GORHAM – The Gorham Town Council Tuesday asked Metro and the University of Southern Maine, which has a student bus service, to submit information with cost figures as the town eyes adding public bus service.

Matthew Robinson, chairman of the Gorham Town Council, said no one on the council needed to be sold on benefits of bus service to Gorham. “This has been a conversation for many years in Gorham,” Robinson said.

“We’re happy to hear that,” Michael Foley, a Westbrook city councilor and president of the Metro board of directors, said about the feelings of the Gorham council.

Options for public bus service include Metro routes to Gorham or the university expanding an existing service shuttling university students to classes between Portland and Gorham campuses. The town would likely have to subsidize a bus service.

Metro now serves Portland, Westbrook, Falmouth and the Maine Mall area. Foley said it now has 80 routes.

A potential bus route to Gorham could expand Metro’s service on its Route 4, which could expand to run from Westbrook along Route 25 to Gorham and returns via New Portland Road. Foley said Metro has buses available.

Craig Hutchinson, chief student affairs officer at the university, said the university’s student service runs two buses constantly between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. Monday through Friday and a third bus 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Hutchinson said a Saturday bus has six runs from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The university’s contracted bus service now does not have intermediate stops between the two campuses. The university’s students pay for the service and the general public is not allowed aboard the university buses, Hutchinson said.

“There’s a lot of possibilities that could work for all of us,” Hutchinson said.

Gorham Town Councilor John Pressey said the town needed to figure out a minimum service. “It doesn’t have to have multiple stops along the way.” he said.

Town Manager David Cole suggested the possibility of considering an express service on a limited basis from Gorham to Portland.

Public buses would likely require a park-and-ride lot. Gorham has a lot now at the roundabout where South Street (Route 114) intersects with the Bernard P. Rines Bypass.

Several transportation officials, including Metro General Manager David Redlefsen, Steve Linnell of Greater Portland Council of Governments, and John Duncan, director of Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation System, attended Gorham’s bus meeting.

Edward Suslovic, a Portland city councilor and a member of the Metro board, believes citizens in Gorham’s neighboring towns would go to Gorham for bus service.

“It’ll make it easier to get people in and out of Portland,” Suslovic said.