Inside the DC Bubble

It's hard to over-estimate how great the circulator bus is. Wanna go shopping in Georgetown but you are standing in front of your condo downtown or just finished a meeting on Capitol Hill? Take the Metro? But it don't go. Take a cab? Only if the boss is paying. The Circulator is the answer.

So why do some malign it. "I think it is time to put the Circulator in mothballs. In my daily travels, I find most of the buses barely occupied," someone told the WaPo.

Hello. . . The circulator is the only way to get across town. The bus got even better a month or so back when it was extended up Wisconsin Ave.


Ok naysayers. DDOT statistics for the Circulator system show ridership is growing. Total ridership for April 07 was 202,000, compared with about 182,000 in April 06. Slow, but steady growth.

A new circulator bus route will be added to the Mall beginning this week, the WaPo reports. Like the north-south line on 7th St. NW and the K St. east-west line, the new line will cost a buck to ride and run every ten minutes or so. Buses will travel along the perimeter of the Mall and will shuttle tourist and others from museum to museum. Watch-out Tourmobile.

As for the other lines, the east-west route served 1,345 riders per day in February up from September 2005 when that figure was 985. Rather than terminating at the convention center on L St., the line will go up to O St., near the Giant supermarket. Given how crowded the 70 bus is, why not extend the line up to U Street where the Metro station is? Until the bus brings people to U St., it always will be a bus to nowhere. Some mornings DC Bubble is the only rider on that bus.

The average number of weekday trips for the north-south route last month was 3,892, compared with 2891 in September. This is the best bus in Washington. Why it took all these years to figure out that a connection between Georgetown and Union Station is needed is beyond us.