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Shuttle service is being run by a local company, U-Street Parking and Transportation. Photo courtesy CStan Photo.
As anyone who has ever tried to get to H Street NE without a car knows, the area isn’t terribly accessible. Visitors to the area are often faced with a long walk from Union Station, trying to figure out the X2 bus schedule, or the often difficult task of finding a cab back at the end of the night. But all of that is has now changed.
Ward 6 D.C. Council member Tommy Wells and H Street business leaders held a press conference Wednesday in front of the Atlas Theater to announce the launch of a new free shuttle service that will run along H Street, from the Gallery Place Metro station to the Minnesota Avenue station. There are four stops planned between the two stations, and the stops do not overlap with existing X2 Metrobus stops.
Speaking at the press conference, Wells said that the shuttle represents a “very exciting collaboration between the community, business leaders, and the city council.” He stressed the importance of keeping H Street accessible during the period of construction that will take place over the next two years to prepare for a planned streetcar line. “We’re seeing a renaissance of H Street,” Wells said.
Wells said that he and Ward 7 Council member Yvette Alexander worked with the H Street Cooperative, a non-profit organization founded by area business leaders, to secure funding for the transportation solution. He also credited Mayor Fenty’s administration with helping make the shuttle line possible, and noted that the city is investing nearly $50 million dollars to help revitalize the streetscape of H Street.
Echoing Wells’s remarks, Ward 7 Council member Yvette Alexander noted that this shuttle service helps connect Ward 7 to Ward 6 and, by proxy, to the rest of the city. She said that she sees the future of Ward 7 as becoming the “new, downtown Ward 7” with a similar resurgence of retail and economic activity planned, with the new shuttle service playing an important role in connecting the area to Metro.
The shuttle will run from Gallery Place to Minnesota Avenue beginning at 5 p.m. daily and will run until Metro closes (midnight on weeknights, 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights). H Street Cooperative is working to get a web site put together with scheduling information and stops. Passengers can look for the buses with the H Street NE logo on the side.
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this is awesome! I will now be able to drink more frequently in the Atlas District.
Ooh! Does it stop near the Rock and Roll Hotel? That would be awesome - I love that place but can never get myself there.
well, this will make richard layman happy (maybe!). he always says you have to make bus riding sexier to get people to ride. hope this does the trick.
i have to question, though, how could this not overlap with any existing X2 stops? the only place the X2 doesn't stop along that line currently is in the middle of the benning road bridge over the river!
also, note the u street parking co. logo there. was there open bidding for this project, or did an already well-connected business concern just get more well connected, lining its pockets with government money?
was the champagne christening really necessary? he should have just thrown a can of Bud Lite at the bus (which will surely happen soon anyway).
this is fantastic news. i once got a ride from a random person (non-taxi) on H street because it was 4am and there were no taxis. not the safest thing to do i know, but drunken desperation doesn't always make for safe choices.
I am certain your drunken desperation was caused by the the city imposed moratorium on the sale of single beers and half-pints of liquor for a seven-block stretch of H Street NE. While you were hoping for "just a taste" of the evil spirits, the "city" made you drink to excess.
that was me who gave you the ride!
alexalexalex - i don't think it was you. in fact it was some giant guy named curly, who was drinking wine out of a dixie cup while he was driving. no joke.
Cost to riders?
"to announce the launch of a new free shuttle service that will run along H Street"
er...do you mean non-economic costs?
Looks like they took a styling cue from the Circulator.. except instead of randomly dispersing the words "Shop.. Dine.. etc" on the side of the bus, they conveniently limited it to one area for our viewing pleasure.
Good on the shuttle. Boo on the logo. A proper logo should be instantly recognizable at a distance. This thing looks like a jumble. And sans serif fonts are tough on the eyes as well. You can tell a Circulator bus coming from a mile away. This just looks like any other small white bus. A little more color would go a long way. If they want H Street to be a destination, they need their own logo, like maybe a bunch of little red hearts (h for heart, see? Heart of the city, and all that.). Or maybe a happy face. Or a bunch of Hitlers. It's a really popular name with the younger people nowdays. And nobody knows how to have a good time like a bunch of nazis.
