For
Washington, DC, there are a TON of bus systems. I'd guess within the US the only cities with more are LA, SF, and maybe NY. So this'll be a long post.
The main bus system is Metrobus. They have several liveries.
Here's the regular livery for a normal local bus. Also common on
articulated buses.
Metrobus has a series of limited stop lines, with their own brand called MetroExtra. It's the same as a local bus, except blue instead of red. These are BRT-lite: Fewer stops and single priority, but not special stations, pre-pay, or bus lanes (except in a few spots):
Metroway is the true-BRT brand. Metro
way because it runs in a busway.
Then there are a bunch of smaller bus networks all over the region. Basically every county-level government in the DC area operates its own more local bus network, on top of Metrobus.
In DC there's DC Circulator:
The biggest county-level bus network is Montgomery County, Maryland's Ride On.
Ride On has its own limited-stop BRT-lite brand, called Ride On Extra. You can see how it's heavily influenced by MetroExtra.
photo from ride on
Neighboring Prince George's County has The Bus:
photo from mw transit photos on flickr
Frederick has TransIT:
photo from bladensburg-burgerchefguy on flickr[/size]
The area sort of halfway between DC and Baltimore has the Central Maryland Regional Transit Authority, or RTA. RTA is sort of new and has a bit of a Frankenstein bus fleet so I'm not going to show them all, but here's their most distinctive:
photo from mw transit photos on flickr
Cross into Virginia and the biggest local system is the Fairfax County Connector, with its ketchup and mustard buses:
The City of Fairfax, which isn't actually in Fairfax County, has CUE. Fun fact: I was one of three people who designed this paint scheme.
Arlington has ART:
Alexandria has DASH:
photo from mw transit photos on flickr
Prince William County and some of the smaller jurisdictions nearby run the Omni system.
photo from mw transit photos on flickr
Phew. Those are the local public bus systems. I'm skipping all the various
commuter buses,
university shuttles,
intercity buses,
tour buses, tiny
bus-to-rail operators, and the absolutely endless litany of
private coaches. I'm also skipping a lot of
one-off special liveries or
single line liveries that would just make this a completely unreadable post.