Ride On
Montgomery County Transit
Who would’ve thought a system as successful as Ride On started off by holding a series of public forums on public transit in 1972? In 1973 WMATA was created and took over the last of the three private transit companies of the region, DC Transit, Alexandria, Barcroft & Washington and Washington, Marlboro & Annapolis. WMATA was a regional operator and thus couldn’t just focus on Montgomery County’s transportation needs. This lead County officials to look into starting a public transit system of their own. The County’s Department of Transportation received funding to purchase 20 vehicles and hire operating staff.
Ride On started off as a “Dial-A-Ride” service in the Gaithersburg area on March 31, 1975 with 8 vehicles. A month or so later on April 14, service was started in the Silver Spring area with 12 vehicles and two fixed routes, the “Green” route which is today’s route 15 and the “Blue” route which is today’s route 18, with both routes connecting at the Silver Spring Armory and Langley Park. The Ride On service was pretty attractive to public transit riders with its frequent service and a low fare of 25 cents per ride versus WMATA’s fare of 40 cents at the time.
After 10 months of operating the “Dial-A-Ride” service in Gaithersburg, Ride On decided to discontinue the operation and started a fixed route operation which had successes in the Silver Spring area. These five routes were color-coded routes but used letter designations instead; for example “R” for Red, “G” for Green, “Y” for Yellow and “B” for Blue. There was one bus for each route except for Red, which operated two buses due to a clockwise and counter-clockwise operation.
A huge milestone came to Montgomery County in February 1978 when the first Metrorail station opened one snowy day in Silver Spring. This moved all of the current bus routes that ended at the Silver Spring Armory to the newly opened terminal at Silver Spring Station. Ride On did a huge expansion of the system from a peak vehicle count of 14 to 53 vehicles. But mechanical problems with vehicles started to cause problems which led to the order of the TMC “Citycruisers”.
With Ride On’s route expansion over the years came several fare increases also. The first fare increase was in 1980 which brought the fare from 25 cents to 35 cents. It went up another 10 cents the next year and another 15 cents the year after that which for the first time possibly led to Ride On’s first decrease in ridership.
In August 25, 1984 the west side of the county got their taste of Metrorail, which was extended from Van Ness-UDC to Grosvenor and about 4 months later, service was started to Shady Grove opening December 15, 1984, thus leaving Ride On to expand and order the first order of Orions. These vehicles were very similar to the TMC “Citycruisers” that were ordered previously.
Ride On then introduced some changes to the system over the years. Montgomery County was the first jurisdiction in the DC area with an “All Day Transfer”. This transfer was only good on all Montgomery County bus routes and only cost $1 to ride an unlimited amount of buses. Another change came in 1989 when Ride On changed the paint scheme with the arrival of a new type of bus, the Gillig Phantom. These buses were also the first with flip dot signs, a lot different than the traditional roll signs.
1990 brought some more changes to Montgomery County transit. The Red line was extended from Silver Spring to Wheaton Station. Ride On service was expanded with this extension. Also, the first wheelchair lift-equipped buses were purchased. The two buses were built by Orion; one went to each division. There was also a fare increase in this year to a base fare of 85 cents.
In 1991, Ride On continued to expand upon the wheelchair buses by ordering an additional 27 vehicles from Orion. There was a fare increase also which brought the base fare to $1. In 1993, the first 35-foot vehicles were bought from Orion. These buses were Orion V (five) models, the first of its kind at Ride On and system’s first 102 inch wide buses.
In 1996, Ride On decided to try out an alternative fuel at the Gaithersburg division. Ride On experimented with Compressed Natural Gas, also known as “CNG”. Ride On bought three 35-foot CNG-powered buses, which turned out to be a success as today Ride On operates a fleet of 95 CNG buses. Ride On also introduced its first 40-foot buses and low floor vehicles to the fleet in 1996.
As the turn of the century was coming, some more changes came too as Ride On bought four used 40-foot Flxibles from Baltimore MTA after a failed LNG experiment made those buses useless to the agency. Ride On reconfigured them into diesel buses. The Flxibles weren’t the only 40-foot buses received at the time; Ride On also purchased 21 diesel and 19 CNG buses from Orion.
After a 7-year hiatus from ordering buses from Gillig, in 2006 Ride On received their first Diesel Electric Hybrid buses. This was a joint purchase with the New York State Consortium.
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