 2024. Now those buses, too big for the job, sit idle at the transit authority’s garage.
Today’s bus passengers typically lack other ways to get around. The transit authority has not surveyed them in years, but a 2017 study found that three-quarters of bus users lacked access to a car. More recent data from Green Mountain Transit’s new fare-collection program shows that roughly half of all riders paid a $1-per-ride reduced fare because they’re under 18 years old, over 60 or have a disability. Another quarter of riders were students and staff at the University of Vermont or Champlain College, who ride fare-free because their schools pay a lump sum every year. Only about 25 percent of riders pay the full fare of $2 each way, with daily caps of $4 and monthly caps of $50.
The advertisements plastered on the outside of Green Mountain Transit buses, visible to all, feature companies such as Vermont Construction, which installs roofs. The few ads posted inside the cabin of the No. 2, aimed at riders, target a different clientele, with taglines such as “Losing Medicaid? Talk to us about affordable plans” and “Compassionate alcohol and opioid recovery.”
Several other commuters joined Stewart and Doolan for the ride. An exchange student was heading to her shift at Dunkin’, where she would soon make lattes for drive-thru customers. A woman wearing a GlobalFoundries lanyard boarded in Essex Junction. Two others wearing janitorial uniforms alighted alongside her when the bus stopped at the company’s campus.
“Have a good day,” a man wearing headphones told Stewart as he stepped off in Essex Junction.
“You too, dear,” Stewart yelled back.
Once Doolan and Stewart transferred to the No. 4, which would take them into the town of Essex, they had the bus to themselves.
The Center of It All
Squint hard enough and you can almost see it: a gleaming transit center, bustling with riders from all walks of life, serving as the gateway to the commercial hub of Chittenden County.
That was the ambitious vision outlined in a 166-page development plan that the Chittenden County Transportation Authority issued in 2010. Bus rides made up between 2 and 3 percent of all trips in Burlington and its surrounding cities and towns that year. The transportation authority forecast a sixfold increase by 2020 under what it called its “optimistic” scenario, in which $10-per-gallon gasoline and a host of policy changes and investments, including the development of a state-of-the-art transit center, convinced more people to take the bus.
The bus system would serve a “wide range of passengers” and provide modern facilities that are “convenient and attractive enough to entice individuals to use their cars less,” the authority wrote in a vision statement. Communities around Burlington would focus new development along existing transit routes and make neighborhoods safer for pedestrians. Meanwhile, the transit authority would expand to commuter towns and eventually provide service every 15 minutes along main urban routes — the frequency that experts say is required to compete with driving.
A “first-class” transit center would make a “huge difference” in public perception of the bus and help entice people who own cars, the report stated.
Planners considered 37 locations for the facility before settling on a block adjacent to Church Street. After many years in the making, the Downtown Transit Center opened in 2016 with a ceremony attended by Vermont’s top elected officials. It connects Cherry and Pearl streets.
Nowadays, the transit center is surrounded by emblems of a city undergoing an uneasy transition. Next door, the State of Vermont’s vacant Zampieri office building is surrounded by a high chain-link fence. The empty Catholic cathedral opposite the transit center has been fenced off for years and is now being demolished. Along Cherry Street, L.L.Bean relocated its brightly-colored retail store to Williston in 2022.
A long-vacant nearby site known as “the Pit” is finally being filled with apartments, hotels and retail shops. That could provide a pool of new riders, though it remains to be seen how many Burlington Square residents will take the bus.
For now, the bus system, and the Downtown Transit Center in particular, serve a clientele that often represents the region’s social ills. As homelessness, addiction and mental health problems have worsened, antisocial behavior is surfacing more often on routes and at the station.
“We had no clue when we built the transit center that we were suddenly going to become a human services organization,” said Clark, who joined Green Mountain Transit in 2023.
Bus drivers are not experts in working with people in crisis or those who commit crimes. “They’re sitting with their back to passengers, and sometimes those passengers are very angry,” said Curtis Clough, who represents drivers for Teamsters Local 597. “Sometimes those passengers are violent.”
