Metro’s reintroduction of NextBus several months ago

last year has proven popular with riders, despite a few hiccups. However, it still has some usability issues which haven’t gotten fixed very quickly. One of those issues has to do with bus bays at Metro stations.

At many stations, especially those in suburban locations, each bus route calls at an exclusive bay at the station. For riders who have multiple routes to chose from to get to the station, NextBus’s webpage has a glitch. Because each bus bay has its own individual NextBus stop ID, the stops are not considered to be the same destination.

In my case, for example, I can choose from the R12 or T16/17 Metrobuses to get to Greenbelt Station from my apartment. But the R12 stops in bus bay F. The T16/17 stops in bus bay E. These are adjacent stalls. They’re less than the length of a Metro railcar from each other. But as far as NextBus is concerned, they might as well be 50 miles apart.

I generally don’t care which bus I take to get to the Metro. The R12 is slightly faster, but I’ll take the T16/17 if it’s coming sooner. NextBus won’t give me predictions for both routes, though, if I select “Greenbelt Station” as my destination because it only lists buses that stop at whichever bus bay I pick.

Left: Selecting a bus bay as the destination, only the R12 appears.

Right: Selecting an intermediate stop, both bus lines have predictions.

Now, it is true that the “destination” field is optional on the NextBus website. However, it would seem to some that providing as much data as possible would result in better information from the system. Because of this hiccup, though, that’s not the case.

For the reverse trip, the problem is worse. Because the buses are leaving from different stops at the station, it is not possible to get predictions for both routes through the web interface. And for the phone system, one would have to navigate the menu each time for every potential bus route that stops at a different bay in order to get predictions for all routes.

With my non-internet-capable phone, that means memorizing the stop IDs for 3 different bus bays at Greenbelt Station. A helpful feature would be the ability to say the name of each major transit center in the region and get estimated departure times for any given routes.

But as the system is set up currently, saying “Greenbelt Station” is not acceptable. The only responses the system recognizes are strings of numbers like “3003302” (Bay F) and “3003354” (Bay E). To make things even more difficult to remember, the stop IDs for these adjacent bus bays aren’t even close to each other numerically.

WMATA and NextBus should work to resolve these issues. At places where there are multiple bus bays, patrons should be able to select the transit center as a whole and not be limited to a specific bus bay. Increasing the usability of NextBus will increase the usability of Metrobus, and that’s a positive for everyone.

Matt Johnson has lived in the Washington area since 2007. He has a Master’s in Planning from the University of Maryland and a BS in Public Policy from Georgia Tech. He lives in Dupont Circle. He’s a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, and is an employee of the Montgomery County Department of Transportation. His views are his own and do not represent those of his employer.