Trying to Do Right by a Busy Bus Hub

By Manuel Perez-Rivas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 3, 2000 ; B03

One of the busiest hubs for Montgomery County buses is located in a shopping center on the Prince George's County border
that was never designed for bus traffic. It has no benches for passengers to sit on while they wait for the bus, no shelters, very
little information about routes or schedules and no bays to keep buses from blocking traffic.

Yesterday, Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) and his counterpart in Prince George's, Wayne K. Curry
(D), jointly urged the state and the Montgomery County Council to each provide $650,000 toward construction of a $1.3
million transit center for the roughly 1,700 passengers who each weekday step on and off the buses at the hub.

Montgomery officials said the current hub, located in the parking lot of the Hampshire Langley Shopping Center at New
Hampshire Avenue and University Boulevard East, is the busiest hub for the county's Ride On bus system that is not directly
connected to a subway station. The facility primarily serves the working-class, densely populated enclaves of Langley Park and
Takoma Park, where many residents rely on bus service.

"Just look around. It's so obvious how inadequate this facility is," Duncan said during a news conference with Curry at the
shopping center parking lot. "The fact is we're using a parking lot, something that was never designed to accommodate bus
service, let alone some 200 buses a day."

The several bus lines that use the transit center as a hub have a total weekday ridership of about 12,000, he said.

Bus patrons at the shopping center yesterday applauded the move. "It's definitely needed, especially because you have a lot of
elderly people who take the bus here every day," said Marcus Brown, 24, who rides the bus daily to Potomac, where he works
as a tutor. "With so much revenue being put into the bus systems in the area, it's time we got something back."

Duncan's proposed capital budget included money for building a Takoma Langley Crossroads Transit Center, but support from
the County Council has so far been lukewarm. At one point, council members voted to delete the project from the capital
budget that they are now working on, but they later revised their opinion and kept the project alive, at least until the budget is
adopted this month.

Council members have said their support will be contingent on whether the state kicks in its share, and some have said Prince
George's should provide some funding because many of its residents also use the hub. State transportation officials are
considering the bi-county request for funding, but a spokesman said yesterday that a decision still is a month or two away.

When the question of whether Prince George's should help fund the project was asked at the news conference, Duncan stepped
up and said that the facility is a Montgomery County project, that all the buses that pick up passengers there are Montgomery
County buses, and that passengers pay the fare to Montgomery, no matter which county they're from.

Besides, he said, Prince George's is helping to lobby the state for funds.

Asked for his comments, Curry deferred to Duncan's remarks, calling them "sensible."

The Prince George's executive, however, did say the project is "very important" to his county as well. "People don't separate
their real lives based on artificial political boundaries," he said.

Duncan said a new transit center at this busy hub is critical toward expanding bus ridership in Montgomery, particularly in the
eastern part of Silver Spring and Takoma Park. He noted that a similar facility, with several bus bays, large shelters and plenty
of benches, was built by the county in Gaithersburg, outside Lakeforest Mall, in recent years. That shelter has resulted in a
significant boost to ridership, county officials say.

Zhanna Milbert, 65, who lives in Takoma Park and takes the bus to the shopping center regularly to do her grocery shopping,
said benches would be a welcome sight. "Sometimes, we have to wait a long time here," she said, demonstrating by mimicking
fatigue and slumping up against a nearby mailbox. "A bench here, just one bench, even, would be good."

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