“This bus station needs to be here"

October 9, 2024 1:58 AM

Intercity buses carry an estimated 60 million people annually — twice the number of people who take Amtrak every year — but companies have cut service and closed terminals in recent decades. Cities lost nearly one-third of intercity bus service between 1960 and 1980 and more than half of the remaining service between 1980 and 2006, according to Chaddick Institute research. Houston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Tampa, Louisville, Charlottesville, Portland, Oregon, and other downtown bus depots have shuttered in recent years. Greyhound and other carriers have relocated their stops far away from city centers, which are often inaccessible by public transit, switched to curbside service or eliminated routes altogether. from America’s Greyhound bus stations are disappearing [CNN]

Cities across the U.S. are abandoning bus stations. This East Texas town is embracing its bustling depot. [Texas Tribune]
What a Beautiful Bus Stop Can Do [Bloomberg]

posted by chavenet (44 comments total)

Philadelphia lost its bus station a while ago, and it was a real loss. The station in still there, but closed. I can't figure out why the city doesn't just buy it.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:55 AM on October 9 [3 favorites]

I can't figure out why the city doesn't just buy it.
They want it to become a basketball stadium.

Almost all of the intercity bus traffic in Philly is bolt bus/mega bus and the carriers seem to be ok with not having any terminal infrastructure at all. They were operating from the curb down the street from 30th street station and construction forced them to move to the curb outside the Spring Garden El stop. Neither of these spots has a bathroom and Spring Garden is only partially sheltered because the street goes under the station. There needs to be a real station for these busses.
posted by cmfletcher at 5:32 AM on October 9 [6 favorites]

Most US people don't even remember a transit system that was sort of OK. If I'm understanding the stats correctly, a typical city would expect to have today around a quarter of the bus service they had in 1960?

What a tragedy.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:39 AM on October 9 [10 favorites]

Boston built a brand-new, publicly-owned bus station as part of the Big Dig, and it's kind of awesome.

There's a quiet dignity and attention to detail in how the whole place is designed. Like an airport, as soon as you walk in the door there are LCD arrival/departure boards, and the entire station is divided into terminals which surround a central atrium which houses ticket counters for the major carriers and food options. Even though all the buses are all parked outside in a row, the terminals are further subdivided into numbered gates or "docks", one for each bus. Each dock has it's own cluster of waiting-area seats and a brightly lit LED sign which lists the bus company, destination, and departure time above a hefty-looking, oversized metal door which is opened for boarding.

Lots of people refuse to ride buses because there's a low-class stigma attached to them, but I think Boston is a great example of how you can overcome that by simply taking bus transit seriously: design stations to be functional and afford every departure with respect.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:41 AM on October 9 [51 favorites]

Lots of people refuse to ride buses because there's a low-class stigma attached to them,

I hear this take a lot, and I think (respectfully) that this is sometimes a "my philosophy trumps your reality" thing. I've been a dedicated bus rider off and on over the years, including intermittent intercity transit. I can't speak for anyone else, but my general experience of public transit is that it's lower quality now than it was 20-30 years ago. Part of that's the companies making profit-driven decisions, and part of it's the change in rider behaviors I see on transit in the U.S. Given an option, I'm less willing these days to travel in a bus/carriage with people vaping, listening to music/playing games on speakers, etc., etc. Public transit means being in community with people who aren't you, and goddamn the bar seems to be lower these days. It's true on airplanes, etc., but at least in my car, no one's filming me in the background of their Q bullshit reel. I don't fly often, but I do see flight attendants do things about obstreperous passengers regularly; I don't tend to see drivers/conductors doing the equivalent. YMMV, of course.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:04 AM on October 9 [16 favorites]

I know air travel generally sucks, but at least airports are designed to facilitate air travel. Intercity bus stations can be a single, sparse room or even just a sidewalk.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:05 AM on October 9 [2 favorites]

Oh, and also: they just closed the bus station in Richmond, VA. It's curbside or nothing, and there are no plans I have heard to build a new one. There is some increased energy around the train stations, though, if I recall correctly, including some increases in routes and speed (?) a few years out.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:10 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]

There was more comfort and dignity in my last megabus ride than my last Southwest flight.
posted by cmfletcher at 6:20 AM on October 9 [4 favorites]

I love buses, but I think the problem ended up being that bus stations don't make sense in the way train stations and airports do. Trains and planes require significant infrastructure at each stop, whereas buses need... a curb. There's no need for all the buses to come to the same spot (and give rise to the inevitable traffic snarls). More or less buses than you planned? You're either expanding your terminal or shuttering part of it. Once bolt bus etc. realized they didn't need to pay for a gate at the bus station and could pass the cost reductions on to their consumers, it was game over, at least in cities.

