The Gaithersburg High School marching band roared and a crowd cheered as a RideOn bus dotted with lime green stars and filled with public officials pulled into Traville Gateway Transit Center next to The Universities at Shady Grove in Rockville on Monday morning, winning by minutes a race between two buses traveling the new Lime and Pink bus routes in Montgomery County.
The Pink and Lime RideOn bus routes, which opened Sunday, are part of the county’s Great Seneca Transit Network bus service initiative and have endpoints at the Shady Grove Metrorail Station and the Traville Gateway Transit Center/Universities at Shady Grove. The Pink line travels along Shady Grove Road while the Lime line is an express route that goes along I-370 and Medical Center Drive.
The Great Seneca Transit Network is being developed by the county to increase transit options for residents in the Gaithersburg and Rockville areas who are located farther from Metro stations and other public transportation options, according to county officials. At a cost of $26 million, the Pink and Lime lines are considered the first phase of the project. The second phase will include two additional bus routes, Cobalt and Gray.
The new routes provide a high-frequency service with buses arriving every 10 to 15 minutes on weekdays and 30 minutes on weekends. As part of the expansion, MCDOT made pedestrian and bicycle enhancements along the bus route corridors and installed new weather-protected bus stations with real-time route monitoring. Chris Conklin, director of the Montgomery County Department of Transportation, said at Monday’s press conference with public officials that the project cost $26 million.
“It’s a part of the regional transportation system investment that we’re making. We cannot be successful if we cannot build out our transit network. We continue to lag,” County Executive Marc Elrich said at the press conference. “But this is important for us, and I’m really glad that we were able to get this done.”
According to Conklin, the new routes significantly cut down on the travel and wait times experienced with previous routes.
The new routes cut the travel time on buses between the Rio and Crown shopping centers in Gaithersburg and the Shady Grove Metro station by half, according to county officials. They also reduce the travel time between The Universities of Shady Grove and the Shady Grove Metro station by 80%.
“It used to take nearly an hour to get to Crown from here, now it takes 10 minutes. It used to take 41 minutes to get to Shady Grove Adventist Hospital from the Metro station. It now takes 21 minutes on this new service,” Conklin said at Monday’s press conference at Traville Gateway Transit Center at Traville Gateway Drive and Gudelsky Drive following the bus race.
Conklin said that RideOn bus ridership has returned to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels and noted the system has made a number of improvements over the past nine months to try to improve the rider experience.
Councilmember Evan Glass (D-At-large), who attended the conference and chairs the council’s Transportation and Environment Committee, said he appreciates the “holistic approach” that was taken with the Pink and Lime routes expansion. Montgomery County was one of the first county governments in the United States to initiate a Vision Zero plan, with the goal of eliminating all traffic-related deaths by 2030.
“We have created 15 new crosswalks. We have brought 10 bus stops closer to those crosswalks. We’ve upgraded five intersections and restriped two roadways to make sure that our buses and bicyclists and pedestrians and cars are safer throughout our community,” Glass said. “So this might seem like it is a bus network, but it is a safe public transportation, pedestrian-friendly transit network.”