Clough said conflicts with passengers have eased since Green Mountain Transit ended its pandemic-prompted experiment of fare-free rides. “Generally speaking, if people pay a fare, it’s because they want to go somewhere,” the union head said.
The new fare system allows riders to pay using a reloadable Smart Card purchased at the transit center ticket counter or downloaded onto a smartphone. Riders using Smart Cards can have their daily fare capped at $4 and monthly fares capped at $50, with those totals halved for qualifying riders.
But the transit authority says it doesn’t have the capability to cap fares for riders who pay in cash, such as Jamie Douglas.
“Because I’m a poor customer,” the 35-year-old Burlington resident said, “I end up paying more.”
Douglas waited for a bus at the transit center around noon on a recent Thursday. He stood next to the fenced-off state building, holding a glass pipe to his mouth. Wearing Puma slides and a Champion hoodie, Douglas said he needs the bus just as much as most Burlington residents need their cars. But he often doesn’t feel welcome on it. One driver dismissed his concern about fares because Douglas is known to “fly a sign,” or panhandle.
“It must be easy to pay for the bus when you’re using other people’s money,” Douglas recalled the driver saying.
Clark now questions whether it was wise to build the transit center downtown. A more practical location, he said, might have been up the hill at UVM or the UVM Medical Center, the most popular pickup points in the system. Residents throughout the region take the bus to medical appointments at the hospital.
Yet when the No. 2 bus stops at the UVM Medical Center, it cruises past the employee entrance. A series of white “Premier Coach” buses circulate there at all hours, transporting hospital workers to and from distant parking lots. The hospital pays a private firm for charter service.
Soul of the System
On the evening of June 16, after Doolan and Stewart had returned from their bus rides to Essex, that town’s selectboard debated the service.
The transit authority had reduced bus frequency to Essex as part of its plan to deal with a roughly $1 million shortfall. At the same time, Green Mountain Transit is charging Essex taxpayers $93,000 this year, a $21,000 increase.
Selectboard chair Tracey Delphia introduced the item briefly and bluntly.
“More money, less services,” she said.
Legally speaking, Green Mountain Transit is its own municipality, which allows it to “assess” — tax — other municipalities whose residents have voted to become a member. In exchange, member communities get a seat on the transit authority’s 14-member board and an implicit promise of bus service.
Essex leaders were contemplating whether they ought to give up their board seat and withdraw from Green Mountain Transit. They could then try to negotiate more favorable terms. Or Green Mountain Transit could decide to drop its costly Essex service entirely.
Clark, wearing a tropical-print shirt and straw hat, took a seat opposite the selectboard members. He lives in Essex himself, but he did not try to persuade his neighbors to remain members of Green Mountain Transit. Instead, he noted that Hinesburg had decided to withdraw last year and suggested Essex’s leaders do “what makes sense for them.”
Clark, 52, is examining all sorts of ways to improve Green Mountain Transit’s balance sheet. Preserving the Town of Essex’s $93,000 assessment — which represents just 0.3 percent of the transit authority’s $30 million budget — is not exactly a linchpin of that plan.
Rather, Clark worries that Green Mountain Transit has become spread too thin.
Before joining the transit authority, Clark worked in eldercare, both as the director of the regulatory division of state government and, more recently, running the nonprofit Converse Home in Burlington. His easygoing manner can be almost startling. He often wears rainbow suspenders to the office and admits freely when he’s having a bad day. His self-deprecating LinkedIn résumé includes a college stint as a bowling alley mechanic and a tagline: “First, be a human.” His first acting role, in second grade, was Santa Claus.
“If you would just put your kid on the bus, it would alleviate so much traffic.” Nathan Bergeron
His straightforward approach has helped engender trust at a precarious moment for the transit authority. “I genuinely feel like he’s one of the best general managers we’ve ever had,” said Nathan Bergeron, who has driven for Green Mountain Transit for the past 18 years. “He really cares about the company. He really cares about the work culture here. And it really does bother him that we’re dropping routes.”
