I saw the new D.C. Circulator buses zipping around the District over the weekend, with many folks aboard. Not everyone thinks they're a fantastic idea, though: see wayan's comment on an old post.
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massysett | 9:24 AM |
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God forbid drivers be inconvenienced for transit…
This is a route designed primarily for tourists. The waterfront/convention center corridor is already served by Metro. I'm happy to have the Circulators, but their benefit is slight (particularly in the N/S direction) -- and certainly not worth turning the already-bad 7th street into a parking lot.
The right way to do this would be to make the center lane bus-only; or, preferably, to redo 7th street and make it one-way northbound, to properly complement 9th street.
"This is a route designed primarily for tourists."
Hear, hear; especially upon discovering service ends at [i]9 pm[/i] seven days a week. Sadly, my fantasies of taking the 42 from Adams Morgan to Connecticut and K, then switching to the Circulator to catch a late movie at the Loews Georgetown on Saturday night are not to be realized.
7th Street / Georgia Avenue to Silver Spring is one of the proposed streetcar routes. In fact, of all the routes it's the one with the highest projected ridership (some 40,000 / day if I recall correctly). It could be the Ddot people are just thinking ahead.
Bus lanes would rock, but lets be logical about where they should go. Routes like 7th street will only increase congestion unless the roads are radically redone.
Bus lanes work best on wide roads, like Connecticut or 16th, or one way roads, like 9th or 15th, where cars can still have two lanes or more at rush hour.
Making a center lane bus or left turn could work on narrow roads as long as enforcement was strict (I was meaning to turn left officer, at that road four blocks up..).
Still, to my original point on the DC CIrculator page, none of this should be done if its only for the DC Circulator, a tourist bus line. Bus lanes should be for high traffic zones where the increase in speed & frequency of buses in a dedicated lane will lead to a decrease in solo-driver vehicle traffic.
These lanes are actually bike/bus lanes and the city is counting them in their bike lane mileage.
