WASHINGTON – Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the DC Circulator bus will be free from now on during her annual State of the District address on Monday night.
Earlier this year, DC officials made the Circulator free for the “Fair Shot” February initiative, then again in March.
“Over the past weeks, workers … have stopped me at the checkout counters, at dinner, telling me how much they appreciate the Circulator being free,” Bowser said. “We may not think about it too much, because it’s just a dollar, two dollars a day, but for a working person it adds up.”
Previously, rides on the Circulator were $1.
Bowser went on to call on D.C. Metro to reopen late night hours, which have not operated since June 2017.
“They are no replacement for Metro,” she said. “We’ve always prioritized safety and reliability and building the capacity of Metro. So now we need a firm commitment from Metro that they will return to late night hours and they will not become a system that only caters to white collar workers commuting from the suburbs.”
Last week, DC Metro announced they were seeking proposals to provide subsidized ride sharing on-demand transportation for workers who commute outside normal hours, with a $1 million, one year pilot program.
Bowser denounced the idea during her speech.
“we can’t move our region forward by further clogging our roads,” she said. “We need a Metro system that works as hard as our workforce.”