If you grew up in Westport in the 1970s, the image — even the sound — is indelible: a fleet of Mercedes buses, meeting at a Jesup Green hub and then put-putting all around town.
If you were not around then, it’s hard to imagine: Our town had one of the most innovative suburban transportation systems in the country.
Even more improbable was the background of the man who built it.
Rich Bradley arrived in Westport in the 1965. Norm Flint — the principal of soon-to-open Coleytown Junior High School — recruited the young English major straight off the Cornell University campus.
Rich Bradley, in the 1969 Staples yearbook.
Bradley spent 2 years teaching English at the brand new school, then 2 more at Staples.
It was a time of educational and political ferment. The high school’s “Experimental English” curriculum encouraged students to design their own course.
Bradley was in the middle of it. “They couldn’t decide if they wanted to fire me or make me assistant superintendent,” he laughs.
He was as involved outside of school as in. With Tony and Joanna Nicholson, and Jim and Do Bacharach, he helped found the Intercommunity Camp. Each summer, youngsters from Westport, Weston, Norwalk and Bridgeport came together for fun and friendship.
Bradley also joined the Youth-Adult Council. A town body (and the forerunner of today’s Youth Commission), it tackled serious issues like drugs and runaways.
And transportation.
In the early ’70s, young people relied on parents — and hitchhiking — to get around town. Some older residents did not drive. Some homes had only one car. The railroad station parking lots were full.
It took 2 years. But with the strong support of the Representative Town Meeting, the Westport Transit District was created.
Rich Bradley was its director. One of his first tasks was obtaining federal and state grants to buy buses. The town agreed to pay operating costs.
Bradley helped devise routes. Each bus had its own 35-minute loop, beginning and ending at Jesup Green.
(As Mercedes buses, they were easy targets for mockery. However, Bradley says, they did not cost more than other buses. Officials also looked at electric buses, but batteries had to be charged every 40 miles.)
The Minnybus system was “fresh — progressive and innovative,” Bradley — who now lives in Washington, DC — recalls.
“It solved environmental, social and economic needs.”
It also incurred the wrath of the Gilbertie family, who ran the town’s taxis. Though Transit District officials tried to integrate them into the system, they were uninterested. They filed several lawsuits, which took years to resolve.
A Minnybus, at the Jesup Green hub.
After a few years, Bradley was hired by the Greater Bridgeport Transit District. Two years later, Governor Ella Grasso asked him to be Connecticut’s deputy director of transportation, with the charge: “Westport-ize the state” — but without much money.
Bradley then ran Hartford’s Downtown Council, before moving to Washington where he headed the International Downtown Association.
For the next 20 years, as founding executive director of the Downtown DC Business Improvement District, he facilitated over $35 billion of public-private investment into transforming abandoned buildings and parking lots into the third largest central business in the country. He repositioned the National Cherry Blossom Festival as the city’s premiere cultural event, was involved in the construction of the Convention Center, and helped lure the Nationals baseball team from Montreal.
Rich Bradley proudly sports a Washington Nationals cap.
Today, Bradley is a principal of The Urban Partnership, (with his wife, noted urbanist Ellen McCarthy), and serves on the faculty of Georgetown University’s Urban & Regional Planning program.
But Bradley has not forgotten his Westport roots (or routes). He visits his former Cornell friend Steve Halstead regularly.
He has watched the town’s “trials and tribulations” as it built the new Staples High and YMCA (Halstead served on the Board of Education, and was chair of the Y Building Committee. His wife Rosemary is a Y trustee). Both changes were beneficial for many residents, Bradley says.
He also watches Westport from his vantage point as a Georgetown professor, whose “Place Management and Place Making” course examines the importance of public spaces.
“Westport always had a vital center,” he says, referring to downtown. “The future of suburbs — and cities — is being walkable.”
Westport Minnybus at Jesup Green, back in the day.
Calling Westport “intensely developed,” while still retaining “substantial vitality,” he believes the town still offers opportunities to “put your car away, and walk around.”
The Minnybus system did that, Bradley notes.
The Minnybus system gave freedom to kids — and taught them responsibility.
From what he sees, Westport has done “a good job of accommodating its character and values.”
We no longer have a Minnybus (or its cousin the Maxytaxys, which picked up riders on demand, then picked up others as it meandered along to different destinations).
We are, meanwhile, engaged in a long debate over the future of parking all around downtown — including Jesup Green.
Where, half a century ago, Mercedes buses loaded and dropped off grateful, car-less passengers.
(“06880” covers Westport — its yesterday, today and tomorrow. If you enjoy our work, please click here to support this hyper-local blog. Thank you!)
