The LAP bus makes a scheduled stop Monday at the Downtown Auburn Transportation Center. The bus makes several stops in Lewiston, Auburn and Portland. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — The Maine Department of Transportation’s new commuter bus service linking Lewiston, Auburn and Portland, called LAP, is in its third week of operation, with several daily trips between the three cities. While it may be too early to make judgments about the demand, the pilot service has already left some passengers feeling frustrated with buses running behind schedule and sometimes not showing up at all.

The pilot bus service is set to run for at least two years. In June, Concord Coach Lines stopped service out of Lewiston. Almost a month later, the LAP came along to attract some of the hundreds of workers who commute between Lewiston, Auburn and Portland daily, as a MaineDOT planning study had revealed.

The LAP service is meant to act as “an indicator of the latent demand and potential market for enhanced public transportation between Portland and Lewiston-Auburn,” a news release from the Department of Transportation said ahead of its launch. Early reports show that the pilot service might not be setting itself up for success.

Kyra Friederich, a student at Bates College in Lewiston, attempted to board the LAP bus out of Portland on Sunday evening. Last week, she’d boarded the same bus from its Bates College stop. It was on time. According to the schedule, the bus was expected to leave for Lewiston-Auburn at 8:20 p.m. from Portland’s Transportation Center.

Friederich waited for 20 minutes after the scheduled time. At 8:40 p.m., it was getting dark. She was losing hope that the last bus of the day was going to show up. She checked in with the information desk at the transportation center as a last resort — they had helped her find the unmarked LAP pickup location earlier.

The dispatcher told her that the “times on the website were not accurate, and they were not updated.” Friederich gave up waiting and decided to carpool to Auburn with another passenger who’d been waiting for the same bus.

Friederich was confused by the inconsistency. She is an international student from Germany. She said she did not have someone she could call to come pick her up from Portland late on a Sunday evening.

“I know that Uber is always an option, but rideshare is not an option for a lot of people who rely on the bus and a ticket only costs $8 (in comparison to pricier rideshare options). I think what they can improve is to update the schedule or create an app which keeps the times updated,” Friederich said. The unexpected rideshare trip cost her $36.50 after splitting with another passenger.

The LAP buses do not have GPS trackers on them. Passengers need to rely solely on the schedule.

Friederich said the service would benefit from better signage as well.

“It just says ‘bus station,’ so you don’t really know what bus is departing there. It doesn’t say on the website where exactly (the LAP bus) stops, so I had to ask someone who had already taken the bus before,” she said. “I didn’t know where it would depart and arrive.”

As of Monday, at least four of the six stops on the LAP’s route were unmarked.

So, will the pickup and drop-off locations remain unmarked? It appears it is too soon to tell.

RTW Management Inc., the Utah-based contractor overseeing the $2.8 million pilot project, could not be reached Monday for questions about the project’s timeline and progress.

“It’s just the third week (of the service). There will be hiccups,” a dispatcher said Monday. The dispatcher declined to further comment on the reliability of the running schedule.

Maine Department of Transportation Transit Manager Ryan Neale could not be reached for questions Monday.

At least one passenger did not report any major issues with the LAP service since it began service three weeks ago.

Aaron Hebert, while he awaited the 1:05 p.m. departure from 111 Bates St. in Lewiston on Monday afternoon, said he takes the bus six out of seven days a week.

“Maybe once or twice a week, it’ll be behind schedule,” Hebert said. “It runs every two hours on the weekends, so that’s a problem.”