© bangordailynews.com Shuttle services are especially popular around airports, national parks, campuses and all sorts of tourist destinations. Like the one here – Island Explorer, who uses a fleet of 30 Ford F-series-based buses running on LPG instead of petrol to transport visitors of the Mount Desert Island, the largest island off the coast of Maine, among them cruise ship tourists visiting Acadia National Park.
How many of them, you may ask and we're here to serve the answer right away. In the first ten days of service in the 2018 season, from June 23 to July 3, the Island Explorer buses carried over 66 thousand passengers, which is more than in the same time the year before. This means over 2200 tourists per bus in just ten days, which gives you a picture of how big the savings must be from replacing conventional fuel with an alternative one. And don't get us started on benefits for the environment.
The fleet is funded with public and private money, so it's easy to understand why it makes sense to use a source of energy that generates lower costs. The service's annual budget is 2,3 million dollars, of which Acadia National Park funds some 60% and L. L. Bean has been donating 1 million dollars in grants for the past five years (as of 2018). And mind you, the service is seasonal – it doesn't run all year long, but only starts in late June.
Island Explorer is a non-profit organisation offering Mount Desert Island visitors and local residents fare-free transport to hiking trails, carriage roads, island beaches, and in-town shops and restaurants through an agreement with the State Department of Transportation in order to mitigate summer months' traffic congestion for transport throughout Acadia National Park and the surrounding communities, with a passenger hub located in Bar Harbor.
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