So many bits of unintentional comedy in that article.. where to begin? Because clearly, the toothbrush is part of the vast Zionist conspiracy embedded in the structures of power.
a great solution to what already amounts to a total traffic clusterf*ck - lets add more traffic!
better yet, lets duplicate a route already serviced by the x2, one of the most frequent bus lines in the city!
brilliant.
Clearly you don't get it. Since this is a free service, all the raffish-assed crack-heads and teen-muggers are going to jump on the shuttle, promoting the X2 to "elite" status. Win win!
Nope, he/she clearly DOES get it. If the X2 drivers train a la Metrobus drivers (i.e., the worst traffic scourge in downtown Washington behind watermain breaks and the Secret Service), then their asses will be hanging out into the right hand lane blocking traffic.
First of all, it's a free service.
Secondly, it will only make four stops--as opposed to the infuriating and nausea-inducing every-block stops made by the Metrobuses.
The key to this being successful is frequency. If it runs like the Circulator (i.e. every 10 minutes) it will probably go over well. If it's sporadic, or a once-every-half-hour type of thing, forget it.
Too true. I love the Atlas District, but the route of this shuttle (Gallery Place to Minnesota Ave.) makes no sense. By making it so long--and duplicating 90% of the X2 route--it won't run frequently enough to be convenient. And when I am drinking, I want convenient.
It should really loop from Union Station right to 13th Street, NE (less than a block from R&R Hotel, Granville Moore's, Sticky Rice, Palace...) and probably 15th St. (Argonaut) for the turnaround.
As it stands, this new shuttle will be as irregular as the X2. Plus, it will basically give all those hobos who used to commute to downtown from Minnesota Ave. on the X2 for free (back in the paper transfer days) a new way to commute to their preferred downtown panhandling spots, again for free. The only upside is that the hobos will be limited to evening panhandling only, when I am on my way out of downtown. Plus, there is a good chance that, on night of hearty drinking, I could find myself stranded out at Minnesota Avenue by mistake. Not good.
Well, according to the press release from Tommy Wells:
"The shuttle service will provide an express route connecting the Gallery Place and Minnesota Avenue Metro Stations, with a limited number of stops on H Street, NE and run on an approximate 30 minute headway schedule."
Well, it's a sad but true fact that most bar-hopping hiptards (and bridge'n'tunnel crowd, but I repeat myself) in DC would rather contract a case of the clap than venture onto a "regular" Metrobus.
How often will this run?
how many wheels does the bus have?
There was already a shuttle bus from Union Station that picked people up and dropped them near the Palace of Wonders, but it only ran on the weekends.
This is a very welcome edition.
Who is Keyser Söze?
Obviously, you're not a golfer.
People are always asking me if I know monkeyrotica.
When will this finally start?
re: replication of the X2,
a lot of people don't ever consider riding a metrobus. say what you will, but this is a nice alternative.
Those people are idiotic douchebags and don't deserve to be allowed to leave their homes.
Totally agree... I hate those people who have lived in DC for a while and are still like, "Oh, I don't take Metrobus... maybe the Circulator." Like it's a matter of principle or something? That level of snobbiness is totally ridiculous.
However, having a bus that only makes a few stops will definitely make it much less of an hour-long ordeal to get to the H Street bars (presuming the shuttle runs semi-regularly). I'll consider it.
It's kind of funny seeing Tommy Wells getting all happy about this shuttle bus service, when last fall he was bitching and moaning about how the shuttle buses between RFK and Nationals Park for baseball games were ruining Capitol Hill. A direct quote from Wells: "The buses add a layer of traffic that is not necessary. I would like to see them stop running." What a douche.
