BETHEL – Maine Department of Transportation Commissioner David Cole accompanied local businessmen on a celebratory ride on the Mountain Explorer shuttle service Monday. The free service, now in its fourth year of operation, was touted as a “success story” by Cole.

“There’s a good market out there. There’s a lot of people looking for experiences and the Maine experience is a good one,” he said. The Mountain Explorer, with its fleet of three 26-passenger buses, has made the Maine experience more accessible to thousands of people in the Bethel area. Last year, an average of 221 rides a day were provided from the Bethel Inn and the Sunday River Ski Resort to restaurants and lodging facilities in the Bethel area during the five months the shuttle runs.

Newry selectman and local businessman James Largess said the idea for the service came about in the early 1990s.

“As Sunday River grew and the community grew,” he said, “it was apparent that we needed to connect” them. Numerous shuttle services rose from this need, including the Bethel Station Bus, the Brew Pub Bus and the Bethel Express. None was successful.

It became clear that “it was going to take a collaborative effort,” Largess said. A transportation committee was formed, and the idea of a free shuttle service was taken to town meetings in an effort to raise funding.

“We knew this was going to be a tough sell to the doubting Thomases who come to town meetings,” explained Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Robin Zinchuk. As the transportation committee suspected, they received no municipal funding in the first year of operation.

The committee went ahead with its plan despite its lack of success with taxpayers. With funding from the Maine Department of Transportation, as well as Sunday River, the Bethel Inn and other area businesses, the Mountain Explorer shuttle service began carrying passengers in November 2001. The service had 21,000 passengers that first year.

Largess said the committee’s idea at the time was, “we’ll get this thing going, the towns will recognize how important this thing is, and they’ll start to fund it.” The committee was right. This year the Mountain Explorer received more than $27,000 in funding from the town of Bethel and almost $17,000 from Newry.

The shuttles run until 11:30 p.m. Sunday through Friday and 1:30 a.m. on Saturdays, making 16 scheduled stops. Glen Gordon of Western Maine Transportation explained that the buses make unscheduled stops as long as it is safe to do so. According to the shuttle schedule and map, anyone wishing to board the bus at an unscheduled stop should “jump up and down, shout, and wave arms vigorously.”

Official stops are marked by Mountain Explorer signs. Schedules are available in the seasonal newspaper Sunday River This Week, and on the Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce Web site.