GM was informed that Jack Evans has stepped in to give it another chance and try to convince the Mayor to keep the Wisconsin branch of the Circulator. But now it really is up to us. Please, if you have just one minute, email the Mayor at Adrian.Fenty@DC.gov and let him know that Georgetown has suffered more than enough cuts in its bus service, cutting the Circulator in half would be unfair and short-sighted.
Category Archives: Transit
DDOT Confirms Circulator Service Cut
Yesterday DDOT’s spokesman John Lisle confirmed that the Wisconsin branch of the Circulator has been slated for elimination. Lisle offered a list of reasons why they decided to do this. GM will list and analyze each of these reasons:
- The Circulator Whitehaven extension carried 2 percent of the entire Georgetown-Union Station route’s ridership but was responsible for 15 percent of its cost.
- The elimination of the extension to Whitehaven will allow the Circulator to reduce the number of in-service buses, which will lower the overall cost of providing the service.
Response: We’ll have to take their word for these stats. Do you want to know why we’ll have to take their word? Because they didn’t hold any public meetings to present the proposed service cut. It’s been announced fait accompli. It hasn’t even really been officially “announced”.
Without being presented with the underlying numbers it’s impossible to argue with this statement. What does it even mean? How does one stretch of road cost more than another? How does that compare with other segments on the route?
Moreover, how does that ratio compare with the Navy Yard Circulator route? By most accounts that’s been an abysmal failure. (Perhaps that’s simply fitting since the route is designed to service Nationals games). But GM doubts the ride from M St. to Social Safeway is nearly the money pit that the ride from Union Station to Nationals Park is. But we won’t know because they didn’t make that information public.
OK, maybe. But cutting service is almost always going to save some money. So what? The question is whether the cut is fair and justified. The Wisconsin Ave. corridor has be decimated with bus service cuts. Surely they save money, but at what point do we recognize that the bus system is designed to move people around, not simply serve as budget cut fodder. Continue reading
Filed under Transit
Save The Circulator!
As GM reported on Monday, DDOT is considering a significant cut in the Circulator service through Georgetown. GM has found out that the proposal is a lot further on than he feared and thus the necessity for action is much more urgent.
DDOT has decided to cut the Circulator extension based on budgetary concerns and ridership totals. Apparently Jack Evans has already fought the cut and lost and City Administrator Neil Albert has already signed off on the plan. The only hope we have to keep the service is for residents and businesses to appeal to Mayor Fenty directly.
So please write to the Mayor at:
Mayor Adrian Fenty
Executive Office of the Mayor
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, Suite 316
Washington, DC 20004
or email at Mayor@DC.gov
And let him know that cutting Circulator service to Georgetown in half is an unacceptable reduction in bus service to a corridor that has already lost a significant amount of service in the last two years.
A sample letter prepared by CAG is after the jump: Continue reading
Filed under Transit
Circulator to No Longer Ascend Wisconsin?
On Friday, Jennifer Altemus, President of CAG, sent out an alert on the possibility that DDOT/WMATA are considering the possibility of cutting Circulator service up Wisconsin Ave. This was the first GM heard of the proposal, but the proposal has a strong bit of deja vu surrounding it.
Right now the Circulator travels along M St. from downtown, turns up Wisconsin Ave., and ends its route at Whitehaven St., just behind the British School. This was not always the route it took through Georgetown. Originally it entered Georgetown on K St., took a right up Wisconsin, and turned back to downtown at M St.
In May 2007, the Circulator was extended up Wisconsin to its current route to take over the Blue Bus’s Foggy Bottom route. In less than a year after this extension, DDOT was already floating plans to cut it (despite the fact that the Blue Bus route it replaced was cut once the extension took place). After strong pushback from the community, DDOT decided to keep the extension. Continue reading
Filed under Transit
The Great Georgetown Bugaboo Part II: How We Really Get There From Here
Last week GM explored the question of cars and parking in Georgetown by digging into the Census records to determine what the actual car ownership levels are in Georgetown. The somewhat surprising results demonstrated that the parking problem in Georgetown may be caused more by multi-car households than it is caused by a density of residents. This week GM looks into what we do (or don’t do) with those cars every morning.
