Montgomery County adding real-time bus arrival displays to some bus stops

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. (DC News Now) — Some bus stops in Montgomery County might be getting an upgrade soon.

The Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) announced that it will be installing real-time bus arrival displays at 100 of the county’s busiest bus stops in Bethesda, Germantown, Rockville, Shady Grove, Silver Spring and Twinbrook.

Around 50 screens have already been installed.

Montgomery County officials said that the display features an audio readout and text-to-speech button. The screens come from Connectpoint and will show information about bus arrivals.

“By providing real-time information displays, riders can better predict their travel times and be alerted to any issues that may affect their trip. We recently rolled out phase one of Ride On Reimagined, a long-term plan to modernize and improve public transit and we also made all Ride On buses zero fare last month. Our hope is that more people will choose public transit. It’s a great time to give Ride On buses a try,” County Executive Marc Elrich said in a news release.

“The digital signs address a common request among our ridership: namely, real-time information on bus wait times and system alerts,” MCDOT Director Chris Conklin said in the release. “We released the Ride On Trip Planner app two years ago, letting riders plan their most efficient route across multiple modes of public transportation and access real-time Ride On bus arrival information. Since then, more than two and a half million trips have been planned on the app, and feedback from our riders has been overwhelmingly positive. The ePaper displays are one more way to deliver critical information to our riders.”

MCDOT said it expects to add even more of these real-time displays to busy bus stops in the coming years.