Greater Portland Metro has rolled out changes to its Route 7 bus service from Falmouth to Portland, which now runs all the way to the Portland International Jetport. More changes are coming this fall. Eloise Goldsmith / The Forecaster

Metro’s Route 7, which runs between Portland and Falmouth, has been revamped with changes aimed at boosting ridership.

In June, the route expanded its service to the Portland International Jetport and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, taking over those duties from Route 5. It now makes stops on the way to the Jetport, picking people up at multiple locations along Congress Street toward the West End.

It also runs later into the evening, with the last service from Portland to Falmouth running after 10 p.m. on weeknights, as opposed to 6:30 p.m., the previous late run.

The route had the lowest ridership in Metro’s system in 2023, according to Greater Portland Metro’s Director of Transit Development Mike Tremblay, though he noted in an email that the route had the least amount of service overall, so the low numbers are “not necessarily an indication of the route’s viability.”

Falmouth resident Elijah Gratz has intermittent access to a car to commute to his job at Flatbread Co. in Portland. He said that the route changes have been “excellent” for him. He can now rely on the bus to commute home because of the route’s later hours.

“I used to have to take Ubers home because I work in the evenings and the bus didn’t run,” he wrote in a message. “In summer, a 9-minute Uber trip could cost upwards of $45!”

Blair Wilhem, who lives in Portland and has the opposite commute, takes the 7 bus to his job at Nouria, the gas station and convenience store, on Route 1 in Falmouth. He said he was disappointed that the route changes don’t include earlier service from Portland to Falmouth; the earliest weekday pickup in that direction is 6:22 a.m., though previously it was 6:30 a.m. Service in the other direction headed toward the Jetport does start earlier, with the first bus leaving the Washington and Veranda stop at 5:10 a.m.

However, the changes do mean he has a shorter walk to his stop in the morning. Because the route makes more stops on Congress Street he no longer has to walk down to Metro’s hub on Elm Street.

Younes Ezekali, a Portland resident, said he’s pleased with this specific change as well. Having just returned from running an errand to Walmart, he said he no longer has to walk to an Elm Street stop and can be dropped off much closer to his home, near Maine Medical Center.

“To go from here to Walmart is awesome,” he said.

While he hasn’t yet used the 7 bus to go to the airport, he plans to.

Tarun Kumar Vaswani, a third Portland resident who takes the bus to commute to his job at Goodwill in Falmouth, had more negative things to say about the changes.

“Since they started the bus to Jetport and DHHS, it’s always late in the morning. It’s difficult for me to reach work on time,” he said. Additionally, he said he’s experienced drivers pulling away from the Falmouth Shaw’s stop earlier than the scheduled departure. He ends work at 6 p.m., and has not made the 6:05 bus home on multiple occasions, he said.

Denise Beck, the marketing manager for Metro, said that no driver should be pulling away from the stop earlier than scheduled and encouraged riders who experience this or any other issue to reach out to Metro.

On the issue of delays, Tremblay noted that the route changes are new and could be affected by things like ongoing construction around the Jetport, and said that Metro would work to iron out any issues with arrivals.

Metro has other big changes for Route 7 service on the horizon. It currently makes limited stops at Falmouth’s Town Landing and the senior community OceanView – sections of the route that had particularly low ridership – but starting in the fall that part of the route will be serviced by a pilot micro-transit program.

Here’s how it will work: Riders download an app and schedule a ride that would pick them up from set locations. The vehicle will be smaller than a Metro bus but will take multiple riders, according to Beck, and will drop passengers off at another spot within a certain zone in Falmouth or at a bus stop so they can transfer to the bus. The micro-transit program will not take a rider all the way from Falmouth to Portland. Route 7 service to the Town Landing and OceanView will discontinue once the micro-transit service is implemented.

“Falmouth ends up paying a lot of money in terms of tax dollars to pay for those routes, so rather than (saying) ‘we’re just going to cut service’ … we’re trying something else,” said Tremblay, adding he hopes that because the micro-transit program will be more flexible and nimble, more people will use it.

“And we’ve already heard from Falmouth residents that they’re excited to put their kids on this vehicle to go to soccer practice or to go to the friend’s house, because that’s totally an acceptable use for this.”

Overall, Metro ridership has been trending upward in recent years, seeing steady growth between 2020 and 2023, but it has not yet reached its pre-pandemic peak in 2019.

The pilot, which will likely launch in the fall and run through the end of 2025, will be funded by American Rescue Plan Act funding, said Tremblay.

In line with Metro’s goal, Route 7 did gain a commuter on a recent morning.

Before noon on Aug. 20, Landu Mamamba, a new Mainer from Angola, was waiting for the bus across the street from Shaw’s in Falmouth. She was in a good mood because she had just secured a new job, as a dishwasher at the Foreside Tavern on Route 1. She doesn’t own a car, so she’ll be taking the bus to her shifts.