Better Bus Service In Leesburg

Leesburg is a great place to live. The people are friendly, the Town is remarkably well run, and the services and amenities are second to none. That being said, there are people who live in Leesburg who are underserved by the current transportation model: public transportation riders.

The Leesburg bus system is an amalgam of fixes to presenting problems, and aimed less at residents than visitors. For example, local buses don't run on weekends, even though the Trolley does.

A simple step that could be taken to help Leesburg citizens without cars, or with limited transportation options would be to make weekend bus service available. There is a concentration of available (retail) jobs along the 15 Bypass, and a concentration of people who need jobs elsewhere in Town. Leesburg would do well to provide a linkage for those residents to the available jobs when those jobs need to be filled - on the weekends.

Of course, making bus service in Leesburg available should go hand-in-hand with making it attractive. For this, the Town should build some bus shelters in places without them, and provide benches at popular stops such as the government center. Those of us with cars recall the difficulties we had getting around town during the snowstorms this past winter. Imagine what it would have been like to have to wait for a bus in that weather, without a bench or a shelter.

It is encouraging that the community is taking the first step towards such a vision for Leesburg bus service, beginning work on a bus shelter for the Heritage Square neighborhood. Let's all work together to provide better bus service to the rest of the Town as well.

(Incidentally, we need better buses countywide as well.)