There are a few edge cases-- the Port Authority's dedicated bus ramps to the Lincoln Tunnel come to mind-- but unless municipalities decide to bar curbside stops, I can't see these coming back.
posted by phooky at 6:36 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]

Without an indoor terminal, travelers can’t use the bathroom, stay out of Chicago’s notoriously harsh winter weather or get something to eat while they wait. People transferring late at night or early in the morning, sometimes with long layovers, would have no place to safely wait. - from the CNN article

Intercity bus travel requires infrastructure, even if the bus itself does not.
posted by egypturnash at 6:45 AM on October 9 [20 favorites]

america seems fanatically deadset on destroying all public spaces even when they’re needed. i’m sure it’s a sign of progress
posted by dis_integration at 6:49 AM on October 9 [15 favorites]

My university will pay me back if I fly to an academic conference, but not if I drive, which, never mind. So over the years, I've developed the habit of taking Greyhound to conferences, which they will reimburse: if it's less than about 800 miles away, I'm on the dog. It's super fun, because here I am, this spoiled tenured academic, and on the bus I'm just Some Dude in a hoodie and jeans. It's just a completely different set of subcultures, so it's a neat experience. We take stops at these little towns I've never heard of, and there's usually some rando local food truck or chicken shack, and I get to talk with all kinds of people.

Las year, I had to fly due to a time constraint, and the whole time, I was like this suuuucks. In fairness, I was flying to Orlando, so both there and back it was the kind of adults who are Disney Parents, and damn, did I want to sit with a bunch of farm workers on a bus.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:57 AM on October 9 [27 favorites]

I know there must be commutes invisibly destroyed by this kind of thing. When I took a bus from the Port Authority to rural Pennsylvania, a bunch of construction workers got on, and one of them* told me that construction workers living in PA regularly took a 3-hour bus ride to and from NYC. I don’t know if that’s still usual, but housing prices sure have not gotten better in the meantime, plus I don’t know that they’re doing more building in and around Kunkletown, either.

—
* While drinking and infringing personal boundaries. When he got out at a rest stop, another worker told me: you’re gonna wanna move, he gets ugly when he’s drunk. I sure did. Still, it’s good to learn things.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:02 AM on October 9 [7 favorites]

I'm not a big fan of Greyhound, and the last time I took a long ride on one--an overnight from Memphis to Knoxville, TN--I couldn't get any sleep, which hindered my ability to participate in the program at the University of Tennessee that I was participating in. (Part of that was a fellow passenger who sang along with her music player for the whole fucking trip; people begged the driver to throw her off.)

But intercity buses are invaluable for serving travelers between cities that have no other intercity transportation options. When I was interviewing for my first library job, it was in a city nearly an hour's drive away and I had no car; being able to hop on a relatively inexpensive intercity bus was priceless. As recently as 2023, I used a bus to get from Des Moines to Davenport, Iowa, because I was dropping out of the RAGBRAI ride and needed to get to my car in Davenport, drive it back to Des Moines, and pick up my stuff from the charter service that I was using. As it happened, the bus stop in Davenport was one block from where I had parked. It was--not quite literally but close enough--a lifesaver.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:02 AM on October 9 [3 favorites]

Greyhound has been owned by Germany-based FlixBus since October of 2021. They are, of course, interested in profits above all else, and it is cheaper to not have a shelter or restrooms. So they are closing the old style stations and moving to curbside solutions a la Megabus etc. It is therfore incumbent upon municipalities to stand up the necessary infrastructure to support bus service with a focus on rider safety, comfort and convenience. This will probably require federal subsidies.

In Philadelphia it is a particularly awful situation because the city, as mentioned above, has done fuck-all to help the people dependent on these buses. They just keep moving them from one shitty place to another, and local civic associations are fighting tooth and nail to keep the bus station out of their precious enclaves. The right thing to do, of course, is to route all of the buses to 30th Street Station. NYC did it correctly with Port Authority and Philly should follow suit.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:21 AM on October 9 [7 favorites]

The Greyhound terminal in my city is in the process of completely shuttering. Buses are infrequent, the facilities clearly haven't been updated since the 90s, service delays of multiple hours are expected, and they blast classical music over the PA outside at ungodly volume to ward off homeless people.
posted by jy4m at 7:23 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]

Almost all of the intercity bus traffic in Philly is bolt bus/mega bus and the carriers seem to be ok with not having any terminal infrastructure at all.

