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Metrobus suspends dozens of routes Sunday, pledges schedule improvements

WMATA says COVID-19 related sick calls among drivers and support staff to blame for recent delays.

ARLINGTON, Va. — WMATA announced 42 bus lines will be suspended as of Sunday, partly due to a surge in bus driver infections. That could mean longer waits for people here at the bus stop.

WMATA will require all unvaccinated employees to pass a COVID test every four days, up from once a week, because of Omicron. That’s because new cases went from 18 just after Thanksgiving to more than a hundred through mid-December.

"It’s been like a 30-minute delay now. They’re coming every 30 minutes, 25 minutes or so. We’re actually missing busses and then late at night, busses are not coming so often as they should be," said Aishah Artis, waiting at Pentagon City bus depot trying to get to her job as a restaurant server in Alexandria. "I’m late to work a lot, I have to leave for work about two hours early now and I only work about 25 minutes away."

395 scheduled bus trips didn’t happen Wednesday because of the bus driver shortage according to WMATA, but over 13,365 trips did happen, some with delays.

Arlington resident Dennis Clark finds it challenging to get to Shirlington now, “It’s going to get worse. From what I’ve seen a couple of days ago, it’s going to get worse. I had a delay in my neighborhood, the 23B bus, and it was a bus scheduled and it just never came. So, there have been delays."

WMATA took full control of a Virginia bus yard from a contractor in hopes of reducing delays there.

"I sympathize with them now, but when I drove a taxi for 30 years, that meant more business for me as a taxi driver," added Clark.

"It only used to take me 40 minutes. Now it takes me two hours and people are like, you need to switch jobs. I’m like, they need to fix the bus routes," said Artis. "Please fix the times - please! Because it takes me two hours to get to work now."

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