Hoping some experienced Middle School parents can help out. I live near John Lewis Elementary and my kid will be going to Deal next year. We plan to send them on the bus (hopefully with some neighborhood kids). Deal has a fairly clear outline of the buses to take but I keep hearing rumors of ‘oh they cancelled the ‘Deal buses’ for next year’.
Can anyone give insight into this? Will the D34 bus continue to be an option? Thank you for any insights! |
They just redid the entire bus system in DC so you should look at the new map to find out what’s available. |
Thank you. I’ve been trying to make sense of it but these routes only operate on school days so nothing comes up since it is summer. Or it could be operator error. Hoping there is a helpful Deal parent here who has it all figured out. ![]() |
Can't you change the date on the trip planner to some Tuesday morning in September? It would at least give you an idea of which bus schedules to look at. |
Check the new C81 route. In runs between Ft. Totten and Tenley metros (and beyond). Ft. Totten to Kennedy to 14th to Military/Missouri to Nebraska to Tenley. Every 20 mins, all day.
https://www.wmata.com/schedules/timetables/ |
+1. That's what my kid will be taking next year. It will hopefully be full of commuting kids during school day rush hours. |
Where can we get hard copies of the new bus map? |
pdf of all individual routes: https://www.wmata.com/initiatives/plans/Better-Bus/upload/DC_All_Profiles.pdf
Open pdf. Select print. Select print to pdf. Select the pages you want to print for the routes are interested in (ex: for C81, choose pages 51-52). Save to desktop. Print. For exact info, look up the route profile on WMATA. That will list and show all the stops. You can navigate to and print the timetables from there. |
I'm trying to be optimistic about this change. It is a little scary to lose the dedicated Deal buses for my kids. But they had their downsides too. It was often a rough start getting the Deal buses to run reliably, since they only ran twice a day and shut down completely over the summer. It also was frustrating trying to get the Deal buses to reliably transmit their location signals to allow my kids to track them on their phones. I'm hoping with the C81 and C87 buses being regular all day routes, that they will be more reliably staffed and tracking online. |