Metro Officials Reverse Decision on N2 Bus Route

Updated: Metro has agreed to reinstate the recently changed N2 route. 

Though Metro officials did not seek community input before making changes to the N2 bus line, they certainly received plenty of feedback at the Glover Park ANC meeting Thursday. In September, Metro changed the N2 bus route so that it no longer makes a stop at the Tenleytown metro station.

The N2 route is now almost identical to the N4 route except for a detour from Massachusetts Avenue along Nebraska, New Mexico and Cathedral Avenues.

In a press release issued 10 days before the new routes went into effect, metro stated, "The changes are intended to enhance reliability, improve connections with Metrorail service and match ridership demand." 

Glover Park residents couldn't disagree more about the actual result of the N2 changes or the process that led to them.

Brian Cohen, the chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3B, told the metro and DDOT representatives who attended the meeting that as a public entity, metro's first obligation is to serve the public.

"It is unacceptable to make these kinds of changes without public input," he said.

WMATA Bus planner David Erion told residents that the change to the N2 line was not "significant enough" to meet the legal threshold requiring public input. 

One 60-year resident of D.C. angrily told Erion that this "pro forma explanation" was "pathetic." She added that agencies like metro and the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) seem to have "total disdain for this neighborhood."

DDOT's Steve Strauss told neighbors that in making the changes, both his agency and WMATA assumed the community "wanted to maintain the Spring Valley connection."

One man, a father of two boys, said the extra six-tenths of a mile his son has to trek to get to the metro from their home might not seem like a lot to WMATA, but with his heavy back pack or in bad weather, it is a challenge.

Other Gloverk Park residents argued that the impacts of inclement weather and insufficient lighting make some of the streets no longer served by the N2 difficult and potentially dangerous.

Another common complaint expressed was that the buses will switch suddenly from the N2 to the N4 without any notice; suddenly instead of going to Cathedral Avenue, they are driven farther down Massachusetts Avenue.

The ANC passed a resolution asking DDOT and WMATA to restore the route to what it was before the Sept. 25 change. Commissioners reasoned that the change was made so quickly in the first place that the agencies should be able to just switch them back.

At the meeting Thursday, DDOT and WMATA said it would not be so easy. Julie Hershorn, a manager from WMATA's Office of Bus Planning, said one issue is that a change in the bus system can have a domino effect. If the buses are "inter-lining," it is possible that, for instance, when N2 bus reaches the end of its route, it could become another line entirely.

Since the meeting Thursday night, WMATA and DDOT officials responded to the ANC and community concerns Friday, agreeing to return the N2 to its previous route.

In an email to Patch, Commissioner Cohen wrote, "We are gratified that WMATA addressed our community's concerns and fixed their mistake.  N2 bus riders will be thrilled that the route will once again take them to Tenleytown and Friendship Heights"