This is a list of bus routes operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), branded as Metrobus in Washington, D.C. Many are the descendants of streetcar lines operated by the Capital Transit Company or its predecessors.
As of WMATA's Better Bus Redesign beginning on June 29, 2025, all DC routes start with a D or C designation, which applies to Downtown or Crosstown routes respectively, followed by two digits. The second digit identifies the corridor or neighborhood served, generally following a counterclockwise pattern in the style of the old streetcars. For example, the D10 follows Pennsylvania Avenue SE to Southern Avenue SE, and the D90 follows Massachusetts Avenue NW to Tenleytown. The third digit is simply a means of distinction between routes in one corridor; routes ending with X indicate express service.
Formerly, most Metrobus routes in DC were named with a letter followed by a number or double-digit numbers. Historically, the pattern was that:
Odd-numbered routes were typically part-time variants of even-numbered routes. At one time, odd-numbered routes were express routes, but that distinction was later abandoned. Most odd-numbered routes operated during rush hours and/or limited stops with a few of them running into the off-peak hours and weekends.
Many current routes operate under former streetcar routes. The streetcars provided the main transportation in the Washington, D.C. area from the 1800s to the 1960s. DC Transit would also operate on the former streetcar routes when the Streetcars ended service. In 1973, WMATA acquired DC Transit along with other bus companies to form its current Metrobus system.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, service was mostly reduced to Sunday service schedules during the weekdays with select routes suspended from March 18 until August 22, 2020. Routes 54, 70, 90, A6, A8, B2, H4, S4, V4, W4, and X2 were the only routes that ran during the weekends with the rest of the routes suspended. On August 23, 2020, more routes came back during the weekdays and weekends returning Metrobus service to 75%. Most service and routes resumed on September 5, 2021.
In 2023, WMATA approved 24-hour service on 14 routes serving DC: A6, A8, B2, H4, S2, V2, W4, X2, 32, 33, 52, 70, 80, and 92.
On November 21, 2024, WMATA approved its Better Bus Network Redesign plan, which began development in 2022. Under the plan, all routes would be renamed with easier-to-understand route designations and would modify most of its existing routes to make the bus system easier to use, faster, and more reliable. The Better Bus Network went into effect on June 29, 2025.
Most DC Metrobus routes operate inside the Washington DC borders. However, some routes would venture into small parts of Montgomery County and Prince George's County to connect to various stations in the Hub-and-spoke system via the old Streetcar routing.
All routes listed below were eliminated or renamed into an C or D designation on June 29, 2025.
This table gives background knowledge of how routes were created and the overall changes it has gone through the years.
These routes were served by Metrobus at one point but have since been discontinued due to either low ridership, duplication of another route, simplification to other routes, combined into another route, low funding, or transferred to another bus company as it would be cheaper to maintain cost and for another carrier to operate the line. However some routes would be reincarnated into new routes for Metrobus. Examples of reincarnations were the 34, V7, and V8.