Bolt and Megabus don't expect you to make connections. Greyhound does. (That said, I think Megabus would sell you a connection, at least they would fifteen years ago.)

The bus station in Oakland is derelict and makes me sad every time I pass it.

Minneapolis got a shiny new Greyhound station in the early 2000s (nicer than Boston, which honestly was unremarkable in my estimation, other than being big). I'm not sure what's happened to it.
posted by hoyland at 7:40 AM on October 9 [3 favorites]

Also, this post has made me realise just how many bus stations I've been to, as someone who takes an intercity bus maybe once every five years. More than I mentioned in the above comment. (I used to ride Megabus between Minneapolis and Chicago a bunch, but not for a decade.)
posted by hoyland at 7:43 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]

I remember when John Laroquette had a show set in the St Louis bus station. Having been to the actual one, it was amusing they thought it could support a diner.

Seattle used to have one downtown that had a restaurant attached. Now it is a tiny single room just big enough for a ticket desk, underneath the highway in SODO. It is right next to a light rail stop though. 🤔
posted by funkaspuck at 7:49 AM on October 9 [2 favorites]

I think we might be talking about the same station in Minneapolis, Hoyland. Per the Strib, it's actually owned by the city, but the half dozen times I used it were profoundly depressing. The sense I got was that the company has been trying to cut service for a while now, especially since busses also stop in St. Paul.
posted by jy4m at 7:54 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]

Three decades ago it was possible (and may still be, I haven't checked) for tourists to buy a month-long unlimited travel pass for Greyhound for just over $300. I bought two and explored the country by bus, picking a destination in the evening, travelling there overnight, and spending the day seeing the sights. It wasn't comfortable, particularly trying to sleep--I am tall, but was young and flexible back then, so I made it work. The experience was amazing. Bus travel gives you a sense of the geography, space, culture and people that plane travel literally passes over.

Two years later I tried the same thing but with an Amtrak pass. That was a mistake.
posted by Hogshead at 8:04 AM on October 9 [8 favorites]

I just spent six weeks traveling around northern Spain by bus. The stations are often nicer than the train stations, because they are maintained by local governments rather than by the inept national train service. The buses are clean, fast, and cheap, and will take you places trains won’t. It’s a reminder of how impoverished the US is in many ways, despite our immense GDP.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 8:34 AM on October 9 [16 favorites]

The reddit for Ottawa constantly has posts from people talking about MegaBus and Flix and whatnot and where are they stopping and why did it change from what was on my ticket and blah blah blah blah and it seems like the world does, in fact, require bus stations because the catch as catch can curbside service doesn't actually work that well, but since they no longer exist (ours is housing now, which we also need desperately) catch as catch can is all we have left. But that only works for passengers who are desperate to save money and yet adaptable enough to quickly change locations on the fly when trying to catch a bus.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:37 AM on October 9 [6 favorites]

Greyhound, owned by German company Flix Mobility (which also owns FlixBus), has sold its terminals to investors for lucrative redevelopment in recent years, including dozens to investment firm Alden Global Capital... Alden is best known for buying up local newspapers like The Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News and The Baltimore Sun, cutting staff, and selling some of their downtown buildings. Last year, a subsidiary of Alden, Twenty Lake Holdings, purchased 33 Greyhound stations for $140 million.

An aside: Watch the film "The Last Detail" for depiction of a fun-filled multimodal trip up the East coast in the 1970s, including a Richmond Greyhound station that relocated after the movie was filmed but was bought by Alden this year. (Feel free to skip the brothel scenes.)
posted by credulous at 8:41 AM on October 9 [3 favorites]

"America’s Greyhound bus stations are disappearing"!?

Why, they've been disappearing for a long time now. Bus stations used to be the height of gorgeous streamlined moderne design, but for example in 1976 the smooth, curving lines of the one in my home town of Washington DC was deemed to be too old-fashioned and it was covered up and hidden behind a horrible Mansard roof. (See it, and many other gems at Roadside Architecture.) Then in 1987 the station was moved to an inconvenient location; but in 1991 the original was restored and now it's a lobby to the new office building they put up behind it.
posted by Rash at 8:57 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]

Three decades ago it was possible (and may still be, I haven't checked) for tourists to buy a month-long unlimited travel pass for Greyhound for just over $300.

