AUBURN – Transit officials could extend the College Street and Auburn Mall bus lines to Central Maine Community College, officials said Wednesday.

Members of the Lewiston-Auburn Transit Committee will look for ways to provide bus service for students. Assistant City Manager Mark Adams, chairman of the committee, said the staff will try to include the college in the new bus schedule due in January.

“If we can just add some stops to an existing route, that might be the easiest way to handle it,” Adams said.

Charles Collins, dean of students for the college, said bus service could be a big boost to the school. Enrollment has increased as much as 80 percent over the past six years, and Collins predicted it would swell to 2,000 students by next fall.

Parking is limited at the school’s Turner Street campus.

“Most of our enrollment comes from the Lewiston-Auburn area, and we are becoming a real option for many people,” he said. “People are beginning to see us as a real college they can attend. Bus service that makes it easier for them to get to the campus would really be helpful.”

Marsha Bennett, transit coordinator for the committee, said many students take the bus to the Auburn Mall and then walk across an open lot to reach the campus.

“But that’s not convenient, especially with the snow,” she said.

The best answer might be to extend the two bus routes closest to the school – the Turner Street and Auburn Mall routes. Lewiston Finance Director Dick Metivier, a member of the committee, said that sounded like a good idea.

“It’d be great to have to deal with buses full of students on those two routes,” Metivier said. “That’s be the kind of problem I think we’d be happy to have.”

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