Tag Archives: Montgomery County

Bus Photo of the Month: October 2024

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Gillig Advantage 4058

Location: Rockville Pike near Wooton Parkway, Rockville, MD
Operator of Vehicle: Ride On (Montgomery County Transit)
Date of Photo: June 21, 2024

Today marks the seventh anniversary of the launch of Ride On Extra in Montgomery County, Maryland.  Ride On Extra is the branded service for Ride On’s “premium” bus routes.  The first route to operate under this banner is Route 101, a limited stop service along MD 355 between Lakeforest and Medical Center.  The trip time on the 101, both advertised and actual, is noticeably shorter than the underlying local service on routes 46 and 55, and depending on the circumstances, can even give the parallel Red Line a run for its money.

Last month, Ride On launched the first two routes of the Great Seneca Transit Network (GTSN), a series of improvements to the transit service in the “Great Seneca Science Corridor”, an area that includes locations such as the Shady Grove Metro, Shady Grove Hospital, Universities at Shady Grove, the Rio Center, and Kentlands.  These two routes have colored names, Lime and Pink; I believe this is to go along with the colored names that are also being used for the “Flash BRT” service that Ride On operates in the Route 29 corridor and will introduce to other corridors in the future.  Unlike the 101, the Lime and Pink operate seven days a week with service frequencies varying between 15 and 30 minutes depending upon the day of the week and time of day.  

Ride On is also engaged in the “Ride On Reimagined” project, which is a network redesign project that may introduce more Ride On Extra routes in the future as well.  It will definitely be interesting to see how Ride On Extra, in conjunction with the Flash BRT and other improvements, will change the transit landscape in Montgomery County.  

For more photos of Ride On’s Gillig Advantage 40 foot buses, please click here.  

Bus Photo of the Month: May 2022

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Orion V/CNG 5997

Location: Shady Grove Station, Derwood, MD
Operator of Vehicle: Ride On Montgomery County Transit
Date of Photo: March 20, 2009

Earlier this week, I saw some photos posted on social media of Ride On’s new electric buses, manufactured by Gillig.  My understanding is that the buses have been delivered to Ride On but have not yet entered service.  The order, placed in 2021, consists of ten buses that will operate out of the Silver Spring garage.  These ten buses will join four Proterras that have been in service since the fall of 2020.  

Back in 1996, Ride On ordered its first compressed natural gas buses.  These three buses originally featured a green and white livery with a cloud imagery wrap on the windows.  They were later repainted to match the scheme on the 40 foot CNG buses that were delivered in 1999.  While these buses are no longer in service, Ride On has almost exclusively ordered CNG buses for its Gaithersburg Garage since taking delivery of these buses over 20 years ago.

For more photos of Ride On 35 foot Orion V/CNG buses, please click here.

Just in time for the summer travel season, Winter 2018 photos have been posted!

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Gillig Advantage 458
The first part of 2018 here at Oren’s Transit Page headquarters has been busy.  The next few months also have some travel planned both to places I’ve been before as well as new ones, but in this post, I wish to let everyone know that new photos from the past few months from a variety of places are now available on this site.  You may have noticed some recent photos of the month were from locations that had not been featured on any part of this site before.

I made my first trip to Memphis, Tennessee back in November 2017.  Unfortunately, it was before that city’s Main Street Trolley reopened, but I guess that just means I’ll have to go back some day.  However, I did get some photos of MATA’s all Gillig bus fleet, which you can find in the new Memphis section on this site.

CAF-GEE UM12
In January, I spent two weeks in Brazil and Argentina.  While I had been to Rio de Janerio back in 2010, I didn’t take any photos of that city’s subway on that trip.  That has changed, and there is now a Rio Metro page here on Oren’s Transit Page.  There are also additions to the existing Rio bus page.  After Rio, I was in Iguazu Falls, where I had also been in 2010, but there are no new photos from here.  The following stop was Buenos Aires, marking my first time in that city, and I have plenty of photos from that city.  The Buenos Aires Subte (Underground), while small, has a rich history and also has the distinction of serving the southernmost subway station in the world. 
Micro Ómnibus 45 S.A. 35
You might recognize some of the 6000 Series cars on the Buenos Aires pages from Madrid and that would make sense, as Buenos Aires bought them secondhand from the Spanish capital.  The network of buses, known locally as colectivos, is an impressive sight to see as they crisscross the city in just about every imaginable direction.  Each colectivo line is operated by a private firm, and each private firm only operates a handful of lines at most.  The buses on each route have unique liveries to make identification by waiting passengers easier.  

