Have you noticed the new buses showing up around the County the past few weeks? We now have buses from two different transit companies operating in Howard County. The new red and white buses, like the one shown above from the Arundel Voice, are the new face of the Central Maryland Regional Transit, CMRT. CMRT lost out to First Transit to provide public transportation to Howard, Ann Arundel, northern PG County and the City of Laurel. The new transit service, called the Regional Transit Agency of Central Maryland, has buses painted with the colors of the Maryland flag. The only image I could find of these new buses came from the groundbreaking for their new bus transit facility in Annapolis Junction.
The new service was developed to save money for each jurisdiction with the savings going into expanding transportation services. With competing transit services which have similar sounding names it may take some time to see how all this public transportation shakes out. At least we have some colorful new buses.
#hocoblogs
I think the red and white CMRT vehicles were done within the past year, and the new RTA vehicles began arriving this Spring. They have also been adding more true buses to the fleet in the past month, including some ex-MTA coaches, which to me is a big improvement over the bumpy riding cutaway buses like those pictured here.
ReplyDeleteThere appears to be an intention of creating a more cohesive transit system as a result of this, which I can readily say is sorely needed, and hopefully the reach can stretch to where one use the system can logically access the Baltimore and Washington systems at times outside of strictly peak hours, as the need is definitely there.
Oddly, the new RTA still uses plural fare structures: one for the ex-CMRT routes, and one for the ex-Howard Transit routes.