The Cooperative Alliance for Seacoast Transportation (COAST) has proudly served the seacoast region of New Hampshire (Rockingham and Strafford Counties) and Berwick, Maine, with affordable, safe transportation since 1981.  In that time, COAST buses have carried over 10 million passengers and traveled over 6.5 million miles.

Originally founded as a private, non-profit organization in 1981, COAST operates as an independent public body through the passage of NH RSA 239:A by the New Hampshire State Legislature in 1985. As a regional public transit system, COAST is not part of a specific town government (like Nashua or Manchester), nor are we a transit authority like the MBTA. We work cooperatively with the towns we serve to establish funding sources, routes and levels of service.

COAST relies on the support of taxpayers to operate our service. Most of our funding comes from federal taxes distributed to the state for public transit through the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). The remainder of our funding is provided in part by most of the towns we serve along with advertising revenues and other partnerships. That money is used to match the federal monies received. Without the local funding, we would not have access to the money provided by the FTA.

COAST is governed by a Board of Directors. The directors represent the communities served by COAST, as well as various representatives from local and state organizations that participate in COAST or have other connections to our organization. Our board meets monthly to set policy, approve contracts, and provide direction and oversight for the organization. Find out about how COAST is governed at the Board of Directors page. You can also find out what organizations COAST is affiliated with.

Information about how to ride the bus.

Information on accessible transportation provided by COAST. All of our fixed route buses are fully accessible as required by law.

Information on compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

Information on COAST projects funded under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)

Significant COAST Milestones:

• 1981 COAST established to promote and/or provide public transit service in southeastern New Hampshire
• 1982 First COAST routes introduced, including integration with previously existing UNH "Karivan" (now Wildcat Transit) Routes
• 1985 State of New Hampshire Legislature establishes COAST as an independent public body.
• 1986 Delivery of fleet of "Scania" built buses (no longer available in the U.S., buses retired around 2000)
• 1987 Four bus routes eliminated due to lack of Federal support for public transit
• 1995 COAST provides 5 millionth passenger trip
• 1996 Start of service to Farmington (COAST Route 6) and reestablishment of Exeter service (COAST Route 7)
• 1998 COAST and UNH part ways. Kari-Van becomes Wildcat Transit, operating routes 3, 4, and 5. COAST moves offices to Portsmouth.
• 1999 Downtown Loop is introduced to historic Portsmouth
• 2000 Year-round trolley service introduced serving Portsmouth and Pease. COAST purchases former C&J Trailways facility in Dover and moves into new, permanent home.
• 2001 COAST reorganizes from primarily contracted operation to in-house management of operation. COAST purchases new 3 Gillig Low-floors, bringing modern bus design era into NH.
• 2003 Redesign of year-round trolley route in Portsmouth results in current Pease/Lafayette Trolley routes.
• 2008 COAST celebrates 10 millionth passenger trip. COAST and City of Dover introduce first of planned three-phase "FastTrans" project, resulting in Route 33. Delivery of four new Gillig low-floor buses. Record year for passenger counts on all routes.
• 2009 Phase two of FastTrans is introduced, bringing hourly service to Route 1 and introducing Route 34. Later in the year, phase three is implemented, adding Route 35.

COAST proudly maintains a fleet of 26+ vehicles. We employ three full-time mechanics to keep our fleet operating in prime condition. Our vehicles are safe, reliable, modern, and clean. Through our maintenance program we have been able to reduce maintenance-related delays to a very seldom occurrence.

Our vehicles are cleaned and fueled every night by a dedicated crew of part-time Utility Cleaners at our facility. Every bus receives an exterior wash and interior cleaning.

21 of our vehicles run on B10 Biodiesel fuel.

We own 16 full-size buses (30' or longer) and three trolley replicas. 17 of those vehicles are used for regular revenue service and are fully accessible with modern wheel-chair lifts or ramps. Two buses are kept as spare vehicles and for training exercises.

16 of our full-size buses are made by Gillig, a well-known heavy-duty bus manufacturer in California. Four of those buses were built in 2008 and delivered to COAST November of that year.

In addition to the new buses ordered (which, by the way, cost over $380,000 each), we sometimes buy used buses and rehabilitate them to save money. We have been extremely successful at this, having purchased and rehabbed five buses originally built in 1996-1997. These buses have proven to be reliable and will serve COAST for a number of years as we save up for our next new bus purchase.

Check out these photos of the transformation from "used" to "COAST". Click on any picture below to see the larger picture.

