August 24, 2014
Metroway, a bus rapid transit (BRT) line serving both Arlington County and the city of Alexandria in Northern Virginia, first went into regular service. This route is operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority as part of its Metrobus system and has the distinction of being the first BRT line in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region as well as the entire state of Virginia.
“A lot of people will be looking to this project as a test concept to find out what lessons they can learn from it,” said Eric Randall, a senior transportation engineer at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, in an interview with the Washington Post at the time of Metroway’s Sunday launch. “It offers us an opportunity to apply some concepts for the first time — things like off-board fare collection, a design of bus stops with higher platforms and custom design shelters, a new branding and frequency of buses.”
Sandra Marks, Alexandria’s deputy director for transportation, likewise weighed in on Metroway and the debut of its fleet of blue buses. “You will be able to recognize that this is a different service, and we hope that we will be able to extend this type of bus rapid transit throughout the region,” she asserted in her own interview with the Washington Post. “We are hoping that it will be successful . . . and we are excited to be the first system in the region and have other jurisdictions and communities learn from us.”
There are a total of 17 stations serving Metroway. This BRT line covers 6.8 miles (11 kilometers) altogether between two Washington Metro stations: Pentagon City station in Arlington’s Pentagon City neighborhood; and Braddock Road station in Alexandria.
Photo Credit: MJW15 (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)
For more information on Metroway, please check out https://metrowayva.com/about
Transportation History 
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