The Washington, DC region was built around two primary forms of mobility.
Personal cars, the area’s primary transportation mode, consume a tremendous amount of land. Thanks to the region’s extensive network of automobile infrastructure, which features behemoths such as the Capital Beltway, Anacostia Freeway, and Rock Creek Parkway, it’s no surprise that – despite cars’ safety lapses and high costs to users – 62 percent of residents use their own vehicles every day.
However, despite all of the space they’ve been given, the region’s cars do not serve people well. Drivers are delayed by congestion an average of 82 hours annually, and in the District of Columbia alone crashes killed 36 people in 2018.
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA)’s Metrorail system, which serves 91 stations along its 117 miles of track, is also a mainstream way for people to get around the region. Around 60 percent of area residents reported using Metrorail this past year.
However, despite its strengths, Metrorail only reaches about 25 percent of the area, and further system expansions will likely take decades. Thus, the area needs another well-functioning, prioritized transportation option.
Fortunately, that option – a regionwide bus system – already exists.
For that system to reach its potential, WMATA’s Bus Transformation Project (BTP) Draft Strategy suggests a combination of integration, retooling, and prioritization. The goal: to make buses “the backbone of a strong and inclusive regional mobility system” by 2030.
Buses provide DC-area residents vital connectivity, but fixable problems cause frustration
Regardless of where one is in the DC area, some form of bus service is nearby. WMATA’s Metrobus is the most ubiquitous brand, with routes throughout the region, while eight other transit providers offer local services.
The region’s bus system carried 163 million trips in 2017, getting hundreds of thousands of people to jobs, school, medical appointments, grocery stores, and other life activities every day. Like the Metrorail system, the buses provide spatially-efficient, environmentally-friendly mobility. But since they operate on the existing road network and require little new infrastructure, they serve the relatively inexpensive areas that rail doesn’t reach. More than half of WMATA’s bus riders earn an annual salary of under $30,000 and 55 percent don’t own a car, demonstrating the system’s essential role in sustaining a livable and equitable DC area.
However, the capital’s buses face numerous challenges, as shown by a 13 percent ridership decline since 2012. The most obvious problem: the aforementioned traffic congestion plaguing the region. As buses become increasingly stuck on automobile-packed roads, passengers face more severe consequences than car occupants do, discouraging people from riding and worsening the congestion that causes the service delays.
Also, while 48 percent of residents live within a quarter mile of a bus stop with at least every-15-minute service, the system’s alignment, schedules, and service hours often do not meet their needs. Some of the region’s main bus routes still replicate the streetcar lines they descended from, despite changing travel patterns and demand.
People’s lives don’t stop at jurisdictional boundaries. Buses shouldn’t either.
Service quality in the DC area varies greatly. For example, while Montgomery County, Md.’s Ride On is investing in a series of improvements, adjacent Prince George’s County’s TheBus provides just skeletal, weekday-only transit service. Furthermore, the region’s bus fares vary depending on the transit provider.
People transferring between buses and Metrorail trains must pay extra to do so, hitting low-income riders especially hard. Also, distinctions between trunk, high-ridership regional routes and more locally-oriented coverage services are unclear – WMATA’s BTP document contains nine slides describing how convoluted the current standards for classifying such routes are!
Examples from around the world, such as Seoul’s 2004 bus redesign and Germany’s Verkehrsverbund associations, demonstrate the benefits of effective coordination between multiple transit providers. Such coordination improves the rider experience and makes buses (and other transit modes) more appealing. It also helps streamline back-office administrative tasks and technological functions.
The BTP document describes the initial steps necessary to implement such coordination in the DC area, calling for a regional task force to take charge of the plan’s execution for three years before turning those responsibilities over to a coalition of jurisdictional representatives. It also proposes a simplified regional fare structure, including free bus-rail transfers – which helped spur a six percent increase in New York City transit ridership in 1996 – and a mobile app-based fare collection system similar to Portland, Or.’s Hop.
