This bus stops here only during full moons and days with an ‘r’ in the name

Arlington’s CommuterPageBlog has the story of a poor Metro rider who tried to connect to an Arlington bus at Court House Metro. No signs tell riders where the stop is. He eventually found the stop, but no bus; it turned out (amid some confusing signs) that this bus stopped in a totally different place on weekdays.

Clearly, our bus routes are geared to commuters. Most riders of this bus take it to the Court House Metro in the mornings and leave again at night. If you’re designing buses for them, there’s no need for good signs at the Metro, since everyone will simply pick up the bus where it dropped them off. There’s no need for clear routes, since everyone learns the one route that goes past his or her house.

But such a system is impossible for the casual user to understand, and makes taking the bus a daunting process. The writer of this letter even used the WMATA trip planner. Woe be to the person who wants to get from one place to another, even within central DC, without having the minutiae of our bus system memorized. Quick: Which D buses go to Dupont Circle Metro and which don’t? Which one bypasses Dupont entirely? Why?

We just redid the 30s buses, which run on H and I between downtown and Georgetown. Meanwhile, the Circulator runs on K. If I’m around Farragut and want to get to Georgetown, what street should I wait on? Why should I have to choose?

We can solve some of these problems with better signs, but what if we simply designated a few routes downtown as main bus routes, built designated bus lanes on those roads, and ran most or all of the buses along the same routes with clear signs? One color for buses to Georgetown, one color for ones out to Dupont and Mass Ave, one up 14th and 16th, etc. If a resident or tourist downtown could know, quite simply, where to walk to get a bus to any given destination, I think we’d see a lot more people using our bus system.