The DC Circulator may soon reach its last stop.
DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson released his FY2025 budget proposal on Tuesday, and while it avoids some of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s initial proposed cuts to city services, it does not protect the shuttle bus system that ferries riders across six routes in downtown and Rosslyn for just $1 a ride.
Under Mendelson’s proposal, Circulator service would wind down in the spring of 2025.
Bowser first proposed cutting the buses in April, citing low post-pandemic ridership numbers. A spokesperson for Mendelson told Washingtonian that the council chair kept Bowser’s request in his budget.
The proposed budget still needs to pass the Council and Congressional review before going into effect.
According to data released by the DC Department of Transportation, the Circulator saw over 5 million riders in FY2019, the last before the COVID-19 pandemic. In FY2020, ridership dropped to about 2 million, never exceeding that total across the three subsequent fiscal years.
Meanwhile, operating costs ballooned to north of $30 million annually, according to DDOT data.
In an op-ed published Tuesday in Greater Greater Washington, former DDOT director Dan Tangherlini and former Downtown Business Improvement District deputy director Joe Sternlieb, who oversaw the Circulator’s creation, wrote that the service was “mostly unsustainable and unsupportable,” noting the DC government ended up subsidizing between $10 and $35 per ride.
“As noted in previous committee reports, Circulator ridership dropped severely during the pandemic, and its ridership has not returned with nearly the same strength as we have seen on WMATA bus routes and even the DC Streetcar,” reads a May 10 letter from DC Council transportation committee chair Charles Allen.
In their op-ed, Tangherlini and Sternlieb called for the DC government to preserve some of the Circulator’s better qualities in future bus ridership—particularly its unique branding and the Union Station to Georgetown bus route, the only one to recover its pre-pandemic ridership.
“As the Circulator service ends, city leaders should seek to preserve its best aspects and find ways to contribute new ideas of their own to improving mass mobility,” they wrote.
While officials reportedly have discussed having WMATA take over some of the Circulator’s routes, those discussions were not part of Metro’s recently-released plans to redesign the bus network, according to Greater Greater Washington. Allen’s letter also noted a lack of communication among government agencies about what a potential transition for riders and bus operators would look like.
“Disconcertingly, despite more than a year’s notice, it is clear from oversight questioning that DDOT has not undertaken until recently any transition planning,” the letter reads. “This is concerning as in the absence of a clearly articulated plan, Circulator bus drivers will begin searching for new employment immediately, which will undercut service and hurt riders.”