Ex-Avis bus before sale to COAST	Interior of the bus as run by Avis. These buses were used as airport shuttles (note the luggage racks).	Ex-Avis bus delivered by truck to COAST.	At the COAST shops, the interior was gutted including entirely new flooring, seats, and wall covering
Ex-Avis bus, now COAST #9702, waiting for final parts before going into regular service	The newly transformed interior of #9702 includes a blue color scheme, carpeted walls, and modern wheelchair securement systems	Two buses, from HART of Florida, arrive at COAST. This is future COAST #9604	#9603 and #9604, freshly painted in the new silver COAST scheme. Less interior refit was needed on these buses, as they came from a public transit system instead of airport shuttle service.

Bus service cancelation (due to weather or otherwise)

COAST very rarely cancels bus service due to weather. However, you should expect some delays in poor conditions.

During inclement weather, we will update our phone greeting with the status of service. Please LISTEN to the whole message before dialing for dispatch. Your question will probably be answered right away.

Information about COAST's Twitter feed.

Twitter is this "social networking" thing that many people are talking about. If you already know about Twitter, you should read below about how COAST will use Twitter, it's important. If you don't know what we're talking about, read on. What is Twitter/Why do I care? (below) How COAST will use Twitter (Important!) How to set yourself up on Twitter Check out the press release
What is Twitter?	The Twitter support page has a video about what Twitter is. Basically, it's a way for someone to get information out to a bunch of people. However, we're only able to write 140 characters (letters and spaces). Imagine reading a newspaper but each story in the paper is only a couple of sentences.
Why should I care (what does this have to do with the bus)?	We're using Twitter to provide up-to-the-minute updates on our bus service. We can "tweet" (that means posting an update) within a couple of minutes if a bus is delayed, and we can tweet again when the bus is back on time. This can help people plan ahead.
How does this help if I'm waiting at a bus stop?	You can set Twitter up to send a text message to your cell phone when COAST updates. That way, if the bus is delayed while you're standing at the bus stop waiting, you'll have some info about when the bus should be coming. To do this, you'll need your own Twitter account, but it doesn't cost anything. Receiving text messages will cost you however much your cell carrier charges, but Twitter doesn't add any fees.
REALLY IMPORTANT: HOW COAST WILL USE TWITTER When will COAST update to Twitter?	Because we have limited resources at COAST, we cannot guarantee tweets about service interruptions. Currently we can only reliably tweet during our main dispatch hours, from about 8am to 4:30pm Monday through Friday. Any other time that service is running, we cannot guarantee any tweets. In other words: Do not depend solely on our Twitter feed for information about service. As always, our normal rules stand: you must wait for the bus at the scheduled time.
What we'll tweet about	COAST will tweet about service interruptions, like delays from traffic, bus breakdowns, or weather. We will not tweet about buses that are less than 10-15 minutes late. Our drivers contact dispatch as a rule when they are more than 10 minutes late. We will follow up with information when a bus is back on schedule. We might also tweet about non-service related COAST news, such as significant upcoming events, or website updates. We will keep our non-service-related tweets to a minimum.
When to expect delays	We are most often delayed in the afternoons around 3 to 5pm, especially on Fridays. There is nothing we can do about this; it's all those darn people who insist on taking their car instead of the COAST bus.
Don't take risks based on our updates	It's good to know how much longer you'll have to wait for a bus, but we don't suggest that you leave the bus stop if we say the bus is late. Sometimes when a bus is leaving late, we'll send another bus out somewhere else to help catch up. We'll try to tweet info about that when we can.
What we won't do	Twitter is a "social network", meaning people can tweet at each other, send private messages, and so on. The COAST twitter feed will not Follow other Twitter accounts Reply to others' tweets Send direct messages Respond to direct messages received If you want to get in touch with COAST, we recommend you email us at info@coastbus.org, or give us a phone call (603-743-5777). We also hold no responsiblity for the "social network" aspect of others following us. On our Twitter page, anyone can see who the other users are that follow @coastbus. We claim no responsibility for who is following us. We claim no affiliation with who they are or represent, nor do we necessarily endorse anything they post.
More info on following the COAST Twitter feed How to take advantage of our service updates How to get yourself set up with Twitter	You can follow our feed just by checking our website front page You can also just check out our twitter page. www.twitter.com/coastbus Create your own Twitter account, and set it up to follow @coastbus Once you have a Twitter account, you can go to your settings and turn on "mobile updates". Put in your cell phone number. Then go to "followers" and choose to receive mobile updates from @coastbus. Twitter will then send your phone a text message when COAST updates. Remember, your phone carrier may charge you per text message, depending on your cell phone plan. (See the Twitter FAQ about using your phone).