Q2 bus. Photo from the Q2 study.

Operating buses might be expensive because of maintenance, fuel, and labor costs, but there’s another enormous driver of cost: traffic. Our region’s buses spend a lot of time in traffic, burning fuel and paying drivers not to actually go anywhere. This also sets up a vicious cycle. If buses take longer to reach the ends of the lines, then they’re not ready to turn around and start a new run as fast. That forces Metro to add more buses and more drivers just to maintain existing service. The slower buses also discourage riders, adding cars on the road which slow the buses even further.

According to WMATA, if our region’s buses could speed up by just 3 miles per hour on average, the effect would be the same as adding 100 new buses. That’d save Metro from having to buy them (about $50 million) or run them (about $40-50 million a year). Metro could run the same service more cheaply, or increase service

How do we speed up buses by 3 miles per hour? Manage the road network to maximize person throughput, not vehicle throughput. Currently, most DOTs, including Montgomery County’s, optimize their signal timing based on the numbers of vehicles. If one bus is waiting at an intersection in one direction and five cars are waiting the other way, they’ll design the signal to move the five cars, not the one bus, even if the bus has 40 people on board. The State Highway Administration’s policies work the same way, even though SHA head Neil Pedersen has endorsed a change.

That’s the wrong way of thinking. The goal of the road network is to move people, not cars. The signals should maximize the total numbers of people. The same goes for turn lanes. Road planners will often put in a turn lane if traffic volume gets high, but they could actually move more people by making that a “queue jumper” for buses, where the bus can go around the waiting cars and proceed faster. Often, there are more people on that one bus than in all the waiting cars.

The Montgomery County Sierra Club, Action Committee for Transit, and Coalition for Smarter Growth sent a letter to Maryland and Montgomery DOT leaders asking them to implement bus priority practices, starting with the recommendations from the Q2 study. That heavily used route travels from Silver Spring to Shady Grove, including an importants segment on Veirs Mill Road from Wheaton to Rockville. The groups write:

We strongly urge you to commence bus priority as soon as possible for all buses on Veirs Mill, both Ride On and WMATA. We believe that you can make immediate adjustments to pavement markings, signal timing, and other elements to create queue jumper lanes and give signal priority. These minor changes would have a major impact in a very short time.

One change that could be implemented immediately would be to move back the stop line on Church Street where it meets 355 at the Rockville Metro, so that exiting buses aren’t blocked. This is just one example of where a street design that favors cars is delaying large numbers of bus passengers and costing the county money. Other suggestions in the Q2 bus Metrobus Veirs Mill Line Study, including signal retiming outside Rockville station and using service lanes on Veirs Mill as bus only lanes, could be implemented now. …

Undoubtedly the next budget year will come with enormous financial pressure to cut bus routes that people depend on for jobs, groceries, and other vital services. Improving bus service with cost-effective changes is a far better alternative. A recent MWCOG study shows that, with full implementation of priority plans, four buses in an hour can do the work of six today.

It’s time for Maryland and Mongomery County to move past 1950s traffic management philosophies and start solving equations around people, not vehicles. DC and Virginia should do the same for their heavily traveled routes. It’s a vital component of any strategy to deal with Metro’s looming budget gap for next year and stave off drastic service cuts, painful fare hikes, or both.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.