Over the summer, the District tested bus-only lanes downtown on H and I Streets in hopes of improving the speed and reliability of buses in one of the region’s busiest corridors.

The pilot was set to end this month, but the lanes will be permanent starting Nov. 12, says District Department of Transportation Director Jeff Marootian.

The bus lanes, which were active during rush hours, increased speed by about 4 percent compared to last year. The H Street lane goes from 18th Street NW to 14th Street NW. The I Street lane stretches from 13th Street NW to 20th Street NW.

“We’ve done a lot of outreach, talking to transit riders, talking to businesses along the corridor and we’ve heard overwhelmingly positive feedback about the bus lanes,” Marootian says. “We know that there are some tweaks that we can make to make them even more efficient.”

Those tweaks include extending the hours for the bus-only lanes. Starting in mid-November, they’ll be active from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Cameras and automated enforcement and ticket writing may be coming to the lanes, too.

While speeds increased on I Street, they did not on H Street, DDOT says. The agency hopes other changes will remedy that, such as adjusting signal timing to allow vehicles that are turning right to clear out of the lane and make room for buses. DDOT also will make loading zones on the opposite side of the street to replace zones that were taken away by the bus lane.

The department will also create a space on 13th Street for buses to layover and avoid clogging the bus lanes.

More than 70 buses an hour use the area and carry 80,000 passengers a day. In the past, buses traveled as slow as 2.8 mph in some sections.

The city has slowly started experimenting with dedicated bus lanes in recent years, putting them on a short stretch of Georgia Avenue in 2016. DDOT also has been working for years to study and implement dedicated bus lanes on 16th Street NW, one of the city’s most congested corridors. Officials say they will open in 2020.

DDOT is also working to redesign K Street to prioritize buses and bikes.

Transit planners say bus lanes are making the bus faster and more attractive to riders, but the rules have to be enforced properly in order for the lanes to work as intended.

Last year, DDOT tried a temporary bus lane on Rhode Island Avenue while part of WMATA’s Red Line was shut down. Parked cars routinely blocked the dedicated lane, forcing buses into other lanes of traffic. The downtown bus lanes also weren’t immune. Traffic safety advocates logged nearly 300 violations in one day.

This story originally appeared on WAMU.

Previously:
Dedicated Bus Lanes Are Coming To H And I Streets In Downtown D.C.
There Were Almost 300 Violations On The H and I Street Bus Lanes In A Single Day, Advocates Say