The Silver Spring Penguin

Dear Penguin: Bus stops will be shmeared all over Wayne Avenue and Bonifant Street while the transit center is being built. But I don’t get how three or four out-of-service buses are supposed to sit on those narrow streets for long periods of time, waiting for their scheduled departure. That will screw things up big time. — Gary

Gary:

Our reporters in the Penguin newsroom don’t understand it, either. Then again, we skate through life on our good looks. Why try to comprehend anything now?

Instead, we bounced your concern to Phil McLaughlin, with the county’s department of public works and transportation. He explained it like this:

Say a Ride On bus rolls into Silver Spring and the driver is jonsing for lunch. Instead of idling on a side street while the driver grabs some nosh, the bus is immediately thrown back into service using another driver. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“The buses will continue to operate, but the operators will be changed out,” McLaughlin summarized in an email. “This is a standard practice in the transit industry.”

During meal breaks, Ride On drivers can kick it inside the brown brick building at Wayne and Ramsey avenues, McLaughlin wrote. Metro bus operators will break for meals at the opposite end of bus routes, he added.

As far as scheduling layovers go, Ride On is arranging for layovers to go down at the other end of bus routes, McLaughlin explained. Ride On is also consolidating bus routes 2 to Lyttonsville and 9 to Wheaton.

“These routes will essentially become one route, with a bus stop in the IOS [interim operations site] as opposed to a layover,” McLaughlin wrote.

Street supervisors will monitor service and adjust things as needed to keep things moving during construction, McLaughlin added.

Thus, balance and harmony in the universe are maintained. Thanks for your comments, Gary!