To be fair to Wells, there's a world of difference between the Atlas District and Nats games. People go to the Atlas District.
You're half right, there is a world of difference. People are already pretty willing to use a shuttle between the parking lot at RFK and the new ballpark. Taking a bus to and from the bar? Quaint notion, but not so much. Wells is a dipshit.
I 'unno. I don't live anywhere near H Street NE, but I visit the bars occasionally. I'd probably go more often if there was a non-sucky transportation alternative for the car-less and tipsy. Whereas I live within easy walking distance of Nats stadium, but I wouldn't go to a non-Cubs game even if you comped me the tickets. (For the Cubbies, I'd accept a free ticket, and maybe even throw in a couple of bucks cash money if the weather's nice. Y'know, if anyone's interested in throwing a couple of tickets my way.)
Now, this shuttle route may not be the non-sucky transportation to and from H Street NE I've been hoping for -- thirty minutes headway? -- but the concept would work for me in theory.
Is there a restroom on board? I'm tired of peeing in cups.
You're allowed to use cups? I just went on the floor. Color me embarrassed.
Seriously? The X2 bus is not difficult to figure out. This is a wasted resource. Run a few more X2 buses on the weekends, make a couple of them expresses and go fix some freakin' escalators!
the hiptards can't figure out the regular x2 bus schedule?
A regular Metrobus schedule? Good one
Gallery to Minn Ave? Srsly?
Why not to/from Eastern Mkt, Potomac Ave, or Stadium...
Is there room for my fixie?
Research has shown that a "special" bus for tourist types afraid of "normal" buses soon become filled with the same people who who take the normal bus. And this new shuttle is FREE, so I expect that it'll be full of the "normal people" who live along the x2 route and want free ride home.
Once again, the "special needs" kids are being forced to ride the "short bus." Why do we continue to marginalize hiptards, sticking them on little 'tard busses and making them wear narrow jeans and Chucks and chinstrap beards and shipping them off to incestuous trendy little hiptard ghettos, when we should be mainstreaming them?
I hope the windows open up on these buses unlike the one on the Circulator. Sometimes one needs to open the window.
Sometimes the window needs to be opened. Sometimes there are smells on the bus. The short bus has bars on its windows. Yay! We win!
I supposed these busses are more cost-effective than overhead ski lift gondolas, but not nearly as fun to throw poop from. Still hoping they can put some gondola transit where the Whitehurst Freeway is now. Nothing quite as satisfying as pegging an LNS douche with a fistful of ca-ca while he's on his way to Sequoia.
The zoo will have an overhead gondola in its {distant} future from which one can throw poop. Then I can yell down at everyone and say, "Hey! Poopyface! Yeah, you!"
If Ms. Krause and others are too good for or are inconvenienced by using the Metrobuses from Chinatown and Union Station, then we don't want them on H Street. There are enough douchebags coming over already.
To answer:
The post above, like many items on DCist, is a news item. It is not intended to be a judgement about the shuttle service or Metrobus or cabs or any of the other ways people might get down to H Street. It's simply to let people know that this is available.
Secondly, as someone who works on H Street, I can say that a lot of our customers who are tourists don't understand Metrobus (they have enough trouble figuring out the whole rail system, asking them to sort out Metrobus schedules is even more tough). Just because DC residents know the X2 route, doesn't mean everyone will and I, for one, am looking forward to having a link to the shuttle information on our webpage to help visitors to the District and to H Street know that this is just one more way for them to come down and enjoy the Atlas District.
I would be wary of saying things like "we don't want them on H Street" since a lot of people who don't understand or ride Metrobus are still big supporters of the Atlas District and make it possible for us to have the thriving business environment that we enjoy.
This shuttle works really well! I'm happy.
By the way, more people might ride the X2, and other bus routes if paper maps were available. The on downloaded pdf available on line, just doesn't hack it.