New Flyer XDE40 7098

Location: 9th Street, NW at Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: April 11, 2011

Beginning with the launch of its first “MetroExtra” route in 2007, WMATA attempted to brand the new service with specially painted buses.  This branding eventually evolved into what are often referred to as the “MetroLocal” and “MetroExtra” schemes where most of the bus is painted silver with the back portion being painted red for local buses and blue for MetroExtra buses.  However, after about 14 years of the current schemes being in use, Metro is repainting all of the MetroExtra buses into the “standard” red Local scheme.  Instead, passengers will need to rely on the destination sign to identify MetroExtra services.

I suspect some of this stems from the fact that blue MetroExtra buses often wound up on local routes and vice versa, and I mentioned this as a reason I tend to dislike branded bus schemes in a post six years ago.  Frankly, I’m not a huge fan of the current Metrobus paint schemes and hope that when the livery is next updated that it is an improvement over the current one.

For more photos of WMATA New Flyer XDE40 buses, please click here.

New Flyer XDE40 7225

Location: 16th Street, NW at Hemlock Street, Washington, DC
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: January 25, 2016

The Washington, DC area got its first measurable snowfall since 2018 this past weekend.  If you’re a winter weather lover, the nation’s capital has not been a great place to be in recent years, with the daily high temperature in excess of 32 degrees Fahrenheit for nearly two years.  That also means if you like getting or seeing transit photos dashing through the snow, you’ve been out of luck (at least in the DC area).  With this past weekend’s storm, there were finally a few inches of measurable snow in the WMATA service area to photograph vehicles in, if that is how one wished to spend his or her Sunday snow day.  (Those in Philadelphia, New York, and other points to the north and east have even more snow to photograph, but fewer transit vehicles to see running through it, as service was significantly curtailed as a safety precaution.)  Given the circumstances, I thought it would be appropriate to highlight a photo taken during the last really big snowfall in the District of Columbia.  In 2016, a blizzard dumped over two feet of snow in the DC area, forcing the suspension of all WMATA bus and rail service for two days on January 23 and 24.  This photo was taken when service resumed, albeit on a limited basis with many routes remaining suspended and many of those that were able to operate being detoured at points along their routes, on January 25.  

For more photos of WMATA’s New Flyer XDE40 buses, please click here.