Editor’s Note: It’s been a while since we’ve written about the metrobus system. Forgive us. This DCist recently moved to within walking distance of a metrorail station, so our daily bus ride has been eliminated. But we still use the bus. Coming home from Columbia Heights two nights in a light rain, we cut across Adams Morgan on the 42 and 90 buses with ease and for the most party dry, demonstrating that despite all the complaints about WMATA’s metrobus service, it does work, as long as you know how the system operates and which bus goes where, which is no easy task if you’re navigationally challenged.
So with this post, we start a multi-part series examining the District’s metrobus system.
Metrobus fills an important gap where our hub-and-spoke metrorail leaves off. Autoless people who limit themselves to just metrorail to get from point A to point B are in some ways shutting themselves off from different neighborhoods, or at least shutting themselves from the quickest transit option. For instance, this past weekend, we saw a group of twenty-somethings get on the Red Line at Dupont Circle only to get off at the next station, Woodley Park-Zoo, to then walk across the Duke Ellington Bridge to Adams Morgan. It would have been easier to just walk from Dupont Circle to the heart of Adams Morgan, or take the 42 bus up Columbia Road.
The bus system’s lack of casual accessibility is perhaps WMATA’s biggest problem. While maps have gone up at certain bus shelters to better orient bus amateurs to the system, WMATA’s metrobus system has structural problems in both the overall layout and its communication outreach. These fundamental flaws relegate metrobus, despite WMATA’s best intentions, to the status of an illegitimate child. After a year of bad news, including a metrorail collision and a high-profile candy arrest there are signs out there that WMATA does care.
But we first take a closer look at the intricacies of metrobus’ transit geography. All you really need to do to understand metrobus’ ailments is stand at the eastern end of the Duke Ellington Bridge between Woodley Park and Adams Morgan, pictured here in this DCist photo.
