June 20, 2005
That Squeaky, Squeaky D2
Most residents of upper Georgetown, Burlieth, and Glover Park are familiar with WMATA's D2 bus route. This route serves as a circulator between Glover Park and Dupont Circle you may be familiar as the short bus with squeaky breaks. "Short," because WMATA uses the Orion II (also seen in service in the city on some of the N routes, the M4 and the 98 - seen here in an image from this webpage) for the route, and "squeaky" because the frequent stops in the route through residential neighborhoods quickly converts the brake pads to shrill noisemakers.
What has been for most simply a quirk of the neighborhood has escalated into a full-fledged controversy in recent weeks. As the noise worsened in recent months, one resident, Mory Watkins, (who the W. Times humorously described as "the bus man"), has made it his life's work to silence the annoying squeaks outside his Benton Street home by any means possible - from pressuring WMATA to fix the buses and curtailing late night service to even terminating the route at Wisconsin Avenue. Watkins' activism happened to correspond to a newly created and quickly growing Glover Park Yahoo Group where his more radical proposals stirred up resentment. However, at last month's ANC meeting some email list members found Watkins much more reasonable than portrayed in print and identified that cranky residents and bus riders probably share the same interest: quiet, well-maintained buses on the D2 route.
In response to the controversy WMATA has said they're testing some newer, quiet brake pads on one bus, and after an undefined length of time will eventually replace the breaks on all the buses on the route. This DCist thinks brakes are just the tip of the iceberg, as we've ridden D2s with malfunctioning sound system that produce screeching sounds instead of announcements, buses with heat stuck on full blast while the A/C is on (the driver said he had reported it but a replacement bus wasn't available), and buses nauseatingly filled with diesel fumes (one driver complained he frequently experienced lightheadedness on the route.) The D2 is certainly not the only route with problems - you may have remembered from Friday that the Post reported a comprehensive survey of WMATA's bus system found a neglected and "dilapidated" system. How are the routes you ride?
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The 42 bus is an evil ninja bus that appears when you least expect it and disappears without warning.
The 66 is a reliable but slightly boring family bus that putters up and down, up and down 11th street.
The U street link is the popular bus in high school that got drunk at the prom and wasn't allowed to graduate.
Oh, were you asking about how clean they were? I haven't really noticed. Fine, I suppose.
The G2, which also serves Georgetown via P Street is the most unreliable line in the system...which is saying something. If it's freezing cold or blisteringly hot, don't even think it will be there. I have taken to walking the 25 blocks from home.
The D2 is the only salvation on that route. I need to meet this NIMBY and give him a piece of my mind.
If the buses didn't stop every single block, they might actually run on time.
It isn't just the D2's brakes that are noisy. I find the engines to be unusually loud, as well -- especially as driven by the typical Metrobus operator. On Benton they appear to reach speeds of 40 MPH, well over the 25 MPH speed limit.
I don't understand the purpose of those short Orion buses. Ususally during rush hour, the D2 buses are always packed and cramped. Those buses were meant as shuttles and not full fledged transportation solutions.
As for the dude who wants to terminate the D2 as Wisconsin Avenue: Boo.....f*ckin' hoo. There are other residents who live in that neigborhood who depend on the squeaky D2 bus and tolerate the noise just fine.
So unless you want to drive me to and from work everyday, please shut the hell up.
I don't think I've ever been on a D2 that even came close to approaching 40 mph (can they even go that fast?). On Benton, there are so many stop signs, reaching such speeds would seem to be impossible.
The D2 is generally reliable, though I have experienced buses that are really late or don't show up at all (this happens on every line). It's not the optimal route to take during rush hour, though, since navigating those tight Glover Park roads with lots of other traffic can be tough.
One thing that would help is if the traffic light at (I think) 35th and Reservoir was better. Currently, only about four cars can get through the green light heading southbound on 35th Street (this is especially true during rush hour). The the light turns red for what seems like three minutes, leaving huge backups on 35th Street in both directions.
I think it's blaming the symptom to point out flaws with the drivers. The core problem is how metro prioritizes (or rather, doesn't) bus service when it comes to budget and attention.
