The Metro Board is set to approve its final budget for fiscal year 2021 on Thursday, following an extensive public comment period and no shortage of controversy.

The final draft is largely the same as previous versions, but there’s one major change: Metro has significantly scaled back its original proposal to eliminate or consolidate dozens of bus routes, which was the subject of significant public pushback.

The Metro Board, it appears, was listening.

“We had a lot of participation in this budget, and the Board worked very hard to respond to the comments they heard,” said Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld. “I appreciate the hard work of the Board to get to this point.”

In the original version of the budget, Metro planned to eliminate or consolidate service on more than 50 bus lines, for a savings of $26 million. The revised cuts will only save the agency $7.6 million. WMATA will also increase service frequency on several especially busy bus lines.

Under the new proposal, just eight lines will be eliminated entirely: the 5A, S80, S91, Z11, Z8, B29, and the B30. Metro estimates the cuts will affect 3,000 riders each weekday.

The agency’s analysis shows that the cuts would have no disparate impact on minority or low-income riders. Across the system, about 80 percent of Metrobus riders are people of color and about half are low-income.

Some of the lines up for elimination have other transit alternatives coming to replace them soon — the 5A, for instance, runs between L’Enfant Plaza and Dulles Airport, but Metro expects the opening of the second phase of the Silver Line to make that bus redundant. Montgomery County’s coming Bus Rapid Transit service would likewise replace the Z11 and Z8.

Several other routes in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia would be trimmed back under the new budget. Many of those service reductions would come later at night. But, under the budget, Metro is also proposing to run trains later in the evening — until 2 am on Fridays and Saturdays and 12 am on weekdays — so some customers could switch to rail.

Transit advocates are hailing the final budget as a victory for riders.

“I’m simply surprised that they moved as far towards where the public wanted them to be, compared to the budget they had released,” said Stewart Schwartz, the executive director at the Coalition for Smarter Growth, which advocates for public transit options. “I think they very much heard us on the concerns about the bus service cuts.”

Schwartz, who served on the steering committee for the Bus Transformation Project, an attempt to develop a regional vision and plan for improving bus service, hopes that Metro’s decision to back away from major cuts could open up opportunities for larger discussions about buses and the region’s transit future.

“I hope it means that WMATA and the jurisdictions will move quickly to join efforts to redesign the bus network to make it better for everyone, to make it more frequent and reliable,” he says.

Metro workers’ largest union also weighed in.

“We were happy to see that the new budget included substantial improvements based on community feedback,” a spokesperson for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 wrote in a statement. “We still oppose any bus route cuts included in the proposal. At a time when we need to be getting cars off the road, this region should be planning for expanding MetroBus offerings.”

The spokesperson also noted that Metro’s budget process is constrained by a 3 percent cap on the growth of the contributions to the Metro budget from Maryland and Virginia — a restriction the union opposes, especially considering the financial strain the coronavirus is putting on Metro’s finances.

That strain is significant. While Metro will receive funding from the federal government to help cover the costs of its pandemic response, General Manager Paul Wiedefeld estimates the agency will lose $50 million in a month. And ridership has plummeted by more than 90 percent on rail and close to 70 percent on buses. Depending on the continuing impacts of the pandemic, Metro says it may change or delay aspects of the 2021 budget, which is due to take effect in July.

“The world has changed since we started this process. This draft budget positions Metro for recovery, and for a day when it is safe for our customers to return and we have demand for more service,” said Board Chairman Paul Smedberg in a statement. “In passing a budget, we recognize that we may need to revisit the timing of some initiatives based on the economic realities we face in the wake of the pandemic.”

This story originally appeared on WAMU