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Rapid Buses May Be Expanded
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District transportation officials are testing the signal technology at 33 intersections along Georgia Avenue. Nineteen Metrobuses have the complementary technology, and officials hope to begin a pilot in early June, according to transportation department spokeswoman Karyn LeBlanc.
Unreliable bus service is by far the most common complaint that Metro receives. Over the years, as roads have become more crowded, buses have been stuck in traffic with the rest of the vehicles. On some heavily used routes, riders say they wait up to 30 minutes before a bus arrives. Or, as is often the case, several buses arrive at the same time.
The high incidence of late buses and high ridership were among key factors Metro officials used in choosing where to add rapid buses. Metro has about 1,500 buses in its fleet; it has 171 bus lines. The 24 priority corridors represent 14 percent of the lines but serve about 220,000 daily Metrobus riders, or about 50 percent of the total.
"These are big bus corridors, they're growing, and they carry a lot of people all day long," Hughes said.
If the board approves the staff recommendation, the first three corridors to add rapid-bus service in 2009 would be 16th Street in the District (S1, S2, S4), average weekday ridership of 14,594; Veirs Mill Road in Montgomery County (Q2), average weekday ridership 10,859; and Leesburg Pike (28AB, 28 FG, 28T) in Alexandria, Falls Church and Fairfax County, average weekday ridership 6,230.
In the years that follow, the plan would add rapid-bus service to one more corridor in Northern Virginia, from Little River Turnpike to Duke Street, six more in the District, including along the heavily used X2 from H Street to Benning Road, and seven more in Maryland, including along East-West Highway in Prince George's County.
If Metro and its partners adopt the plan, transportation officials will have to make a fundamental shift in the way they think about traffic, Bottigheimer said.
County and state governments own the intersections and the right-of-way on the roads, he said. They are used to thinking about traffic flow by getting the greatest number of vehicles, rather than people, through an intersection.
But if buses start to carry 25 to 30 percent of the total number of people going through an intersection, then "we need to ask the question, at what point do you start treating a bus as a special vehicle," Bottigheimer said.
