The Wheels of Change Turn Slowly

The Washington Post recently trumpeted an innovative new way that D.C. area residents are getting to work: taking the bus! It's just the contrarian, old-is-the-new-hip take that's bound to make the kids start buying morning newspapers again; never mind the fact that bus trips are down 12 percentin the last year.

Like much of the dreck that's in the paper these days, there's a little bit of truth wrapped up in its banal perspective—taking the bus probably does work for more people these days, especially given Metro's troubles over the last year, and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) could do more to help people use it.

However, it's far from a panacea. The area's bus service has as many problems as the Metro, and the biggest one is true for both: WMATA has been dreadfully slow at improving its bus service.

When I first got to town 15 years ago, I lived a block from a bus route that went directly by my place of work—a perfect arrangement, it seemed to me. I faithfully took the bus to work every day for my first month until I discovered one day that it was, in fact, faster to walk the 2 miles to and from work.

The problems with the bus route I took were numerous and self-evident to anyone who rode the route regularly. For starters, the stops were way too close together—less than a city block apart in many instances.