I try not to be one of those people who reflexively disparages Metro’s performance. Of course it has its problems, and delays are always frustrating, but given the myriad challenges the organization faces, bus and rail delays are just going to be inevitable at times. So I try to be a WMATA optimist.
This feeling, however, does not extend to the B30 bus. Anyone who’s ever taken the pilgrimage up to BWI in search of cheaper airfare knows that the while the B30 will get you from the District to the airport sans car, the experience won’t exactly be a pleasant or particularly prompt one. Such is life.
But it seems that lately the B30 has been reaching new heights of crappiness. Katie and I have some family that semi-recently moved to Baltimore, so we find ourselves taking the bus to and from BWI fairly regularly on weekends when there’s no MARC service. And let me tell you, the trips from BWI to Greenbelt have become an infuriating ordeal.
At BWI the bus is supposed to make stops at domestic arrivals, international arrivals, and the light rail station before heading back to Greenbelt. However, the last several trips (I’ve lost the exact count as a coping mechanism), things haven’t quite gone as planned. Each time the bus showed up 20 or so minutes late and then, after making its supposed last stop at the light rail station, just kind of idled for 15 minutes or so instead of heading south. Then, much to the chagrin of we ill-informed passengers, the bus headed right back to domestic and then international arrivals to pick up another load of passengers.
This is, of course, completely infuriating. Not only are we pushing 40 minutes late at this point, but after picking up a double load of passengers the bus is packed to an extremely uncomfortable degree. Think Red Line at 8:30 but everyone has roller luggage.
If this had only happened once I would chalk it up to a broken down bus or something and I wouldn’t be unleashing my blog-fury about it. But it’s been at least the last three times that we’ve done the double loop thing. Clearly WMATA is trying to double the capacity (and halve the frequency) of the B30 when it needs to without changing the printed timetables.
Anyway, just wanted to vent. If nothing else I’ll take this as incentive to work hard and get raises so I can just fly out of National all the time. Yay for rail access!
Photo from Flickr.
i’ve not had the problems you have with the B30. i don’t know if you’re just having a spate of bad luck, but the B30 works quite well for me, and seems to be very close to running on schedule (within 3-4 minutes) when i’ve used it.
Yeah, it’s probably just bad luck, as we’ve also taken it several times without this issue arising. Just the last 3 or 4 times in a row…
The same thing happened to me the last time I took the bus. It was a joke–getting from BWI to my front door in Shaw took exactly as long as getting from Chicago to BWI. They should really run MARC on weekends.
Well, I’ve had mixed results on the B30, but absolutely horrible experiences on the atrocious 5A bus. It’s always beyond overcrowded, has a superpower ability not to be on time, and now costs something like $3.74, exact change only, which should be obvious and second nature to all the visitors from Europe and what not who are trying to board this pathetic excuse for “public transportation.”