Public Transportation

While automobiles were more common than the original Town Planners may have provided for, plenty of Greenbelters did not have the income to support owning an automobile. Jeff Stone, ⁵⁸ in his project about bicycles in Greenbelt, breifly mentions their value as around-town transportation; however, for long-distance commuting such as travelling to and from Washington, residents of Greenbelt without their own autos either used mass transit or carpooled with neighbors.

Buses and Streetcars

"Transportation to and from Washington is furnished by the Capital Transit Company of Washington. Buses on regular schedule operate between Greenbelt and Berwyn where connection is made with strret cars to and from Washington. The time required to make this trip one way is about one hour. The cost of a weekly pass is $2.00 and the holder of a pass is entitled to use it on any of the Capital Transit cars or buses in Washington. The bus schedule is posted on the wall of the Bus Depot. Tenants may also obtain schedules from the Management Office."⁵⁹

• "We also had our own bus in Greenbelt. It went from town to the street car tracks in Berwyn. From there, people took the street car into Washington." ⁶⁰
• "By using the Greenbelt bus and the street cars, we were always able to go places -- even when we couldn't get car transportation." ⁶¹
• "It was a long ride, but it was dependable. [...] First I would take a bus to Branchville, then I would transfer to a street car, then to another bus. It took an hour and a half to get to college but I always got there, and I don't remember it being very expensive, as I don't remember ever worrying about how much it would cost. That was the way everyone traveled." ⁶²
• "Going into Washington took some effort, but in those days we didn't think anything about it. [...] if I wanted to go downtown, it meant riding the shuttle bus to Branchville, then catching a streetcar to Mount Rainier and transferring." ⁶³

Carpooling

As long as the trip took by mass transit, carpooling seemed to be a good alternative. However, it was not without its problems as well. The Greenbelt Maryland Manual even has something to say about the annoyances of carpoolers. "Some residents leaving early in the morning for Washington have the habit of blowing their auto horns to attract the attention of a neighbor who may be intending to share the ride with them. We ask you to please not indulge in this annoying habit." ⁶⁷

Cartoonist Isadore Parker, through his weekly satire of the carpooling culture, reminds us that when dealing with human nature, some things never change, even after fifty years. These cartoons were authored in the nineteen-forties, but most everyone should agree that the sorts of idiosynchrocies that occur when a group of people try to coordinate their different schedules still happen with frequency today.