Clark’s most ambitious reform, so far, has been to return the transit authority to its roots as an urban bus system. The 2011 merger that created a regional network spanning four counties was intended to reduce overhead costs, and the savings were intended to improve service.
The opposite has happened. Green Mountain Transit struggled to manage its hybrid urban-rural network — one of the few of this type nationwide. Facing budget pressures, the transit authority cut its administrative staff by nearly half. Poor management followed, a consultant later determined. The system became less responsive to its riders and communities, and the few staff remaining didn’t have time to seek out new sources of funding — from major employers in the area, for instance.
This past spring, Vermont lawmakers approved a legal tweak that allows Green Mountain Transit to off-load its rural division to other Vermont transit providers. Clark is negotiating those transfers now, with hopes of completing them by next July.
But shedding the rural division may yield only modest short-term savings. Clark anticipates another budget shortfall of up to $3 million during the next fiscal year. The Vermont Agency of Transportation will try to cover part of that gap, public transit program manager Ross MacDonald said, but Green Mountain Transit won’t likely be able to avoid another round of deeper cuts.
Such a trajectory could also jeopardize several million dollars in federal funding that is earmarked for high-performing transit agencies, further fueling the downward spiral. MacDonald, of VTrans, said the agency will do what it can to help Green Mountain Transit circumvent that worst-case scenario.
“I want to know what the community wants … and whatever that is, then I’m going to work towards that.” Clayton Clark
That’s why even as Clark winds down the rural division, he’s broaching the question of what kind of “urban” service Chittenden County is willing to support.
Most of the heavily used routes traverse Burlington, Winooski, Essex Junction and South Burlington.
Routes through the surrounding towns — Williston, Shelburne, Colchester, Milton and Essex — tend to cost more per rider and per mile. If nothing changes, Clark said, “those outlying communities may end up losing their transit.”
Such a rollback could threaten the interconnectivity of the regional economy. It would add another barrier to affordable housing in those towns and limit employment opportunities for bus-reliant residents. The cheapest one-stop shopping for low-income families — Walmart — is located in Williston.
That leads to the collective soul-searching that Clark is encouraging: Should Green Mountain Transit function as the infrequent transportation option of last resort across most of Chittenden County? Or should it limit its routes to the most densely populated areas and try to offer car-competitive, high frequency service?
“I want to know what the community wants and what the community can support — and whatever that is, then I’m going to work towards that,” Clark said. “Because for me to have a vision that is divorced from the reality on the ground isn’t going to help anybody.”
The Essex Selectboard discussed its membership with Green Mountain Transit during a closed-door executive session. At the end of that debate, to Clark’s surprise, the selectboard decided to remain aboard.
Will the town’s continued membership help or hinder public transit? Clark couldn’t say.
Behind the Wheel
Green Mountain Transit isn’t quite a round-the-clock operation, but it’s close.
The first mechanics and custodians arrive at 3:30 a.m. to make sure the fleet is ready for the day. The 60-plus buses each get washed, looked over and repaired in the evenings. Work wraps up around 12:30 a.m.
Maintaining a fleet of urban buses in northwestern Vermont is costly. Green Mountain Transit performs almost all of its maintenance in-house at its headquarters and garage in Burlington’s South End. The closest source for outside service and parts is often in Boston.
“We kind of have to be self-sustainable, because we’re on an island out here,” said Tyler Austin, Green Mountain Transit’s maintenance manager.
With proper upkeep, a 40-foot passenger bus typically lasts for about 12 years. The transit authority still operates some buses that have been in service since 2009. Those older buses cost more to keep on the road. Green Mountain Transit has also added seven electric buses to its fleet in recent years, but two have proven unreliable and are not in service.
Vermont-based independent journalist Nathaniel Eisen analyzed the transit authority’s expenses in a recent article published on Substack. Eisen found that the cost of vehicle parts, operating insurance, health insurance, and driver and mechanic wages have all increased more quickly than inflation over the past decade. The cost of vehicle parts more than doubled during that time.
