LEWISTON – Twin Cities bus service could run later into the night and on Saturdays, according to plans presented to city councilors Wednesday.

Transportation planner Tom Crikelair presented three options for boosting ridership on the Lewiston-Auburn Transit Committee’s CityLink bus system to councilors from both cities Wednesday night.

“My job is to help you generate more benefits from the system for the money you have invested,” Crikelair said. “In other words, my mission to fix the system without additional money.”

First, he suggested changing bus service on each route from 30-minute schedules to 60 minutes. That would make the buses more efficient and reliable for riders.

“The buses you have now cannot complete their routes in 30 minutes,” he said. “When one bus runs late, it begins to fracture the entire system and people start missing connections. What people really want is reliability.”

Less frequent service would let the buses push into new areas – adding stops at Montello and Geiger elementary schools on Lewiston’s Main Street route and adding Hillview to the Sabattus Street route.

Crikelair’s plan calls for three options for improving service, each more expensive than the last. The low-cost option asks for an additional $119,000 per year for bus service. The next option calls for $285,000; the most expensive would cost $454,000. Once passenger fares and federal subsidies are subtracted and the costs are divided between the two cities, the least expensive option would add $25,000 to each city’s subsidy. The most expensive would cost each city an additional $102,000.

But it would give the cities service until 9:30 p.m. on some routes, limited Saturday bus service and a free shopping shuttle between Wal-Mart, the Auburn Mall, Central Maine Community College and other stores along Center Street.

Crikelair also suggested creating a Medicaid pass program for riders who have more than three medical appointments per month. Those people typically use a medical van for transport, paid for by Medicaid. Bus systems can offer monthly passes to those passengers and have Medicaid cover their costs instead.

“The problem with the medical vans is that it’s one trip, to and from the doctor,” he said. “But these passengers want to do more. They want to go to the store and to other places, and this frees them up.”

That would decrease each city’s transit subsidy, he said.