Night-time bus rider organizing

Bus protesting in Baltimore, not DC. Caption: Michael Taylor (left), Shadid Abdul-Rahim, Joyce Fuller, Quinton Hill and Rosevelt Johnson were among those who protested outside the MTA building Thursday. They were upset about the recent cancellation of a bus route in their neighborhood.(Sun photo by Chiaki Kawajiri)Dec 30, 2005

The new Express blog-website alerts us to the creation of the DC Nightriders Coalition, "a group of late-night bus advocates have banded together aimed at pressing their cause."

This is a tough issue. If you look at it as a particular bus being underused, as the Express says:

Also, weekend service on the N8 -- which connects the Van Ness-UDC and Tenleytown-AU stations to Spring Valley, Ward Circle and Wesley Heights -- would be dropped. One American University law student, who said he feels that the bus he uses was designed specifically for him (because he's often the only one riding it), told us he isn't too happy with the elimination of his private bus line...

then it is a waste of resources and it makes sense to eliminate the run.

Along 16th St, NW Photographer: Gerald Martineau. Summary: Late night bus passengers Caption: Passengers load onto a Metrobus at 905 16th Street headed for Silver Spring around 11:40 PM. (mid-August)

If you look at the overall picture, the cycle of bus service on a particular line for a 24 hour period, and the way the service connects to other lines, and how the overall service offer shapes the decision on whether or not a person will take transit instead of drive, then the question becomes fundamentally different.

(This is something I plan to write about in a different way within the next couple weeks, thinking about transit planning in terms of the few mile radius around each subway stop.)

Also see "Agustin (and many others) have a hard time hopping on the bus," which discusses Lyndsay Layton's long article from last December on bus transit in the DC region, "Progress Has Passed Metrobus By: Outdated System Is Plagued by Unreliable Schedules, Inefficient Routes."

Transit rider demographics, Washington DC region
A look at who rides Metrobus and who rides Metrorail. The largest group in each category is symbolized in black. NOTE: Some figures do not add to 100 percent because respondents did not know or declined to answer. Washington Post Graphic.

Index Keywords: transit