Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), a public transit agency that operates in the DMV area, issued a joint press release Sept. 10 announcing a plan for the Metrobus to temporarily supplement select D.C. Circulator routes beginning in October.
The District Department of Transportation (DDOT), a separate service that manages the D.C. transportation network, announced in July that they would begin phasing down the Circulator Oct. 1 and fully terminate the service by the new year as a part of budget cuts under the District Fiscal Year 2025 Budget and Financial Plan. The Circulator meets Georgetown University students near the university at locations such as Wisconsin Avenue and P Street, connecting them to Dupont, Rosslyn and Union station.
Brandon Wu (GRD ’25), a member of the WMATA Riders’ Advisory Council, a group of 11 individuals across the DMV area who advise the Metro Board of Directors on issues affecting Metrobus, Metrorail and MetroAccess service, said his main responsibility is to share riders’ views with the board, which is currently working with DDOT to implement the Bowser administration and WMATA’s new plan.
“A lot of folks have expressed to me, ‘I live in Rosslyn and I live in Dupont, and getting to campus is going to be pretty difficult, or getting to Georgetown in general will be more difficult with the Circulator ending,’” Wu told The Hoya.
On the Council, Wu represents a demographic of university students — specifically Georgetown students — who would be negatively impacted by the Circulator’s discontinuation.
Luke Pappalardo (CAS ’27), who relied on the Circulator to get to his internship on Capitol Hill this past summer, found its timeliness dependable and convenient.
“The Circulator was one of the most consistent modes of transportation in the city, especially from Georgetown, where we don’t have a Metro stop.”
Pappalardo also said he was disappointed to find that the Circulator was being discontinued because he valued access to areas of D.C. not covered by the Georgetown University Transportation Shuttle (GUTS), Georgetown’s free bus service for university affiliates.
“I was really upset because the Circulator is a great way to get realistically familiar with navigating D.C.,” Pappalardo said. “The GUTS bus is great, but the GUTS bus can only take you from Georgetown to another place, or from another place back to Georgetown. The Circulator can take you all over the city. If you get on the right line, you have a direct line of transit to places where the GUTS bus doesn’t run.”
Georgetown students are not the only community members opposed to the wind-down of the Circulator; the Amalgamated Transit Union Local (ATU) 689, the union that represents Circulator drivers and workers, also voiced concerns.
The ATU Local 689 has advocated for a negotiated transfer from DDOT, which runs the Circulator, to WMATA, which oversees the Metrobus. They have called upon WMATA to integrate Circulator workers and soon-to-be-defunct routes into the Metrobus network.
Matt Girardi, the political and communications director of ATU Local 689, said ATU Local 689 has expressed their disappointment with WMATA and how they handled the discontinuation of the Circulator.
“The Mayor and DDOT announced that they were accelerating the wind-down of the D.C. Circulator by three months and only gave the Union a few hours’ notice,” Girardi wrote to The Hoya.
DDOT, the Bowser administration and WMATA have worked together to produce the proposed redesign, which would leverage the Metrobus’ current network to service critical routes which may experience crowding due to the Circulator’s discontinuation.
With the new plan, Circulator routes from Rosslyn to Dupont, Union Station to Congress Heights, Woodley Park to McPherson and Georgetown to Union Station would be temporarily serviced by the Metrobus. However, the Circulator routes from L’Enfant to Eastern Market and to the National Mall would not be accommodated and the base fare would rise to $2.25.
Girardi said ATU Local 689 was not satisfied with the proposal.
“This is a plan that still leaves riders and workers stranded. A band-aid on a gashing self-inflicted wound,” Girardi wrote. “There are many riders, especially in Eastern Market, Adams Morgan, Woodley Park, Anacostia and Southwest who have relied on service and there are not adequate replacements.”
Girardi said ATU Local 689 was not involved in the creation of this plan, which could financially harm tenured transportation professionals.
“Mid- and late-career transportation professionals under the Mayor and DDOT’s negotiated plan with WMATA would not become Metrobus operators automatically,” Girardi wrote. “Instead, folks who have worked their way up the ladder through many long years of service would be paid at the very bottom of the wage scale even if they are able to find jobs at Metro.”
Wu, as a student interested in public transit accessibility in marginalized communities, said he has personal reservations with WMATA, DDOT and Mayor Bowser’s new plan, highlighting Council Member Charles Allen’s statement on the proposed plan reinforcing existing inequities.
“It’s great that Metro is increasing service on the Rosslyn-DuPont Circulator, but communities east of the river, like in Anacostia, are not seeing the same level of service increase to compensate,” Wu said. “We want to make sure that Metro is not only taking into consideration our voices and our community’s voices, but also marginalized communities that have traditionally not had a seat at the policy making table.”
