The Sheriff Road Line, designated as Route C33, is a daily bus route operated by the

Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA ), commonly referred to as Metro, is a tri-jurisdictional public transit agency that operates transit services in the Washington metropolitan area. WMATA provides rapid transit servic ...

between

Minnesota Avenue station Minnesota Avenue station is an island-platformed Washington Metro station in the Central Northeast/Mahaning Heights neighborhood of Northeast Washington, D.C., United States. The station was opened on November 20, 1978, and is operated by ...

of the

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower ** Orange juice *Orange (colour), the color of an orange fruit, occurs between red and yellow in the vi ...

and Silver Lines of the

Washington Metro The Washington Metro, often abbreviated as the Metro and formally the Metrorail, is a rapid transit system serving the Washington metropolitan area of the United States. It is administered by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority ...

& Sheriff Road NE & Lee Street NE (Sheriff Road) or 33rd Street NE & Blaine Street NE (River Terrace). Route C33 operates every 13–15 minutes during peak hours, and 30 minutes at all other times. Route C33 trips roughly took 30 minutes to complete.

Background

Route C33 provides daily service between

and Sheriff Road NE & Lee Street NE (Sheriff Road) or 33rd Street NE & Blaine Street NE (River Terrace). Because the C33 route was a short Metrobus route with low passenger demand, C33 had almost always been assigned the smaller sized 30-foot buses, as route U4, as opposed to the regular 40-foot sized buses WMATA typically uses on many of its Metrobus routes. However, route C33 occasionally used 40 ft buses if the 30 ft buses were undergoing maintenance. Route U4 operated out of Bladensburg division.

History

Before WMATA implemented the Better Bus Redesign network, Route C33 was previously known as Route U4. U4 originally operated as part of the "Sheriff Road-River Terrace" streetcar line, between the

Deanwood Deanwood is a neighborhood in Northeast Washington, D.C., bounded by Eastern Avenue to the northeast, Kenilworth Avenue to the northwest, Division Avenue to the southeast, and Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue to the south. One of Northeast's o ...

River Terrace Fluvial terraces are elongated terraces that flank the sides of floodplains and fluvial valleys all over the world. They consist of a relatively level strip of land, called a "tread", separated from either an adjacent floodplain, other fluvial t ...

neighborhoods of Northeast Washington D.C. The U4 streetcar line was later replaced by buses during the 1950s and eventually became a WMATA Metrobus Route on February 4, 1973 when WMATA acquired all four bus companies that operated throughout the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area and merged them all together to form its own, "Metrobus" System. U4 kept operating on the same exact streetcar routing it had been operating on since 1949, even after becoming a WMATA Metrobus Route. On December 3, 1978, U4 went through a minor rerouting change to divert into/serve the newly opened

. The rest of U4's routing remained the exact same. The line was named the Minnesota Avenue Shuttle. On January 22, 1984, route U4 was rerouted to operate between Sheriff Road and Capitol View passing

in both directions. In 2014, WMATA announced a series of proposals for route U4 that will be implemented in June 2015 if it was approved by the Metro Board. It went as the following: * Route U4: Daily service at all times between

and Deanwood Station via the current route between River Terrace and

, then via the current route of V7 and V8 from Minnesota Avenue Station to Deanwood station. * Route U4 would no longer serve the portion of the current route between Minnesota Avenue Station and Sheriff Road. * New Route U7 would serve the portion of the current route between Minnesota Avenue Station and Sheriff Road. This rerouting was to create a better balance of capacity and demand on lines serving the Minnesota Avenue station. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, Route U4 was reduced to operate on its Saturday supplemental schedule during the weekdays beginning on March 16, 2020. On March 18, 2020, the line was further reduced to operate on its Sunday schedule. Weekend service was later suspended on March 21, 2020. Service was restored to its pre-pandemic schedule on August 23, 2020. In February 2021 during the FY2022 budget, WMATA proposed to eliminate the U4 if it does not get any federal funding. As part of WMATA's Better Bus Redesign taking place on June 29, 2025, the U4 was renamed into the C33, keeping its same routing.

Incidents

* On September 5, 2017, a passenger was arrested after he spat on a U4 bus driver along Minnesota Avenue. The driver was taken to a hospital.

References

{{reflist U4