Bus Service Existing Conditions - Analysis and Key Findings

Bus Stop Facilities

Our analysis found the following:

• 14 percent of bus stops in Montgomery County are sheltered or have plans to be sheltered, and only six percent of all Montgomery County stops have lighting.
• While most high ridership stops are sheltered, there are a number of stops with high ridership volumes that are unsheltered, and a number of sheltered stops that have very low ridership volumes.
• 63 percent of all bus stops have a sidewalk, although many stops have sidewalks only at their stops and fail to provide connectivity to surrounding areas.
• Stops with sidewalks generate higher ridership numbers than those that do not have sidewalks.

Trip Planning

We reviewed how drive time and transit time compared throughout the county:

• The analysis compared trip planner results to Google Maps for transit versus driving travel times. The comparison showed that the driving time for most of the Origin/Destination (O/D) pairs was normally much shorter than the transit time, except for Silver Spring to DC and Bethesda to DC.
• Many of the pairs with dramatic differences between drive time and transit time were further up-county, such as Germantown to Rockville, Clarksburg to Silver Spring, Poolesville to Rockville, Gaithersburg to Darnestown, and Clarksburg to Gaithersburg.
• We compared identical or similar trips on the Ride On and Metro trip planners to each other. They had different results in both how to complete the trip and expected travel time; this is due to their different algorithms. 
• Ride On’s trip planner does not include locations not directly served by Ride On outside of Montgomery County, so some trips into DC could not be planned. This was another limitation of trip planners in the region and contributed to the fractured nature of trip planning across different platforms.

Route Profiles

There are five county subareas where we examined service and performance:

1. Germantown-Damascus had a decrease in ridership and some poor performing routes.
   • Between 2019 and 2021, bus ridership in the Germantown-Damascus subarea decreased at a faster rate than whole of Montgomery County. Weekday ridership decreased between 54 percent and 84 percent across all communities in the subarea. Germantown and Clarksburg together generate around 95 percent of all trips in this subarea of Montgomery County.
   • In 2019, Ride On Loop Route 97 in this subarea was the top performing of the four countywide Loop routes for weekday Passengers/Vehicle Revenue Hours, Passengers/Trips, Cost Recovery and Subsidy/Passenger, yet has the lowest on-time performance of the six routes in the sub area. Its on-time performance for weekdays, Saturday, and Sunday are all below 75 percent.
   • The remaining five routes ranked in the bottom third and fourth quartiles among all routes for all key performance indicators (KPI's) except on-time performance (OTP). OTP for all day types were greater than 85 percent., with the exception of Route 73's 79 percent on-time performance for Weekdays.
2. >Gaithersburg-Laytonsville-North Potomac was defined by Metrorail station ridership and Route 55 ridership.
   • In the Gaithersburg-Laytonsville-North Potomac subarea, the Shady Grove Metro Station and Lakeforest Transit Center generated 41.6 percent of all weekday ridership in 2019.
   • Like Germantown-Damascus, bus ridership in the subarea decreased at a faster rate than the whole of Montgomery County.
   • Ride On Local Route 55, the only route to have at least seven hours of 11-15 minute headways on weekdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, is the best performing route in this subarea. This route also ranks first in weekday boardings, Passengers/Trips, Cost Recovery and Subsidy/Passenger among all local routes, although it only scores 84 percent for weekday and Saturday on-time performance.
3. Bethesda-Potomac-Rockville is a heavy-employment subarea, which impacted ridership figures because of the changing commuting landscape.
   • The Bethesda-Potomac-Rockville subarea contains 47 percent of Montgomery County's total employment base. Ridership in the area decreased at a faster rate than Montgomery County as a whole.
   • COVID-19-induced work-from-home trends and the subarea's high percentage of the county's employment base are likely the reasons why this subarea experienced higher than average ridership decline.
   • Transit productivity and general usage and availability is lower in lower density and higher income residential neighborhoods.
   • Metro Stations accounted for 44.9 percent of all weekday ridership in 2019. Rockville, Bethesda and North Bethesda represented 76 percent of the subarea's total ridership in 2021.
   • Ride On Local Route 46, the only local route to have 11-15 minute headways on weekdays, was also the best performing weekday route in 2019.
4. Wheaton-Aspen Hill-Olney has several poorly served communities and Metrobus service issues, but maintained ridership across the study timeframe.
   • In the Wheaton-Aspen Hill-Olney subarea, the Wheaton and Glenmont Metro Stations accounted for 33.3 percent of total ridership in 2019.
   • The subarea contains a few pockets of high transit propensity that are served with little to no transit, including the communities of Leisure World, Layhill, Colesville, and Kemp Mill.
   • Ridership decreased at a slower rate than the county as a whole between 2019 and 2021, and the subarea gained ridership share in the county across all days of the week.
   • Metrobus routes in this subarea are the worst performing services in terms of on-time performance.
   • Top performing routes serve major corridors with direct alignments, connect to Metrorail stations, offer frequent service, and operate long service spans, seven days per week. The lower-performing routes generally operate low-frequency, peak-only service on weekdays.
5. Silver Spring-Burtonsville has a varied transit landscape and consistent high ridership, partially owing to its booming population and transit proclivities.
   • Silver Spring-Burtonsville is the densest county subarea, making up only eight percent of land area but 20 percent of the population.
   • 69 percent of the subarea population identify as a racial minority, 49 percent of the subarea pop live in rental households, and 39 percent of the subarea population are single-vehicle households.
   • The subarea contains a BRT FLASH line and several routes with 11 to-15 minute headways, including Ride On Local Route 15 and Metrobus C2, C4, F4, K8, and K9.
   • The subarea accounts for around a quarter of total county bus ridership, with Silver Spring accounting for 60 percent of the subarea's ridership in 2019.
   • Two-thirds of Silver Spring's ridership is generated within its downtown core.
   • Most of the subarea's census designated places (CDP's) experienced a less severe ridership decrease compared to the county average.
   • The Colesville Rd./Columbia Pike Corridor is the subarea's most productive and utilized bus corridor; this is attributed to the fact that it intersects four other major corridors in the subarea. Only four routes (Ride On 15, 2, 25 and 19) have a weekday on-time performance greater than 85 percent.

Want to see more?

• Visit our interactive data map.
• View the complete Analysis of Existing Conditions report (PDF, 17MB)