[HN Gopher] Greyhound bus stops are valuable assets
___________________________________________________________________
Greyhound bus stops are valuable assets
Author : mooreds
Score : 54 points
Date : 2023-12-18 14:02 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| starkparker wrote:
| > Houston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Tampa, Louisville,
| Charlottesville, Portland, Oregon, and other downtown bus depots
| have shuttered in recent years. Bus terminals in major hubs like
| Chicago and Dallas are also set to close. Greyhound and other
| companies have relocated their stops far away from city centers,
| which are often inaccessible by public transit, switched to
| curbside service or eliminated routes altogether.
|
| The Portland depot closed two months before COVID arrived; the
| ticket booth moved one whole block south. Two years prior TriMet
| had tried to buy it and turn it into a parking depot for its
| buses and trains. The new curbside stop is closer to parking.
| Nothing moved more than two blocks from Union Station.
|
| The old 30,000-square-foot building became a 96-bed county-run
| homeless shelter, which the city needs a hell of a lot more than
| a bus terminal.
|
| https://www.portlandtribune.com/news/greyhound-station-to-re...
|
| https://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/2019/09/greyhound-moves...
| tclancy wrote:
| How does this single example disprove the claim?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Portland was part of the claim. So it at least disproves the
| claim for Portland.
| starkparker wrote:
| I never suggested it did. It's just significant context not
| in the article.
| chasil wrote:
| As far as Chicago is concerned, the obvious answer is to find
| room at Union Station.
|
| For some unknown reason, neither CTA ("The El" and subways) nor
| Greyhound/Trailways are directly connected to the Union Station
| building; each is at least a two block walk, with limited
| accessibility.
|
| Only Amtrak and Metra trains are inside the building. CTA does
| have a bus stop outside across the street.
|
| Putting everything into one facility would make it easier to
| use all of it.
|
| Edit: there are a couple of potential reasons for this. First,
| Amtrak likely does not want to compete with Greyhound on fare
| pricing. Second, adult beverages are sold within Union Station
| and Metra is particularly friendly towards them; Greyhound is
| very much not.
| jdeibele wrote:
| My daughters take FlixBus up from/down to Corvallis (Oregon
| State) and Eugene (U of Oregon) and the stop is a couple of
| blocks north of Union Station, as you say.
|
| I took a different bus to Eugene, The Point, where you buy
| tickets from Amtrak but the bus is run by a different company.
| The bus boards right outside Union Station in Portland. The
| nice thing for me was that I able to show a ticket for that day
| to the two security guards and was able to use the restroom.
| I'm not sure I could have talked them into it otherwise. I was
| dropped off at the Eugene Amtrak station where there weren't
| any security guards.
|
| I see restroom access as a competitive advantage but The Point
| only goes up and down I-5 so it's limited in appeal.
|
| https://www.oregon-point.com/
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| > "As Greyhound terminals close, transit advocates say the public
| sector needs to step in to play a larger role in supporting
| intercity bus travel."
|
| I wish the article would cite the transit advocates that are in
| favor of this.
| yaomtc wrote:
| Why wouldn't transit advocates be in favor of more support for
| intercity transit?
| bluGill wrote:
| That can be different from supporting these terminals though.
| Which is why a citation would be nice: so you can drill down
| into why they think this is bad. Maybe you disagree, maybe
| you agree, but until you understand the issue you cannot form
| an opinion. You may even agree with all their reasoning and
| still favor closing the terminals because there are
| considerations they are not considering.
|
| (I consider myself a transit advocate, but I'm not sure if
| I'll write up my thoughts: that would take a lot of
| time/effort to put into words. In any case you didn't ask
| that question)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Why wouldn't transit advocates be in favor of more support
| for intercity transit?
|
| The solution for intercity transit is obviously trains and
| aircraft. The primary disadvantage of intra-city trains is
| the expense of building a rail line to less traveled parts of
| a city, but nearly every city already has at least one
| intercity rail line.
|
| The reason intercity passenger trains aren't more popular is
| that Amtrak charges almost as much as a plane ticket costs
| but then gets you there much slower. Which is in part caused
| by low ridership, which subsidies for intercity buses would
| only make worse.
