Bus route map integrated with the flag for the bus stop, for Montgomery County Ride-On’s free circulator of downtown Silver Spring.

I’m not sold on the value of bus services like this. I’d just walk between most of those destinations. Regardless, putting the map on the stop flag was a great idea.

I ran across this picture hanging on the wall at the Council of Governments building. It shows a “Capital Flyer” commuter bus from the late 60s or possibly early 70s in front of a big building with a Sears sign. Southwest Mall, maybe? I’m not sure. Interesting, in any event.

With construction well under way, Silver Spring’s new multimodal transit center is rising quickly from the ground. It seems a good time to share details of this important project.

The new center will consolidate just about every mode of transit imaginable into a single station, to be named for former US Senator Paul Sarbanes. It will include:

• 34 bus bays for use by local, commuter, and intercity buses.
• Kiss & Ride facilities for cars.
• A taxi stand.
• The Metropolitan Branch bike/ped trail.
• Bike racks (and maybe a bikesharing station, if Montgomery County joins Capital Bikeshare).
• Improved connections to the existing MARC and Metrorail platforms.
• A commuter store.
• Three major parks/plazas for civic use and passenger waiting.

Overall, Sarbanes Station will become the largest multimodal transportation depot in the Washington region, after Union Station.

Plans and renderings of the project are below, courtesy Montgomery County.

Overview rendering, showing Metro at bottom right and Colesville Rd at bottom left.	Lower level plan, showing plazas at the Metro entrance and Wayne Avenue, bus bays, the transit store, and the trail.
Middle level plan, showing bus bays and the Wayne Avenue entrance/park.	Upper level plan, showing Kiss & Ride and taxi facilities.
Two views of plaza in front of the Metro station entrance.
The trail, in its temporary pre-Purple line location.	The future Purple Line’s addition.
View of mid-level bus bays.	View of mid-level plaza.

The design under construction is at least the third iteration. The previous two versions of the design were both quite different. For the sake of posterity, here they are:

The original design featured a grand stair, but didn’t leave room for the Purple Line.

The second design was focused around a luxurious “hanging garden” waiting room. Courtesy Torti Gallas.

 Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.
 
 
 

WMATA buys new buses just about every year. They have to, in order to replace a steady stream of old buses that have reached the end of their useful lives. This year’s bus purchase is a little more notable than most because the new buses will look different enough from anything running right now that regular riders may actually notice.

The new buses are being delivered right now and will begin to hit the streets later this month. They’re hybrids, which is important for vehicles that are basically running all day long.

So what will they look like? The paint scheme isn’t changing much, except that Metro has made the sensible decision to add a colored stripe to the front so passengers waiting at stops will know if an approaching bus is red for local or blue for express. Beyond the livery, the shape of the buses is a little different. They’re produced by the same manufacturer (New Flyer) as the sloped-front buses from the last few years, but the new buses are a different model, with a noticeably different – and less sloped – front.

One of the new buses is pictured below at left. For comparison, the image to the right is one of WMATA’s existing buses.

New bus, image from New Flyer.	Existing bus.

The District’s GIS data catalog is a treasure trove of interesting information. I’ll continue to post maps produced from that data the rest of this week. This morning: The MetroBus system, shown alone and geographically accurate.

Geographically accurate MetroRail maps are pretty easy to come by, but I’ve never seen the MetroBus system all on one page, stripped of other detail. Here it is:

Click the map to enlarge.
Per a request in the comments, here is a version with county borders.

The National Building Museum tweeted this morning “Mathematician Blaise Pascal organized the first public bus line in 1662.”

Neat! But awfully vague. I went looking for more details, and found them in a 2008 article from Wired, which explains:

“The system started with seven horse-drawn vehicles running along regular routes. Each coach could carry six or eight passengers. Some sources specify three routes; others say there were six, and that one of them was a circular route.

The Carosses à Cinq Sous, or Five-Penny Coaches, were popular at first, but the novelty soon wore off. The system proved an idea ahead of its time. France was still a feudal society, with the Sun King at its apex. Nobility and gentry were allowed to ride the coaches, but not soldiers and peasants. The bus routes were out of business by 1675.

Regular bus service didn’t return to Paris until the early 19th century. Stagecoaches running short routes also began service around that time in London and New York City.”

So there you have it: Urban bus service in Paris 250 years before anybody thought to try it elsewhere. I wonder if the routes are mapped anywhere, or if that information is lost to history.

Germantown’s landmark giant globe may be repainted.

I haven’t had much time for blogging this week, and today is busy too. But there’s a lot of Montgomery County news today, so let’s just shoot through it real quick like.