GM first started thinking about these questions after the last ANC meeting. At one point Commissioner Bill Skelsey argued that when he has to drive around for a half an hour at the end of the day looking for parking, that’s time he can’t spend with his kids (a point made in critique of a proposed curb cut). GM left the meeting wondering: is that the experience of most Georgetowners, or is Skelsey a minority? Should the ANC be worried about Georgetowners spending time away from their loved ones while circling around the block, or do most of us get to work some other way?
The interesting results after the jump: Continue reading
Filed under Cars and Parking, Transit
Update On Smartbike Expansion
As discussed by GM in June, the long discussed expansion of the District’s bike sharing program, SmartBike, which was to include a Georgetown station, has been delayed. Today the Director of DDOT Gabe Klein sent out a message giving an update on the delay and what they are currently considering. The email and the takeaway after the jump: Continue reading
WMATA Re-Evaluating 30 Series Changes
Tonight at 6:30 pm at St Columba’s Episcopal Church at 4201 Albemarle St. in Tenleytown WMATA will be hosting a public meeting on the 30 series. Last year WMATA adopted several significant changes to the line, incorporating semi-express routes and chopping up the line into shorter segments. GM evaluated some of the changes here, and found that they short-changed Georgetown. To wit:
While it was slow, it had an incredibly short headway of only 3-6 minutes (meaning there is only 3-6 minutes between buses). From a Georgetown perspective, the 30 Series offered a very frequently non-transfer ride straight through downtown or up to Cathedral Heights, Tenleytown or Friendship Heights…After the changes only three lines go through Georgetown: the 31, 32, and 36. Moreover, the 31 bus only goes to Foggy Bottom. The crosstown route now only comes every five minutes during peak and only every fifteen minutes during off-peak. That’s a significant cut in service, particularly for the off-peak hours which is when a lot of Georgetown’s senior citizens use the 30 Series to get around.
To WMATA’s credit, they are taking the chance to re-evaluate the changes and see whether they’ve worked out as planned. Are you unhappy with the changes? Come to Tenleytown tonight and let your voice be heard.
The Morning Metropolitan
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- Georgetown student reportedly raped in her house two blocks from campus
- Georgetown’s Sweet Green lost to Dupont’s Tangy Sweet in an NBC poll. Unlike the “people watching” poll (also against Dupont), Georgetown at least made this one close.
- WMATA is taking another look at the changes to the 30s series it made last year. You have a chance to chime in during two meetings.
Photo of the Georgetown waterfront by Flickr user M.V. Jantzen used under Creative Commons.
Filed under Crime, The Morning Metropolitan, Transit
How to Use Nextbus
At the top of the Georgetown Metropolitan has been a link to a page explaining how to use the test site for Nextbus. Once WMATA discovered that people were using the test site without their permission, they shut it down. Thus the instructions on GM’s page have been futile. But since July 1, Nextbus has been officially rolled out. Here is how to use it:
Step One:
Go to either WMATA’s page or Nextbus’ page. (GM will explain the benefits and drawbacks to each below)
Step Two:
Select your route.
Step Three:
Select your stop.
Step Three-and-a-half:
If you used Nextbus’ website, you need to select a destination. Select “Show predictions for all vehicles”.
If you’re using the WMATA site, just skip the destination choice.
Step Four:
Find out what your wait is. You should bookmark this page in order to skip ahead next time you need it, particularly if you have smartphone (GM has his most frequent bus stops bookmarked in his blackberry).
WMATA Platform vs. Nextbus Platform Continue reading
SmartBike Expansion Gets a Flat
GM has been increasingly excited about the planned expansion of DC’s bike sharing program, SmartBike. As early as last August, just a few weeks after the initial roll-out, DDOT was already talking about expanding the program to places like Georgetown or Capitol Hill. This spring, DDOT filled our heads with visions of 50 stations, then 100. GM was certain that we’d have SmartBike in Georgetown by this Summer.
Turns out he was wrong.
GM heard through the grapevine that the expansion has hit a major snag. Continue reading
Filed under Transit
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
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