There are an enormous number of job unfilled openings for managers and drivers, which tells me that the pay isn't there for the work that needs to get done. Things don't get fixed when there's no one in the job position that's supposed to be concerned about and fix the problems. And it's a miracle that we get any competent, caring people behind metro bus wheels; the pay for drivers isn't great and was structured to make it difficult to get the gig on a full-time basis.
Ultimately we're seeing the ugly interaction of class with politics. Wealthier riders tend to avoid the busses and don't hesitate to raise a ruckus at rail problems, so that's where the budget priority goes. It's probably going to take middle and upper-class folk (call 'em eccentric cranks if you like) who happen to ride busses to do some political organizing to create enough political pressure to have the bus system fixed. Folks living from paycheck to paycheck and who are dependent on the bus to get to work most likely have far too much of their time sucked up by multiple jobs and the hellacious commute time created by bus service to organize. Maybe it's time for a Bus Riders Union or the like?
Seriously, stand on the corner anywhere in this city, night or day. I recommend 18th and Columbia and close your eyes briefly (keeping a hand on your wallet). What do you hear? You hear the constant, grinding, shrill of the Bus's and their brakes at every stop. Why must every bus have bad brakes and make such high pitched sounds that it sounds like someone pulled the emergency brakes of a speeding locomotive. This happens all night and day we're just immune to the sounds of it since it happens all the time. Please let me know who's window I hold my cardboard sign out front of letting them know we hate this shit?? Pure noise pollution man! It's bad enough I have to endure the crazy homeless man on the corner screaming epithets and the window shaking bus engines that make us stick little pieces of cardboard between the panes just so we can sleep at night.
I agree with John, however the problem isn't necessarily just with WMATA, but with City politicians and wealthy residents in general. First the citizens of Georgetown say they don't want a metro stop (this is a rumor I heard is it true?) because they want to keep out the riff-raff, and now they complain about buses being too loud.
While the residents of Georgetown are complaining about allegedly squeaky brakes(I haven't heard them, but I can't imagine they're worse than a large number of the other buses) bus drivers are having large rocks thrown and them along North Capital.
Metro should be prioritizing the safety of it's employees and riders above everything else. After that they can deal with scheduling problems in some of the neighborhoods not served by the subway, and maybe after everything else is perfect (by this I mean never) they should be looking into this alleged brake problem. This level of pandering to wealthy communities is sickening.
Someone needs to remind this Watkins dude that this is a city, after all. If he can't handle the sounds of a typical city, maybe he needs to move out to Loudoun County.
I ride the 30-series buses between Foggy Bottom and Glover Park. Cleanliness is fine. I hate that sometimes you wait for 30 minutes and then 3 show up at once. But my biggest problem is the buses that don't stop at all. Frequently on my morning commute a 38B will show up at my stop and while people are boarding a Friendship Heights bus will drive past without stopping. They aren't supposed to do that, but they do.
Two of the busses I ride (30-series and D3/6) are chronically off-schedule in the afternoons. The 30s are supposed to come about every 7 minutes -- on a good day, 3 come every 20 minutes. But generally they come and generally they pick up passengers. Albeit often in a kind of relay fashion, alternating stops.
On the other hand, you can wait up to an hour for a D6, watch one climb MacArthur toward Sibley, see it turn around and then blow right past you --it's late and the driver wants to make up lost time. Besides, the logic goes, it's so late another one will come soon (you know, like in 15 minutes -- cold comfort when you're already as late as the bus blowing past you -- and precisely because it didn't come on time). This phenomenon then slows down the next bus because that poor driver is picking up passengers at nearly every stop (at least two busses-worth of passengers) and having to listen to them rant like I just did.
Conversely, in the morning, my two bus routes (one a Ride-on, the other a rush-hour only commuter bus (the D5) work like clockwork. And the drivers and passengers on both are a delight.
The D2 buses that I have been riding are not as nice as the Orion shown in the photo. You will notice that there is a sign on each bus stating this is a "refurbished" bus. My adobe is across the street from a stop and I can tell the time of day by the brake screaches, but it's a trade off for convenient service.