Upper Marlboro Needs Better Bus Service, Residents Say

Upper Marlboro residents are growing frustrated with the lack of public transportation options in the area.

Nearly 35 years after Metrobus left the town’s immediate vicinity, only The Bus -- operated by Prince George’s County employees -- runs through downtown Upper Marlboro, according to transportation officials.

For Steven Chery, who rides The Bus every weekday, it takes 90 minutes to get from his Upper Marlboro home to his school in Landover. He transfers once at Water Street.

“I would ride on the weekends if it ran” then, said Chery, 23. “Buses running every 30 minutes would be ideal so people didn’t have to wake up an hour early to get somewhere.”

Chery also said that The Bus could improve by lengthening its schedule and routes. He’d welcome Metrobus if Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority planners decided to extend it to downtown Upper Marlboro.

According to James Hamre, director of WMATA’s Office of Bus Planning, Metrobus hasn’t hit downtown Upper Marlboro because Metrorail’s Blue and Green lines were extended last decade to Largo Town Center and Branch Avenue, respectively. None of the ensuing bus studies compelled planners to draw routes out to Upper Marlboro.

“Most of the Metrobus service was focused on serving inside the Beltway and the Metrorail stations,” Hamre said.

Another factor which worked against would-be Metrobus routes in downtown Upper Marlboro was the desire of county lawmakers to promote The Bus as the principal mode of public transportation into and out of Upper Marlboro, according to Hamre. No one from the Prince George’s County Department of Public Works could be reached for comment.

“We definitely try to focus on complementing each other in terms of the routes that are run,” Hamre said. “Upper Marlboro is an area that the county wanted to run county services to, so there was no reason for us to duplicate that.”

Hamre said the closest routes to downtown Upper Marlboro are the C21 and C22, which service Collington Trade Center in the northern part of Greater Upper Marlboro, and the J11 and J12, which service the area’s western fringe, near Andrews Air Force Base.

The only other Metrobus route that ever served Greater Upper Marlboro was a mid-day only K18 route which ran from Upper Marlboro to 11th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, according to Hamre. Service ended during the fall of 1976.

Sitting at a bus stop on Water Street, Bowie resident Chelsea Postell said WMATA should bring bus service to Upper Marlboro.

“I ride a Metrobus from my house to [Largo Town Center], and then the county bus from the train station to here,” said Postell, who works in Upper Marlboro. “Because transfers are free, it’d be a lot easier and a lot cheaper if I could ride a Metrobus straight from my house to here.”