| pavon wrote:
| It's not just price. Amtrak routes cover a tiny fraction of
| the routes that greyhound does, and likewise only a
| fraction of cities/towns have airports. At least in the
| past, Greyhound was often bundled with Amtrak to complete
| trips.
|
| Many of the existing freight rail lines aren't suitable for
| passenger use even if there was demand to support them, and
| even if they were the are still tons of town with no rail
| passing through them. Using the highways we've already
| built and are going to maintain either way is more
| efficient than building out completely different
| infrastructures for public transit and personal
| transportation.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Eh. Amtrak has routes to most regions and Greyhound
| _doesn 't_ have routes to most ultimate destinations.
| Typical bus or train trips are you get a ride to the
| station from a friend or Uber and then the people you're
| visiting pick you up at the station on the other end. If
| the station on the other end is five minutes drive or
| fifteen minutes doesn't really matter, because it's too
| far to walk either way.
|
| The problem here isn't intercity transit, it's intra-city
| transit. But that isn't the one Greyhound solves.
|
| Low ridership is also the reason many cities with tracks
| don't have passenger routes.
| pavon wrote:
| > Amtrak has routes to most regions
|
| No it really doesn't, and even if it passes through a
| region, the routes are often pathological, like in the
| worst case a trip from Denver to Dallas having to pass
| through Chicago or San Francisco.
|
| > If the station on the other end is five minutes drive
| or fifteen minutes doesn't really matter, because it's
| too far to walk either way.
|
| That is very minor problem compared to the issue of the
| nearest Amtrak stop being literally hundreds of miles
| further away compared to the nearest greyhound stop.
|
| > Low ridership is also the reason many cities with
| tracks don't have passenger routes.
|
| There are other reasons, in particular that running
| freight and passenger trains on the same rails has many
| scheduling issues that makes the rails worse for both
| users.
| philwelch wrote:
| Intercity rail in the US only makes sense in a few places,
| mostly the corridor between Boston and DC where Amtrak
| operates the Acela. If Amtrak could just close down their
| long haul routes and operate Acela by itself, it would be
| profitable. There's also Brightline between Miami and
| Orlando and I wish them success.
| bluGill wrote:
| Intercity rail makes sense in a lot more places. If
| Amtrak was as competent as other operators around the
| world most of the US east of the Mississippi is similar
| density as Europe and could have great intercity trail.
|
| Rail across the US doesn't not make sense. Even North
| South the US is too big for rail to make sense. However
| there are a lot of shorter trips that would make sense
| via rail if the network existed and had competent
| operations. That Amtrak only makes money on the Boston-DC
| routes (or so they claim) more about their bad management
| and decades of bad decisions to not invest in making
| anything else worth using.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| It depends on the kind of transit advocate you are. To me it
| appears that with the amount of investment the government has
| already and continues to put into the automotive sector
| (building infrastructure, keeping laws that keep them pretty
| protected, etc), inter-city transit is handled pretty well by
| the private sector.
|
| You have all sorts of private inter-city bus services
| (megabus, boltbus, etc. and of course the Chinatown buses
| that have connected Chinatowns across the country for
| decades) that work pretty well to keep costs down and are
| pretty efficient.
|
| The government can step in to require certain minimum labor
| protections and safety and maintenance standards, but I don't
| think there's much need for govts to actually run inter-city
| buses.
|
| In larger cities with a lot of buses governments should
| create an open bus depot where all the different private
| operators can rent gates (much like an airport), so there's a
| centralized location where services such as food, drinks,
| taxi services, public transport, etc., but this could very
| easily be a profitable venture that would not require govt.
| support (other than requiring inter-city buses to use the
| depot).
|
| I'd rather have govt support other inter-city services where
| it currently does not put much investment in, such as rail.
| gbacon wrote:
| The article links Better Bus Coalition and Link Houston.