• The Montgomery County Fairgrounds are considering possible redevelopment scenarios with the City of Gaithersburg. The fairgrounds are smack in the middle of everything, within walking distance to stations on the MARC line and the future Corridor Cities Transitway, and right up against I-270. The redevelopment scenarios aren’t actual proposals, just illustrations of what could happen.
• County Executive Isiah Leggett – essentially the mayor of Montgomery County – has formed a transit task force charged with studying how to best advance bus and train projects in the county.
• Speaking of bus projects in the county, MTA’s new ICC bus routes are now running. There are two routes starting in Gaithersburg. One ends at Fort Meade and the other at BWI. Rides are free through March 14.
• A water tank in Germantown that’s painted like a giant world globe and is visible from miles away may be repainted. Officials haven’t decided yet whether to keep the tank a globe or to give it a different look, such as that of a baseball.
• Developers want to build a 75-foot-tall apartment building in downtown Kensington near the MARC station. The area has a 60-foot height limit, but the developers say they can’t make the project work without 15 more feet.
• Preparations are underway for construction at Lot 31 in downtown Bethesda, the large surface parking lot adjacent to Barnes and Noble on Woodmont Avenue. The parking lot will be replaced by an underground public parking garage with mixed-use buildings on top.

Modern transit buses cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each. When a bus route shuts down it’s not economical to just scrap the vehicles. Instead, they’re usually sold or donated to other agencies.

Earlier this year the City of Falls Church discontinued its ‘George’ bus service, which ran between East and West Falls Church Metro stations. What happened to their buses? Take a look at this:

George bus. Image from Wikipedia.	The same bus, now part of ART. Image from Eric N. Dobson.

Notice anything familiar? That’s the same bus, repainted as part of the Arlington Transit fleet.

Fairfax City’s CUE bus has a good paint job.

We have a lot of different bus providers in this region. In addition to WMATA, every county or county-level locality has its own system. Last year BeyondDC ranked them by ridership, providing a basis for meaningful comparison of service levels.

Today I’m in the mood for something a little more frivolous. Therefore, in the interests of nerdy transit fun on a Friday afternoon, here are the 10 largest DC regional bus agencies ranked by the quality of their current standard livery:

Number 1: WMATA Metrobus
WMATA’s new paint job for buses looks great, and the idea to show local and express buses in different colors was an inspired move. My only complaint: That you can’t see the local red or express blue from the front, where it would be most useful to riders waiting at bus stops.

Number 2: Fairfax City CUE
Clean, modern, unique. I’m a big fan. Best bus most Washingtonians have probably never seen.

Number 3: Arlington ART
Simple, but in a good way. The wavy green is instantly recognizable and more fun than the standard stripe-on-white-background.

Number 4: DC Circulator
The wavy red is good in all the same ways as ART’s green, and the addition of yellow adds a little more interest. So why rank Circulator below ART? All those destination names printed on the side of the bus are cluttering and confusing; you can’t get to Georgetown on the 14th Street route, so Georgetown shouldn’t be in big letters on its side.

Number 5: Fairfax County Connector
Fairfax’s ketchup and mustard scheme rounds out the top 5 as the last of the paint jobs I personally like. Others say it’s tacky. What do you think?

Number 6: Montgomery County Ride-On
Solid colors are more noticeable and better looking than horizontal stripes. Ride-On’s new livery at least has that going for it. But it seems backwards. Rear-facing chevrons and trim make the bus look like it’s perpetually slowing down, and I can’t help but think the pastel colors will begin to feel dated quickly. The old paint scheme was a lot better.

Number 7: Prince William Omni-Ride
The best of the three bus systems that still use a horizontal stripe on a white background. Omni-Ride tops the other two because its stripe is the thickest.

Number 8: Alexandria Dash
Looks like its from about 1985. The diagonal bit is something. Not much, but something.

Number 9: Prince George’s County The Bus
Even by the standards of stripe-on-white this is ugly.

Number 10: Loudoun County Transit
The dishonor of last place goes to Loudoun, for not even trying. Logo sticker on a plain white background. Y-a-w-n.

Honorable mentions: No list of cool bus paint jobs would be complete without mentioning REX, Metro’s Go Green, and Dash’s streetscape liveries. They’re all great, but as special schemes are not eligible for the main ranking.

Falls Church’s GEORGE bus service is closing down. The 8-year-old circulator service between East and West Falls Church Metro stations will run for the last time on September 27.

Bye George. We hardly knew ye.

Image from wikipedia.