Effective bus service must balance demand and equity
As mentioned earlier, many DC-area bus riders earn incomes less than half the regional average. Low-income riders, like everyone, want good mobility – according to the BTP’s mobility survey, the three aspects of bus service they care about most are reliability, travel time, and service frequency.
Robert Puentes, the chair of the BTP’s Executive Committee, emphasized this basic principle.
“We have to make sure the bus is working for people, that it’s actually connecting people from where they are to where want to go, and that it is as customer focused and easy to use as it possibly can be,” he said.
The BTP document proposes redesigning the region’s bus network to boost service on high-demand corridors (as other regions, including Houston and Richmond, Va., have done successfully), while considering flexible-route van services as a replacement for less frequent fixed routes designed to provide lifeline coverage in lower-demand areas. Some of the region’s jurisdictions are already experimenting with such demand-response options. For example, Ride On will launch its Flex service in two zones serving areas close to suburban Metro stations late this month, while DC Microtransit is offering a fareless pilot service in parts of the city through the end of September.
While vans providing first- and last-mile connectivity to fast, frequent trunk routes could benefit transit, there are also risks. After all, U.S. transit agencies have provided flexibly-routed service – such as paratransit in cities and general-population dial-a-ride systems in some exurbs and rural areas – since long before smartphones were invented. And in the developing world, small-vehicle microtransit remains a dominant form of mobility, no app needed to ride.
More recently, numerous North American cities have dabbled in smartphone-based microtransit. However, these programs have struggled to match the performance of even the lowest-performing fixed bus routes, and programs contracted out to ride-hailing companies have faced sudden fare and capacity changes.
Thus, before replacing any existing bus routes with microtransit, BTP planners should re-examine the reasons fixed-route service was originally chosen over other alternatives and determine the extent to which those factors still apply. Any changes should ensure transit effectively serves people who have long relied on it, including those without bank accounts or smartphone access.
Roads should be designed with buses in mind
One bus can carry as many people as 60 cars, so improvements to roads that allow buses to travel faster can increase capacity much more than new mixed-traffic lanes can. When buses speed up, throughput increases, and the better service that results attracts more riders.
But in the DC area, the opposite is happening, with average bus speeds down nine percent over the last decade and fewer people on board. Accordingly, Puentes emphasized the need to give buses priority on the region’s roadways, discussing options such as dedicated lanes, transit signal priority, or queue jumping.
DC-area jurisdictions have already made some limited efforts to give priority to bus service, including routes with bus rapid transit (BRT) features: WMATA’s Metroway, serving Arlington and Alexandria, Va., and Ride On’s Flash, a network of new Montgomery County routes set to begin operation next year.
While BRT-style amenities such as dedicated lanes can greatly benefit bus service (especially if properly enforced through simple means such as cameras mounted on the buses), addressing the primary cause of delays – solo car trips – would also catalyze improvements. However, solutions recommended in the BTP document, such as congestion pricing, curb access management, and parking limitations, could be politically challenging to implement in our auto-oriented society.
The BTP document also discusses the importance of bus stop amenities such as shelters, benches, and trash cans, citing a Utah study that found upgraded Salt Lake bus stops saw ridership increases 92 percent greater than comparable, but unimproved stops did. Such amenities, essential for the 39.5 million Americans facing physical mobility impairments, typically cost just several thousand dollars to install – a rounding error in DC-area transportation spending. Reduced demand for expensive-to-provide paratransit near upgraded bus stops helps offset these low capital costs, and in some U.S. cities advertising firms cover the full price of installation in exchange for the right to utilize the improved infrastructure.
DC-area bus riders deserve change – and deserve it soon
WMATA’s Bus Transformation Project will likely continue to evolve as residents and other interested parties provide input. While officials should review this feedback and look for constructive advice, the people riding the buses want better mobility – not years of studies.
The DC region’s road and rail networks were built out to their present-day extent because planners had a transportation vision that they committed to achieving. Bus riders share those same needs, and deserve the same priority.