Sunday, March 15, 2009

14th Street Circulator Line To Commence Next Month

According to a transportation report provided at the March CSNA meeting, a new Circulator bus line linking McPherson Square with Logan, U Street, Columbia Heights, Mount Pleasant, Adams-Morgan and Woodley Park will debut beginning next month.

The new line will begin at McPherson Square (14th and I streets) and run north along 14th Street to Irving Street. From there, it will run west along Irving, south on Mount Pleasant, southwest along Columbia Rd., then west on Calvert across the Ellington Bridge to Woodley Park. The line will run every 10 minutes from 7 AM - Midnight Sunday through Thursday, and until 3 AM on Fridays and Saturdays.

EDIT: Courtesy of the Washington Business Journal, a map showing the new route can be found here.

We feel that this expansion of the Circulator service is both welcome and long overdue. 14th Street has long needed an expansion of transportation options, and linking a neighborhood such as Logan and U Street with Adams-Morgan and Woodley will provide a much-needed transportation option between those popular areas, and will also provide a quick link between Logan and the Orange/Blue lines at McPherson.

The Circulator presents an enticing option over bus transit for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its dependable frequency and the fact that the number of stops is limited. It's also cheaper than a MetroBus ride ($1) and accepts SmartTrip cards. In other words, we look at this as a win for all involved.

The Circulator's website can be found here; unfortunately you won't find any news about this expansion in service. The most recent news item is a press release from 2007, so perhaps their website isn't the best place to find information about their service.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Will this also run southbound. And it won't be running west on Irving as that is a one way street. This is very exciting stuff though.

Mr. Other Upper NW said...

Bob - it will run both northbound and southbound.

The Irving Street portion came from the BJ's website, so perhaps they're off...maybe the Circulator will head down Harvard or Park when going west? Unfortunately I can't find anything "official" from the Circulator about this.

Jeff said...

The infrastructure blog Greater Greater Washington has written a fair amount and drawn a more accurate map.

It can be found here: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=1203

I'm pumped for the new route!

Mr. Other Upper NW said...

Thanks Jeff! We're excited too--this is loooong overdue.

Anonymous said...

Sweet! Thanks for posting a link to the map - it's exactly what I was looking for and not nearly as clunky as a PDF.