For more than 50 years, the Georgetown University Transportation Shuttle (GUTS) has served members of the Georgetown University and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital (MGUH) communities.
In order to strengthen GUTS for its next 50 years – and meet evolving public transportation, fiscal, and regulatory conditions – Georgetown has made recent improvements to bus routes and operational structures.
Context and External Considerations that Drove Changes
Given the deep expertise and significant, ongoing capital investment needed to run a transportation system, especially in a complex metropolitan area like Washington, DC, the university has partnered with a third-party provider. Abe’s Transportation, a company with a primary business focus of serving as a full-service transportation provider with a strong focus on safety, professionalism, and maintenance, will own, maintain, and clean the buses used by GUTS. In recent years, the university has directly operated and maintained 60% of buses in the GUTS fleet, while Abe’s has operated and maintained the remainder of the fleet in order to fully support the needs of the Georgetown community.
By partnering with Abe’s, we are able to continue to expand our service offerings and ensure community members have trusted and reliable transportation while strategically managing financial resources towards continued academic and institutional priorities.
We take seriously our responsibility to carefully manage the tuition dollars paid by students and their families. Georgetown University, like all institutions of higher education, is facing unprecedented threats to its financial model. As Interim President Groves announced in April 2025, this requires the university to make difficult decisions to limit spending and look for operational efficiencies to protect the academic and research mission of the university.
Recent Changes
As public transportation options in the region evolve and we expand routes and frequency of our GUTS service, we know that safe, efficient, reliable, and sustainable transportation is critical to our community.
In recent years, the GUTS system has added three new routes, while increasing the frequency of existing routes by 30%. As the university expands our presence at the Capitol Campus, we have simplified the route between the Hilltop and Capitol campuses and increased pickup frequency from every 30 minutes to every 20 minutes to reduce transit time between campuses.
Given these factors and increased demand as our community’s footprint has expanded, the university entered into a contract with Abe’s Transportation in early 2026 to operate and maintain the university’s full fleet of buses moving forward.
As a part of this transition, GUTS drivers – who are critical to the service offered by the university – were provided the option to remain as GUTS bus drivers employed by the university.
Improving Sustainability
Georgetown University is committed to reducing our carbon footprint, conserving natural resources, and promoting sustainable practices. Additionally, DC law requires that 50 percent of fleets be zero-emission by 2030 and 100% be zero-emission by 2045. The university’s contract with Abe’s Transportation is a significant step towards ensuring we will be able to operate a sustainable fleet.
Continual, direct operation of GUTS with expanded services and deployment of zero-emission fleets would require the university to make an estimated $60 million investment in capital costs to comply with legal requirements in 2030 and 2045. Buses owned and operated by the university would require specialized storage, charging, fire mitigation technology and maintenance facilities that the university does not currently have and that would require significant investment to design and build. Bearing this in mind, partnering with Abe’s to deploy a more sustainable fleet, contributes significantly to the university’s sustainability commitments.