At the December 2013 meeting of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board, area officials discussed the final report and recommendations of a special task force that investigated promising locations in the region to operate buses on the shoulders of highways.

The task force said that the conditions in specific corridors under consideration need detailed analysis to make sure that the benefits of so-called "bus-on-shoulder" operations will outweigh the costs of implementation.

Eleven metropolitan areas in the United States currently allow buses to use shoulders to bypass heavily congested travel lanes on at least some routes, the report says. The Washington region is one of those, where buses are allowed to use the shoulder on a stretch of the Dulles Airport Access Road near the West Falls Church Metrorail station, as well as on a four-mile segment of Route 29 in Montgomery County.

To read a TPB Weekly Report on the Bus-on-Shoulder report, click here.

To view the full report, click here.