Posts about TheBus

New Greenbelt bus frequency chart for midday weekdays. Click to enlarge. (Full day chart)

The hard work of Transit Riders United of Greenbelt and elected officials in Greenbelt has paid off. As of yesterday morning, the routes are now offset by several minutes. Riders should not have to wait more than 16-18 minutes for a bus during rush hour if they're headed for parts of the city where the routes overlap.

While the bus schedules are not staggered by the optimum 15 minutes, the offsetting is clearly an improvement.

It should be noted that the G12 and G13/G14/G16 are a line family. The buses on those routes meet at Greenbelt Center for a timed transfer, so the red and green dots on the above chart should always be right above one another.

The Prince George's route 11 overlaps mostly with the G12 or is within 2-3 blocks of the G12 at any given time. So, the best way to schedule this route is to offset the 11 from the G12 by about 15 minutes.

The new schedules don't offset route 11 by exactly 15 minutes, and some riders will face a 20 minute wait between some bus departures, but most riders will average about 15 minutes between departures. An exact staggering of times is not possible, since the G12 and G13/G14/G16 wait for 5 minutes at Greenbelt Center, whereas the 11 does not. This makes the offset timing difficult.

Prince George's County Transit should be commended for listening to the concerns of riders and making a positive change. Hopefully, the result will be shorter commutes for residents and better transit ridership in the county.

The film mainly talks about how New York City is the only major city in the United States without bike racks on its buses.

And it notes that 100% of Washington's buses are equipped with bike racks. However, that's slightly misleading. It's true that 100% of WMATA's buses are equipped, and they represent the lion's share of buses in the region, but not all of our buses have the racks.

None of Prince George's County's TheBus buses have bike racks. In Alexandria, the city council made bike racks on buses a priority, but it's unclear if the racks have been installed. DASH's website doesn't make any mention of bikes.

Among the other local bus operators though, 100% of buses have bike racks. That includes every bus operated by Arlington Transit, DC Circulator, Fairfax Connector, Fairfax City CUE, PRTC (local buses only), and Montgomery's Ride On.

It's time that the rest of the region got on board with bike racks.

Greenbelt bus frequency chart for midday weekdays. Click to enlarge.

As you can see from the chart, the buses are clustered in the schedule. This is especially true at Greenbelt Center (Crescent Road and Gardenway), where for almost the entire day, all three buses are scheduled to depart within 2 minutes of each other.

The Metrobuses are supposed to operate that way. As a part of simplifying Greenbelt's bus service, Metro removed bus service from certain neighborhoods to other destinations. To solve this problem, Metro introduced a "timed transfer". Westbound buses on route G12 meet westbound buses on route G13/G14/G16 at Greenbelt Center, where they have a scheduled 5 minute layover. The same is true for eastbound buses.

But TheBus route 11 operates over a route very similar to Metrobus G12. Since it serves the same neighborhoods as one of the timed transfer routes, it does not itself need to meet at the transfer point.

During rush hours, all 3 routes operate at 30 minute headways, so the ideal scheduling would be for Route 11 to be offset from the G12 and G13/G14/G16 departure by 15 minutes. That would give much of Old Greenbelt and Greenbelt East 15-minute bus service.

Instead, the failure of WMATA and Prince George's County to coordinate means that Greenbelt will have 3 buses leaving at virtually the same time, with approximately 29 minutes between departures.

It appears that the failure to coordinate occurred because WMATA was not able to release finalized schedules until about a week before the new service began. Prince George's County, not knowing when Metro's buses would be running, scheduled their departures on the hour and on the half hour from Greenbelt Metro. They released their schedules to the public well before WMATA did.

As a result, when Metro finally released their schedules, it was too late for Prince George's County to do anything.

Because of this snafu, the buses are going to cannibalize each others' ridership, which is bad, since the old routes were already underperforming.

Prince George's route 11 is the fastest way to get from Greenbelt East, Greenbelt Center, and the North End to the Metro, but it might not reap the gains it otherwise would've, because many riders don't know as much about the TheBus system.

That's a marketing problem, which will be exacerbated since riders will be able to chose between TheBus and Metrobus, with the same departure time. If the buses were offset by 15 minutes, riders might be more likely to just get on whichever bus came first.

The simplest solution would be for Prince George's County to move their bus schedule for route 11 by 15 minutes in either direction. That would result in 15-minute headways parts of Greenbelt for rush hour, and would keep the half-hour headways in the off-peak that are currently scheduled wherever route 11 operates.

This failure to coordinate has resulted in substandard service for a densely populated part of Prince George's with relatively good transit ridership. But not all is lost. A few simple scheduling changes could result in vastly improved bus service in the area, at no cost to either transit agency. And better bus service might mean more revenue in the form of new riders.

These changes are planned to improve ridership and to work with the revised Metrobus service plan adopted by the WMATA Board in late September.

Two of the lowest ridership lines in the County, the 11 and the 15, operate out of Greenbelt Station. Prince George's County wants to change these routes, because without an improvement in ridership, it is likely they will be cancelled altogether within the next few years.

The largest change will be taking the equipment and workers used to operate routes 11 and 15 and merging them into one route. This new route will be called route 11. It will run every 30 minutes. The route will no longer serve Beltway Plaza (as the old 11 did), but it will continue to serve the Federal Courthouse. It will serve Old Greenbelt and Greenbelt East, but it will no longer serve NASA Goddard.

Existing TheBus service in Greenbelt. Map by author.

Passengers needing to reach NASA Goddard will have to use Metrobus G14/16 or TheBus 15X. In the past, the County was considering adding some additional service on the 15X (which is currently rush-hour only), but I'm not sure if that is still in the cards.

Additionally, I believe the 15X should be rerouted so that it can stop in Old Greenbelt. Currently, there are no stops on route 15X between Greenbelt Station and NASA Goddard. A stop at the Greenway Shopping Center would be helpful as well, since it's the only stop in Greenbelt (aside from the Metro station) where all the other routes in the city stop.

In order to serve Berwyn Heights, which is losing its route 15 service, the County proposes rerouting route 16 through the town. This will mean better service for Berwyn Heights, which currently only sees one bus per hour in each direction. Route 16 runs every 30 minutes.

But not everyone is happy about this. In a recent Gazette article, the Mayor of Berwyn Heights, Cheye Calvo, objected to the change. Saying "Every [20] minutes, there's going to be a bus driving by people's houses... It is going to be a change in frequency that is a rather significant one ... When I see the bus right now, it's empty."

Author's note: Initially, this post failed to mention that the Mayor and Council voted 4-1 to take the official stance with the county that they will not oppose the plan. This is contingent on the County reviewing the change in several months to see whether ridership has increased. I apologize for the omission.

There are reasons that the 15 has low ridership. One reason is that it only comes once an hour, throughout the day. Another reason is that it takes a very circuitous route. In my case, it takes more than twice as long to get to Greenbelt Metro on route 15 than it does on Metrobus route R12.

TheBus 16 has much better ridership than route 15. So even if no new riders from Berwyn Heights start taking the bus, the Mayor will likely see more people on it.

One Councilman, James Wilkinson, says that he thinks the bus would be better on the periphery of the town. That would mean the least impact for current riders on route 16, but it would mean less mobility for Berwyn Heights residents. That means it's especially important for Berwyn residents who want better bus service to come to the hearing.

Better frequency and more logical routing are clear benefits to these changes. But bus service in Prince George's has a long way to go.

Currently, TheBus does not operate past 8 pm or at all on weekends. That needs to change if Prince George's is to become a more accessible, sustainable, and livable place.