Your most memorable Circulator moments
Walks (rides) of shame, lost items found, and very, very kind drivers. Here's how residents will remember the D.C. Circulator.
As you’ve probably heard by now, on January 1, 2025, the wheels on the Circulator buses will go round and round no more.
Citing low ridership, Mayor Muriel Bowser cut Circulator funding in the fiscal year 2025 budget, ending nearly 20 years of service. To the dismay of riders — and to the detriment of hundreds of staff members who now face losing their jobs — a service phase-out has already begun.
To bid those big, red buses a dignified goodbye, we wanted to know: how will you remember the Circulator?
Many of the stories we received revolved around a particularly kind driver retrieving a lost item, waiting a few seconds for someone at a stop, or just going the extra mile on a difficult day. So this is, yes, a eulogy for a bus. But in many ways... it's a big thank-you note to the Circulator drivers who kept the system running for 20 years.
“My most harrowing Circulator story [is] of nearly losing my daughter’s beloved stuffy, Lamby. We left it on a circulator bus in 2019, and after taking to Twitter and calling the Circulator dispatch, we finally were reunited the next day. All of the staff I talked to were so kind and the bus driver went out of his way to meet up with me. My daughter is eight now, and Lamby is still a part of the family!" — Jenny Harper
"I took the Circulator home with my dry cleaning one day, but I left the hanger with my pants on the bus. A short time later, I got a call from an unknown number. The driver had seen my pants and radioed the dispatcher about them, along with my name and phone number, which were on the claim ticket stapled to the hanger. The dispatcher told me the driver was headed back out on another run, and gave me an ETA and the bus number so I could keep an eye out for it. Sure enough, the bus arrived and I told the driver I was the guy who left his pants on board. They handed me my pants and I carried on with my evening." — Jon Steingart
"I worked full-time in D.C. and then took the Circulator to night classes at Georgetown, where I was also a full-time student. I was so poor and so tired and I used to cry on the Circulator to release some stress — it was so nice to have a safe, reliable, and affordable way to get where I needed to go while I was working my ass off to make my dreams come true! RIP Circulator." — Cecilia
"I grew up in Falls Church and, after class and every weekend, my friend and I would Metro into town to skateboard. We heard that the Circulator was free and it opened up a whole new section of the city: Georgetown. At the time, weekdays saw the Dupont-Rosslyn Circulator route packed with people in business attire. We were 16-year-olds with skateboards and big pants, so we’d often get comments from riders. A lot of the time they’d say they liked skateboarding as a kid, and sometimes if we got off at or were waiting at the same stop, they’d borrow our boards and roll around in their dress shoes. There was a certain intimacy [to] the Circulator at the time that was different from other transit. It’s a shame that ridership never recovered." — Miles Wilson
"One of my friends called it the twerkulator and it made me happy." — Katy
"I had just moved to D.C. and I lost my ID. I had to take a flight soon, so I decided to get a D.C. ID instead of just ordering a new one. It was raining really hard that day and I needed to take the Circulator to get to the DMV. Just as I was a block away from the stop, the bus arrived and my umbrella broke. The bus driver must've seen what happened, because she didn't drive off and she waited for me. I'll never forget that memory on the Circulator!" — Mark
"did the walk/bus ride of shame home on them many times lmfao" — Will
"The Circulator was the only transport that allowed me to work full time in Georgetown and make it down to the Union Station UDC campus for night classes and eventually nursing school. It was a crazy schedule for a year and a half of my life but seriously couldn't have made it all fit without the Georgetown to Union Station line." — Margaux
"I took it to my job interview at Georgetown Hospital. Flew in the morning of from Indiana and thought I was big city." — Liz
"Accidentally left a phone on a circulator – a driver had found it (or maybe another passenger brought it to the driver) and the driver had it ready when the bus came around to the same stop." — Eric
