Last week, 11 jurors reviewed the ideas you submitted to MetroGreater and selected finalists. Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld is reviewing and approving their selections now. We’ll announce the finalists later this week.

MetroGreater jury members

Meet the jury

The jury was charged with identifying the top 10 ideas for the public to vote on. We set out to create a jury that included both professional and community-based transportation leaders. We wanted to bring together a group that could both answer specific, technical questions about the feasibility of certain ideas and also effectively represent riders’ interests.

The eleven jury members who gathered last week settled on a slate of finalists that captured the spirit of the contest and the diversity of ideas you submitted. Here’s who participated in the jury:

David Alpert - Founder and President, Greater Greater Washington

Lynn Bowersox - Assistant General Manager, WMATA

Aimee Custis - Managing Director, Coalition for Smarter Growth

Ronit Dancis - President, Montgomery County Action Committee for Transit

Allison Davis, Manager, Regional Planning, Office of Planning, WMATA

Sarah Guidi - Managing Director, Greater Greater Washington

Lessie Henderson - Prince George’s Advocates for Community Based Transit

Barbara Hermanson - Chair, Riders Advisory Council and representative from Alexandria

Albert Himes - Manager, Service Development, Office of Bus Planning & Scheduling, WMATA

Graham Jenkins - WMATA Riders’ Union (formerly)

David Stephen - Communications Coordinator, Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 689

How do you get from 1,380 ideas to 10?!

We were thrilled to see so many ideas come pouring into the contest. But narrowing those down to a slate of 10 finalists was a process.

Greater Greater Washington did a preliminary review of all 1,380 ideas to eliminate any ideas that were clearly not feasible within six months for under $100,000. Then, we categorized each submission and grouped similar ideas to identify duplicates. There were a lot!

To determine which one submission should move on among many similar ideas, we looked for the earliest and most actionable idea. Through this preliminary review we narrowed down the submissions from 1,380 to 172 and sent those along to WMATA to be vetted to make sure they were feasible in under six months and for under $100,000. WMATA returned 76 ideas for the jury to consider.

MetroGreater jury in action

Over two-hours, through a combination of small group activities and full group discussions, the jury reviewed these 76 ideas and selected a slate of finalist ideas that would provide a benefit to riders, were creative, could be easily understood by the public, and were doable by Metro. General Manager Paul Wiedefeld is reviewing and approving these ideas now.

What’s next?

Once we hear back from Mr. Wiedefeld, we will contact the owners of the finalist ideas by email to share the good news and give them a chance to provide additional information about their idea.

Later this week, we’ll announce the finalists on Greater Greater Washington and MetroGreater.org. At that point, the public can begin voting on their favorite idea.

Stay tuned for the finalist announcement and voting details later this week!