The transit planners wanted to extend the dedicated bus lanes farther toward DC to shave off another 15 minutes. The traffic engineers didn’t like seeing big, empty headways between buses. Why should these buses—which represent less than 15 percent of the traffic—consume 25 percent of the space? The answer? The buses held 82 percent of the people.6 Nevertheless, they downgraded the bus-only lane into a combined bus/high-occupancy-vehicle lane. The buses lost their advantage and eventually, their riders.
