By Ivan Willig   Fall 2005

An Overview:
Project 1
The goal of the Island Explorer Bus System project was to find a way to display ridership data for the Island Explorer bus system on Mount Desert Island in a manner that would be easy to understand. The map provides two types of information (1) Island Explorer bus routes and (2) the number of individuals who rode each route during 2005.

Project 2
The college provides a transportation system for students in the form of a small bus (Night Bus) which makes several stops in downtown Bar Harbor five nights a week. The goal of this project was to minimize student use of personal vehicles by providing them with night bus route information.

Map 1 Summary:
This map depicts the average number of people which rode on the Island Explorer in 2005. The data used for this map was obtained from the Friends of Acadia organization, the Maine Department of Transportation, and the COA GIS lab. The map was created by digitizing the Island Explorer bus routes and by creating buffers for each route based on the average number of riders.  (Click image to open pdf version of map)

Click image to view pdf map. (pdf - 427k)

Map 2 Summary:
This map shows the routes the COA night bus makes throughout downtown Bar Harbor. Data for this map was collected  by riding the night bus and taking GPS points at each stop. More accurate data was collected by riding a bike along the nightly routes and taking GPS points. Data for road locations was taken from the Maine Department of Transportation.  (Click image below for pdf version of map).

Click image to view pdf map.  (pdf - 604k)

GIS Lab Contact:
Gordon Longsworth, glongsworth@coa.edu, 207-288-2944, extension 277