Photo by Chris Rief

Mayor Vince Gray left little doubt today as to where he stands on Metro’s proposal to cut a portion of two bus lines in Southeast D.C. due to allegations of rocks being thrown at buses and passengers: he’s against it. Very against it.

“I’m unalterably opposed to that,” he said today during a press conference. “That’s exactly the direction we don’t want to go in the District of Columbia, that when you live in a particular place you feel like the services of the city are not available to you in the same way.”

The segment of the W6/W8 bus route that would be discontinued after 8 p.m.

In mid-October Metro proposed cutting a portion of the W6 and W8 bus lines running through a residential section of Ward 8, citing as its rationale a number of incidents where buses and passengers had been pelted with rocks. Metro officials said that the rock-throwing incidents happened often enough to justify cutting a portion of the routes after 8 p.m., a claim that Gray and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Paul Quander took issue with today.

“There were four reported incidents—four—that took place at different times and different places in the community, so there was no pattern, there was nothing that points to a particular neighborhood. There were four random acts,” said Quander, later specifying that four incidents had been recorded so far this year, and four last year.

Quander said that MPD commanders met with Metro Police to review the incident reports, and that while any one incident would be treated seriously, the numbers presented by Metro did not seem to justify changes to the bus routes. “That is not a significant number,” he said of the eight reported incidents over two years, adding the buses along the U Street corridor had reported more problems over that same period.

Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said that similar incidents in the past have resulted in rerouting, and that other considerations were factored into the proposal. “I would note also that there isn’t a lot of ridership on this segment, and that operating into a cul-du-sac and back is not a standard operating practice. We do it in a few places, but would prefer not to as a basic service design principal,” he said.