Metro has been forced to backtrack on an effort to consolidate bus stops, restoring a handful of stops just months after eliminating them on several D.C. lines. The transit agency had quietly eliminated 67 stops from four bus lines in the District when it rolled out new “service enhancements” amid fanfare from public officials in December.
The agency targeted the lines because they had the most stops per mile in the system. The idea was to streamline the routes to about four or five stops per mile to keep the buses moving. The agency had estimated it could save 10 to 20 seconds for each stop it removed.
But, as The Washington Examiner first reported, riders started complaining after the change, wondering what happened to their stops. Within the first 15 days, 20 complaints had already come in to the agency during the normally quiet winter holidays, Metro said.
Now, the agency said, it has since relocated six of the stops and reinstated seven others. The restored stops were on the 62/63 lines, which travel from Takoma through Petworth to Federal Triangle station, and the G8 that travels on Rhode Island Avenue from Farragut Square through Brookland to the city’s northeast boundary. It also relocated two stops on the U8, which runs from Capitol Heights along Benning Road.
“We were trying to improve the service reliability,” Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said. “We did get feedback from the customers. We’re still trying to strike that balance.”
The transit agency is meeting with community groups such as D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commissions to gather additional feedback, he said. “We’re listening to our riders, we’re listening to the community,” he said.
Metro said it is trying to come up with a process of getting the community involved earlier, with the goal of making sure the agency doesn’t need to make changes after the next round of consolidations. Metro still has more than 60 other lines with more than five stops per mile that could be up next.
The challenge has been that riders want buses to move faster and more efficiently through street traffic to stay on schedule, but they don’t want to lose their stops.
Bus ridership has been faltering. In the last budget year, it fell 8 percent. Through the first seven months of the current budget year, it has fallen another 4 percent.
The system’s buses are chronically late, with about one in five off-schedule. Even the NextBus system designed to help riders track their buses has been having problems, accurately predicting bus arrivals just 80 percent of the time.
