For Metrobus, It's Back to the Old Timetables

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OVER THE SPRING AND SUMMER, we've been dumbfounded at times using Metro's NextBus service, which uses the wonders of global positioning systems technology to tell users online or over the phone when the next bus is due to arrive at a specific location.

Knowing our local bus stop ID number, we'd call to see when the next bus would be coming and allocate a specific amount of walking time to get there. And then, inevitably, we'd see the bus whiz by two minutes early while we were walking to the stop.

Now we know why: As The Post's Lena H. Sun reports, the system is likely to be out of commission for 18 months because of software problems that need to be fixed to make the system accurate and ready to expand from the 32 routes it currently serves to all 338 that Metrobus runs.

For now, it's back to the old-fashioned bus timetables, perhaps the most user-unfriendly piece of paper known to man.

» "Metro to Suspend System Providing Bus Arrival Times" [WaPo]