The American Bus Association (ABA) is entirely confounded by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA) insistence on prohibiting motorcoaches from dropping-off hundreds of thousands of customers from around the country at metrorail stations, to participate in the events related to the 58th Presidential Inauguration and Million Women March this weekend, Jan. 20-21.
“It simply defies logic on why WMATA wants to disappoint hundreds of thousands of potential customers from accessing its service directly, particularly at a time when it could be garnering much needed positive attention for facilitating traffic this weekend,” said ABA President & CEO Peter Pantuso, expressing his frustration. “As we approach this historic weekend of events, we see no relief for the hundreds of thousands of citizens who want to participate," said Pantuso. "WMATA had no issue taking our customers' money for Metro passes but now they say we can’t drop them at stations to use them. Such unfair treatment of motorcoach customers will not be easily forgotten, and is not a very flattering image for the District.”
Pantuso added,"Although we appreciate Paul Wiedefeld's efforts into allowing buses to park at certain metro stations, we would like to resolve the entire problem by Metro simply allowing our buses to access all rail stations.”
ABA was informed WMATA plans to allow motorcoaches to park at the NOMA, Greenbelt, Landover, Armory/RFK and Navy Yard metrorail stations; but ABA has not received any word regarding metrorail stations in Virginia.