WMATA cut the bus to BWI. Time to bring it back.

The Washington region has three major airports, but only one of them–BWI–is hard to get to by transit from DC. The B30 bus route used to serve BWI, and WMATA’s ongoing Better Bus network update is a great chance to bring it back better than ever.

It’s far easier to take transit to DCA and Dulles than to BWI

Passengers use all three of our airports at similar rates: each airport serves around 11 million passengers every year, and DCA, BWI, and IAD are the nation’s 23rd, 25th, and 28th-busiest airports in the country, respectively. DCA can be accessed by Metrorail’s Blue and Yellow lines, which run every 10-12 minutes combined. While there is no bus service to DCA, the Crystal City, Pentagon City and Pentagon Metro stations, which feature plenty of bus connections, are a short ride away.

For its part, IAD can be accessed via the Silver Line as well as by a number of bus services. The Fairfax Connector, for example, runs to both the Reston Town Center and Innovation Center Metro stations.

But BWI has only a shuttle connection to intercity/regional rail services (such as Amtrak and MARC) and as a connection to the Baltimore Light RailLink. There is also a commuter bus route, the 201, which provides hourly service to Burtonsville, Shady Grove Metro station and Gaithersburg via the ICC.

There is no rail service that runs directly from DC to BWI. Various regional services (GGWash wouldn’t let me include all the options here, but come find me at a happy hour and we can discuss the assortment), serve savvy travelers who are used to rail or mostly don’t need to get to DC. But if you are headed to DC, you’re boarding a shuttle, then a train. Additionally, paratransit customers can access Baltimore MobilityLink paratransit services, but MetroAccess appears to no longer be an option with the elimination of the B30.

The B30 bus used to mitigate infrequent rail service to BWI

In the past, the B30 bus was a big help for anyone who wanted to take transit to BWI. Opening in November 2001, the B30 ran directly between the Greenbelt Metro station and BWI. Buses ran every 40 minutes, from 6 am on weekdays and 9 am on weekends until 10 pm every night, and the service initially cost $2.50 rather than the standard $1.20 bus fare. In 2011, the fare rose to $6.

By June 2017, ridership had dipped, and weekend service was discontinued while weekday headways increased from every 40 minutes to every 60 minutes. Fares also rose to $7.50, which remains the most expensive Metrobus fare at any given point in the system history (the max rail fare has never exceeded $6.85 and express buses have never exceeded $4.25).

With the drop in service, increase in fare, and competition from other services (the MARC Penn Line was now $0.50 cheaper), the B30 entered the dreaded transit “death spiral.” There was one more service change in 2018, when the bus was rerouted to serve Arundel Mills Mall, but weekend service never came back, fares never went back down, and headways got even longer, from every 60 minutes to every 70 minutes.

In March 2020, the B30 was one of the routes that WMATA discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic. But with air travel having largely rebounded since 2020-2021, the case for cutting it at that dire time when WMATA had serious limitations on operators who could drive the buses no longer exists.

WMATA’s bus network update doesn’t propose restoring service to BWI…yet

WMATA is currently redesigning its bus network for the first time in 50 years, and as part of that effort, the agency has released a draft Visionary Network full of proposed new bus routes.

The Visionary Network emphasizes service to DC’s suburbs, either by connecting more suburbs with one another or connecting far-flung suburbs with a regional hub. Examples include MD332, from Germantown to Silver Spring, MD233, from Columbia to Silver Spring, MD347, from Laurel to Bowie, and the long-requested MD240, from Bethesda to Tysons.

What the draft network currently does not include, however, is service to BWI Airport.

While many people marked such service as a “need” when providing WMATA with input (this was on the Better Bus comment page, which is no longer available online), the agency is not currently planning to provide service to the second busiest airport in the region (and, historically, the busiest overall).

Bringing back the B30 would help WMATA reach its goal of creating “the frequent, fast and reliable bus network that the customers and the region deserves.” The B30 provided transit access to one of the region’s gateways, both for people with travel plans and for hundreds of workers who run the airport.

The issues that led to the B30’s initial demise are very real, but the reality is that when you starve a route of resources, people stop riding. With some imagination, the B30 will be a thriving pillar of our region’s transit network.

What should a restored B30 look like?

A new B30 needs to be equipped to lure riders with the promise of good service. An ideal B30 service should incorporate the following:

1. 20-30 minute headways, every day of the week. This would make the average wait for a bus 10-15 minutes at any given stop, giving riders more flexibility.
2. Extended operating hours. Airports are generally 24-hour operations, and while Metro doesn’t currently have any 24-hour routes, the B30 could still run during hours outside of the 6 am-10 pm range that the original route had. A 4 am- 2 am window would support both red-eye passengers and alternative shift airport workers.
3. A regular fare. $7.50 is already high, but when you add in the expense of transferring to/from Metro, it becomes cost prohibitive.
4. Extend to the New Carrollton Metro station. This makes sense given Better Bus’s emphasis on regional connectivity, as New Carrollton is host to numerous bus connections (and, in the future, the Purple Line).
5. An expanded multi-day parking program. Greenbelt Metro currently has 15-17 multi-day parking spots available on a first-come, first-served basis. However, New Carrollton and Greenbelt have just under 7,000 parking spaces combined. Allowing people to use more of them to park their car and take the B30 to the airport would encourage ridership.
6. Market the B30! When the route was running, there wasn’t much to tell people that it existed beyond a note on the Metro system map. A campaign like the one rolled out for Silver Line II would be a great way to let riders know there is a viable transit option to BWI airport.

Service is what the bus network redesign is all about

WMATA is not currently taking comments on its Draft Visionary Network, but while it was, I saw several folks calling for the B30 to be restored. The agency will release the results of recent outreach in the coming months with a follow-up network design. In the meantime, it’s worth considering what the agency could give back to riders if it were to restore service on this strategic route.

Even if a resurrected B30 doesn’t look exactly like what I outlined above, a new schedule and approach could help a lot. It would be a shame to restore the B30 only for it to run on the same unhelpful schedule as before.

Frequent, fast, and reliable transit service to DCA and IAD are part of what make our region’s transit network great, and a true resource for travelers from all over the country and world. The same should be true when they fly through BWI.