Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich and County Council President Andrew Friedson will commemorate the opening of dedicated bus lanes on University Boulevard in Wheaton on Friday morning.
The new dedicated lanes run along the two-mile corridor between Amherst Avenue and Dennis Avenue, allowing buses to travel faster along one of the area’s busiest and most congested corridors.
The route connects riders to Metrorail, Ride On, Metro buses and the Silver Spring Transit Center. More than 9,000 riders take the route each weekday, making it the second-highest ridership for any Metrobus route.
“These (projects) are important to us, and being unable to fund these things properly is not good,” Elrich told MCM during his weekly media briefing.
With the lanes completed and in use on Monday, Feb. 19, the Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) will monitor the bus lanes as a pilot program for the next 12 months. MCDOT will release data on the project in December 2025.
The new lanes are part of the Bus Priority Project, a larger MCDOT effort to advance similar bus-only lanes in Montgomery County.
The commencement starts at 10 a.m. on Friday, March 8, at Wheaton Forest Local Park, 1700 University Blvd. West, Wheaton.