In 1975 Bicentennial promotions were starting to appear - I bought a seven-day pass from competitor Trailways which let me go everywhere coast-to-coast for just $76.
posted by Rash at 9:00 AM on October 9 [2 favorites]

The local, 60s, greyhound station closed when greyhound shuttered in Canada. But even that was awkwardly placed on the edge of a big box light industrial heavy commercial area. The old station was right downtown but couldn't handle modern coaches

The replacement service is curbside at the back of a old mall that doesn't even have a local transit stop. I really wish the city government would entice them to move to any one of the four dedicated transit hubs. Preferably the one two blocks from my house but the one at the University would probably be the most appropriate. The shortest frequency of city bus service is 20 minutes so there is lots of time to squeeze inter city service in at any of the bays.
posted by Mitheral at 9:18 AM on October 9 [3 favorites]

The Greyhound station in my hometown closed a little before the pandemic, prime downtown real estate I'm sure for somebody.

Still undeveloped five years later, its most useful feature these days appears to be as a windbreak for rough sleepers and tent campers.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 9:49 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]

When I actually lived in a city, I was leery of city buses because I have a terrible sense of direction and wind-y business routes can get me very confused, very quickly if I take the wrong stop. I'm actually sort of longing for the chance to try it out now that Google maps is a phone tap away -- I would not only be able to reorient myself on foot, I would be able to find public transit directions to get back on track! What wonders! (When I regularly took the bus, I had a top-of-the-line Motorola edge lmao.)
posted by grandiloquiet at 10:57 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]

That downtown land is super valuable with the price of urban real estate these days
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:40 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]

I rode the city bus to high school. As you can imagine in these United States, there was heavy historical segregation where I grew up. The bus was almost always a fine experience, with the occasional three card monty hustler trying to prey on the kids. Never violent even though it travelled from a "bad" area to a downtown area. It exposed me to a working class group distinct from my family's working class, which was a good experience. Shame to see those services shutting down...especially Greyhound, which was "travel of the last resort" when I was a poor newly separated veteran.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:10 PM on October 9 [2 favorites]

Per the Strib, it's actually owned by the city, but the half dozen times I used it were profoundly depressing

Man, if Ramp B is the place I think it is (i.e. where Megabus moved to when they stopped stopping opposite the Metrodome), it sucks. It's better than the side of the road, but the "waiting area" is really the elevator lobby of the parking garage and it's not easy to get to on foot.

Honestly, if the St Paul stop is on the light rail, you only really need one or the other.
posted by hoyland at 12:10 PM on October 9 [1 favorite]

Without an indoor terminal, travelers can’t use the bathroom, stay out of Chicago’s notoriously harsh winter weather or get something to eat while they wait.

I don't think the problem is "there is nowhere to go to the bathroom or warm up because the bus depot shut down"; the problem is just that "there is nowhere to go to the bathroom or warm up". We just keep demanding that our need for basic human infrastructure be met by our public transit systems, and only that. There should be public bathrooms and places to not freeze to death! Cities should be able to provide this! But instead, we put the onus of doing so on our public transit systems, and then complain that they attract the desperate. It's just so frustrating.
posted by phooky at 12:25 PM on October 9 [14 favorites]

That downtown land is super valuable with the price of urban real estate these days

Yep there's really no more to it than that. Vulture capital gobbling up every last damn thing. The company that is decimating bus stations is the same one that turned the iconic Tribune tower in Chicago into the shittiest condos an oligarch can buy to launder their wealth.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:47 PM on October 9 [3 favorites]

I have a friend in rural Kansas that I want to visit. there is not a bus station within 100 miles in any direction. Greyhound in the past year has alernatively, had many stops in Kansas, 2 stops in Kansas, some stops in Kansas, and then 3 stops. there are more than 3 now, but none near where I want to go. I was a faithful bus traveler in the late 70's and early eighties and back in those days as long as you had time Greyhound went EVERYWHERE. I grieve the loss of transportation options in this country. Fuck I hate some of the things in our modern world.
posted by evilDoug at 2:57 PM on October 9 [2 favorites]

We just keep demanding that our need for basic human infrastructure be met by our public transit systems, and only that.