At the end of January, I was in the Boston area for a weekend, and at the start of April I spent a weekend in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

As is often the case, I also added a number of photos from around the DC area.  Most of the new photos are additions to pre-existing galleries, but I also finally added photos of Shuttle UM, the campus bus system for the University of Maryland-College Park, and Loundoun County Transit.

Below, you’ll find a complete list of pages with new photos.  Enjoy! 

Gillig Advantage 3710

 

Bus Photo of the Month: November 2017

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Gillig Advantage/BRT 4061

Gillig Advantage/BRT 4061

Location: Medical Center Station, Bethesda, MD
Operator of Vehicle: Ride On (Montgomery County Transit)
Date of Photo: October 6, 2017

Exactly one month ago, Ride On, the county operated bus system in Montgomery County, MD, launched its first limited stop service, Route 101 or the Ride On Extra.  This route uses a special fleet of BRT styled Gillig Advantage buses.  I’m not a huge fan of WMATA’s “MetroExtra” branding for several reasons, but I really like how Ride On has taken this brand from another agency in the area and applied it to itself.  The paint scheme and name is clearly derived from WMATA, and to Ride On’s credit, the paint scheme makes it clearer that an approaching bus is a limited stop one than Metro’s scheme.  In its first month of service, I had three occasions to take this service, and found the trip to be extremely speedy, though I was admittedly riding against the peak direction of travel each time.  The buses have WiFi and USB charging ports on board, but I did not use either feature any of the times I have been on these buses.  The buses also still have that new bus smell, so be sure to check it out soon if you want to experience that, too.  The Ride On Extra currently operates between Lakeforest Mall and Medical Center Station during weekday rush hours.

For more photos of the Ride On Extra, please click here. 

Bus Photo of the Month: May 2016

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Orion V 5622

Orion V 5622

Location: Little Falls Parkway and Dorset Avenue, Chevy Chase, MD
Operator of Vehicle: Ride On (Montgomery County Transit)
Date of Photo: June 11, 2014

Ride On is the county owned and operated bus system in Montgomery County, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC.  It’s hard to believe, but about 15 years ago, the fleet only had a handful of 40 foot buses.  Nowadays, 40 footers dominate.  While the first order of 30 foot buses in a number of years was made in 2014, no new 35 foot buses have been ordered in about 10 years.  As a result, as the 2016 Gillig Phantoms arrive on the property, the Orion Vs, like the one pictured here, will be retired, leaving no diesel 35 footers in the Ride On fleet and even fewer buses remaining in the “traditional” blue and white scheme.  In addition, the arrival of the new Gilligs will mark the retirement of Ride On’s last high floor buses, as Ride On’s fleet will be entirely low floor.

Photos of the new Gilligs, which also feature a new unit numbering scheme, will be plentiful in the months and years to come, so enjoy this oldie but goodie while you can!

For more photos of the Ride On 35 foot Orion Vs, please click here.

Transit Bloopers

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Last week, I showed a friend of mine a photo posted to a Facebook group of a Ride On bus that was supposedly going to a place called Glennont.  Here is the photo, courtesy of Dave Galp, who originally posted it online:

Good luck finding Glennont on a map of Montgomery County, MD...

Good luck finding Glennont on a map of Montgomery County, MD…

Photo by Dave Galp, used with permission

Did you find the error?  The sign is supposed to say “Glenmont” but the destination was misspelled in a recent update of all the destination sign readings.

At least that one is hard to notice at first glance, I had to look at the photo more than once to realize what was wrong.  The error on the destination sign of this TCAT bus in Ithaca, NY is probably a bit easier to spot:

I took this photo in the fall of 2006 and have yet to figure out how to pronounce the word on that destination sign.

This post is not meant to discredit the hard work of the transit professionals behind the scenes who make sure the overwhelming majority of the signs and brochures that passengers rely upon each day are correct.  However, we are all human and occasionally make mistakes, and in the case of transit employees, those minor misspellings have potentially wide audiences.  So what is the funniest “transit blooper” you’ve seen on a sign or heard in an announcement?  Feel free to share what you’ve seen or heard in the comments (with our without a photo attachment) below!