The free bus meant to shuttle people around downtown Silver Spring should become more reliable and feature some fresh marketing later this year, Montgomery County officials told a group of residents Monday.
The county’s Ride On bus system operates Route 28—known as the VanGo shuttle—around 25 stops near downtown Silver Spring’s transportation, restaurant and retail and arts hubs.
Howard Benn, chief of customer and operations support for Ride On, said reliability on the route should improve by September, when the county starts cycling in more drivers.
Benn told the Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board that VanGo drivers now complain of tedious shifts driving around the same route, which makes them slower to arrive at stops.
“It’s just too much, going around in these circles,” Benn said. “Hour after hour after hour just didn’t cut it.”
Of the roughly 90 trips per day made on the route, Benn said Ride On found that only about five or six drivers are adhering to the targeted 24-minute cycle time for completing the route. Benn said there are about 1,000 boardings on the route a day.
In September, Benn said Ride On will integrate up to 18 different bus drivers who will drive the route a maximum of about four hours per day.
In January, Ride On expanded the hours for the route from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. to midnight Monday through Thursday.
The weekend hours were expanded to 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday. The longer schedule means passengers at stops must now wait 12 minutes instead of eight minutes between VanGo buses.
Will Kenlaw, in charge of marketing for Ride On, told the advisory board Monday that the county has been aggressively distributing cards to Silver Spring businesses and government facilities advertising the expanded hours. The advisory board is a group of residents organized by the county government to provide recommendations to the county executive and county council.
Kenlaw said Ride On might host a charrette to gather ideas from the public on new signs or branding for the buses, which today look like all other Ride On buses. In 2008, the VanGo shuttle was painted purple with the downtown Silver Spring logo and an image of the painter Vincent Van Gogh on the side.
A resident at the meeting asked Benn why the VanGo shuttle in Silver Spring shouldn’t look more like the Bethesda Circulator, a similar free shuttle service that takes riders around downtown Bethesda and looks distinct from county buses.
In 2006, before the county planned to shut down operation of the then-Bethesda Trolley, the Bethesda Urban Partnership took over before eventually switching out the trolleys for sleek, modern buses.