Well, that and libraries.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:05 PM on October 9 [9 favorites]

I will say that, in towns that have Amtrak service, some of them are going with an intermodal station that serves both the buses and the trains (as well as city buses if they have those). In Bloomington-Normal in Illinois, they went from having Amtrak stopping in a dusty old depot located in the west side of Bloomington, near the once-mighty, now-somewhat-dilapidated train yard, to stopping near Illinois State University; eventually they built this station which also hosts city and intercity buses (and, apparently, the City Council). Champaign-Urbana (home of the flagship state university, University of Illinois) has a similar arrangement with the Illinois Terminal.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:34 PM on October 9 [4 favorites]

Reliability is another reason I think a lot of people don't use buses even when they are available. I travel between two midwestern cities a few times a year to visit family, and the one time I tried to take a Greyhound bus it was delayed by five hours. I was okay because I could just drive instead, but it totally destroyed any desire to try the bus again. And if the bus is your only option it must be hard to make plans when you don't know when you'll actually arrive.
posted by extramachine at 7:36 PM on October 9 [1 favorite]

I don't think the problem is "there is nowhere to go to the bathroom or warm up because the bus depot shut down"; the problem is just that "there is nowhere to go to the bathroom or warm up". We just keep demanding that our need for basic human infrastructure be met by our public transit systems, and only that. There should be public bathrooms and places to not freeze to death! Cities should be able to provide this! But instead, we put the onus of doing so on our public transit systems, and then complain that they attract the desperate. It's just so frustrating.

Both of these things are true. We need public restrooms and places to stay warm throughout cities. But we also need shelter and restrooms at transit terminals because one of the things you need to do when taking transit is be there when the bus / train / whatever shows up to collect you. If you're two doors down staying warm or staying out the sun, you might miss your connection.

In general this feels like an intermediary stage as we transition from "bus stations belong in low value urban centers" to "urban centers are high-value real estate with far better uses than bus stations, and transit belongs in dedicated, centralized transit facilities which facilitate easy multimodal connections." Private capital moves much faster than public money, so the "centralized transit facilities" will take longer to come to fruition, but hopefully they will get built and people will no longer be forced to huddle on the sidewalk, waiting for their bus.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:40 AM on October 10 [1 favorite]

Private capital moves much faster than public money, so the "centralized transit facilities" will take longer to come to fruition

That's because the city planning profession has devolved into meetings to gauge neighbors' feelings about things and futz with setbacks and floor area ratios instead of anything that has to do with planning or even caring what cities need. Man that profession is in serious need of a revolution.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:15 AM on October 10 [1 favorite]

There are all sorts of roadblocks to progress, but "what do the neighbors think" is probably the biggest one in urban areas.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:44 AM on October 10

I used to take a lot of Greyhounds in the late 90s and early 00s -- mostly going back and forth between NYC, Ithaca, NY, and Providence, RI. My first visit out to Washington/Oregon (from RI) was done via Greyhound in '98. At that time, the maximum price for round-trip Greyhound tickets was $99, if I remember correctly (not counting monthly ride-anywhere/anytime passes). There were individual tickets for each transfer, and each ticket was good for either 24 or 48 hours after the time printed on the ticket, so if one wanted to stop and hang out at one of the transfer points for a bit, and this let me spend a day in Salt Lake City on my way back from Washington. There were bus stations at most of the transfer locations, though the one in Cheyanne, WY, was not open while I was there, so that was about 10 hours of standing around on a sidewalk -- I don't recall there being much else in the area beyond an overpass, a hotel, and a fireworks store I could see off in the distance.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 10:34 AM on October 10 [2 favorites]

The fireworks store, hotel and overpass are still there!
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:13 PM on October 10 [2 favorites]

Reliability is another reason I think a lot of people don't use buses even when they are available.

Be interesting to see actual numbers on intercity buses vs airplane reliability over the last 50 years (to account for different regulatory enviroments and fortunes of bus and airline companies). I've taken both dozens of intercity bus and airline trips (in Canada) and never been delayed on a bus longer than the time it takes to have a pee but have been delayed and/or had my flight cancelled about 10% of the time I've flown (ironically cancelled flight resulted in bus trips most times). Cripes I once spent 2 hours on the apron after my flight arrived because we couldn't use the jet way and there was a thunderstorm in the area.
posted by Mitheral at 2:17 PM on October 10