The most significant expense, however, has been for labor. Since a strike by the unionized workforce in 2014, total driver and mechanic wages have risen from about $4.5 million in 2015 to more than $7 million this year.
The market for drivers with commercial licenses “justifies a higher wage than it used to,” the Teamsters’ Clough said. Fewer people seek out the licenses, Clough noted, which require holders to undergo regular drug tests for cannabis.
The transit authority has cut 10 drivers through attrition in recent years, but further service reductions could require layoffs. The 57 full-time drivers and Green Mountain Transit are currently negotiating a new contract.
Bergeron, the longtime driver, reflected on his career last month as he steered the No. 11 Airport route toward South Burlington. He and his wife raised three kids on his bus-driver salary, which allowed her to spend some years at home.
“We didn’t live an exorbitant lifestyle,” he said. “I mean, we didn’t have vacations, we sacrificed a lot, but we were able to make ends meet.”
He and other drivers have a front-seat view of the bus system’s importance to its riders. Bergeron drives elderly residents who live alone and need to get to appointments. He greets riders whose driver’s licenses have been suspended or revoked and people who can’t afford a car.
By the state’s performance measures, which influence how Vermont allocates federal dollars, the No. 11 bus Bergeron drove that particular afternoon is underperforming, which could eventually put it on the chopping block. The route includes stops near Howard Center’s Chittenden Clinic, off Dorset Street, a key hub for people receiving treatment for substance use. The methadone clinic requires clients to arrive by 11 a.m., sometimes daily, to receive their dose. Without the bus, few could make it.
As a driver, Bergeron also sees how much more useful the bus could be. The Burlington School District, which does not offer school bus service, contributes to Green Mountain Transit so its students can ride fare-free.
Driving the bus through the New North End, Bergeron takes note of how many parents drop their children off at school by car.
“They’re all coming from … the neighborhoods along North Avenue,” he said. “We go by all of them.”
“If you would just put your kid on the bus,” he suggested, “it would alleviate so much traffic.”
Round and Round
On Friday, June 20, the bus stopped across the street from the Chittenden Clinic just a few minutes before 11 a.m.
Katie Grant stepped through the front door, swiped her Smart Card and curled up on the seat nearest the driver.
She wore coral-pink pajamas with a lobster pattern. Grant, who described herself as a recovering addict, was returning home to Burlington from an appointment at the clinic. She was pregnant and didn’t have a car.
She sat quietly, listening with headphones, while the No. 11 drew a lasso around Williston Road before returning to Dorset Street. The bus stopped near the clinic a second time, northbound this time, and another woman stepped on.
The latest passenger struggled to keep her balance near the fare box as the bus juddered up the street. The woman, who appeared to be intoxicated, plunged her hands into her jacket pockets, looking for cash that wasn’t there. She quietly asked if anyone had spare change.
“I’ll pay for her,” Grant said. She stood up and swiped her Smart Card again.
The woman plunked down a box that contained a bouquet of roses wrapped in cellophane. She pulled out one of the pink and white flowers and handed it to Grant.
“You don’t have to,” Grant said.
“No, I want to,” the woman insisted.
They sat silently as the bus neared the Downtown Transit Center. Then the woman with the flowers opened a takeout container of rice and chickpeas and began to eat. She was struggling to stay awake, still unsteady in her seat.
Eating isn’t allowed on the bus, and Grant tried to get the woman’s attention. When that didn’t work, she stood up and told the driver. He quickly, and loudly, chastised the woman, leading to a brief argument.
The No. 11 eased to a stop alongside half a dozen other buses at the transit center. Grant and the other woman went separate ways.
It had been upsetting to see another person, presumably struggling with addiction, “nodding out” in public, Grant said as she puffed an electronic cigarette on the sidewalk next to the transit center. But she’d paid the woman’s fare anyway.
“I feel bad for people who can’t get on the bus,” Grant said.
With that, she hurried back to the terminal platform. She had another bus to catch.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Out of Service? | Fewer passengers, reduced schedules and soaring costs have left Green Mountain Transit and its riders searching for a new routeOut of Service?”
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