|
| https://betterbuscoalition.org/
|
| https://linkhouston.org/about-us/
| jewayne wrote:
| Next year, the youngest Boomer will turn 60 years old. As the
| Boomers age out of driving, the lack of other options is going to
| become a major political issue. The post-war babies still have
| enormous clout, and I highly doubt they will accept a total loss
| of mobility when they're no longer comfortable navigating busy
| stroads and highways. They will soon be the ones pushing for
| better intercity bus / passenger train options.
| bluGill wrote:
| They should be, but more likely they will just push relaxing
| driving standards so they can continue to drive despite not
| being safe. Same as nearly most other retirees are doing.
|
| Most retirees seem to drive less, but only a few have stopped.
| I don't think it has occurred to many that transit could be an
| option - unless they already live in a place where transit is
| useful and thus they are using it. Even then few seem to think
| they could get transit in other places they want to visit.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| For some of them who live in certain suburbs - like Plano, TX
| - they've likely lived most of their adult lives without ever
| actually _seeing_ public transportation, much less using it.
| jewayne wrote:
| Meh. I think those with means quietly vote with their feet,
| not quite aware of what they are doing. Have you ever been to
| / seen video of The Villages? Golf carts and pedestrians
| owning the street, with cars as guests. And this might be the
| most politically conservative place in America.
|
| Yes, they probably need an at least one experience of good
| intercity transit before they see it is possible, but now
| that the Brightline is running in The Old People Holy Land of
| Florida, many will have it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > more likely they will just push relaxing driving standards
| so they can continue to drive despite not being safe
|
| Statistics don't bear this out. The most unsafe drivers are
| the younger ones.
| kube-system wrote:
| Accident rates per mile bottom out during people's 60s and
| then rise again. Drivers 85+ are involved in accidents at
| rates similar to drivers in their 20s.
|
| https://www.iihs.org/topics/older-drivers#by-the-numbers
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Big difference between 60 and 85. But I do grant that at
| some point, people should give up driving if their
| vision, reaction times, cognative function, etc. do not
| allow them to do it safely.
| kube-system wrote:
| Yes, but the older end of the baby boomer generation
| being discussed is already starting to climb up in
| insurance risk according to those stats.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I certainly hope your optimistic take is correct, but I fear
| that they'll be pushing for more lax drivers' license exams
| instead.
| jewayne wrote:
| Well, we know how that will turn out, unfortunately. We will
| end that experiment when the body count gets too high.
| mcpeepants wrote:
| In my state at least, licensing requirements are already lax
| enough that my 94 year old relative has no problem
| maintaining (and, using) a valid license.
| jewayne wrote:
| How comfortable is your 94 year-old relative on a busy
| interstate, or worse, a 6 lane stroad? Just because
| somebody still has a driver's license doesn't mean they
| haven't lost mobility. Now, others have pointed out that if
| they don't have experience taking good transit, older folks
| wouldn't even think of using transit as opposed to staying
| home, which I have to admit has a ring of truth to it.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Have you taken a Greyhound across the country? I have.
|
| Put it this way: the boomers with clout are probably not
| accustomed to being around the folks that take the bus cross
| country. You meet people and hear stories that you wouldn't in
| other contexts. Whether that makes you uncomfortable or not is
| in you, but it's different than what I suspect most of us are
| used to.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > They will soon be the ones pushing for better intercity bus /
| passenger train options.
|
| Nah. Boomers mostly live in the suburbs, where mass transit is
| never going to work because there isn't enough density. But
| it's common for retirees to move once they no longer have any
| need to live within reasonable commuting distance of work and
| no longer need the three bedroom house because their kids have
| moved out. So they move to a retirement community in a low cost
| of living area and don't have to advocate for anything because
| those communities are already designed for that lifestyle.
|
| When they want to travel between cities they'll get on a plane.
| jewayne wrote:
| > When they want to travel between cities they'll get on a
| plane.
|
| You've only solved one leg of the journey. Even airports are
| going to be more accessible with good bus options.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Airports are accessible via Uber, which is only a fraction
| of the cost of the plane ticket.
|
| When you're visiting your kids you don't even need that on
| their end because they pick you up at the airport. When
| you're traveling the destination may not even be in the US
| much less the city or state where you have a vote on local
| transit systems.
|
| Also, that leg of the journey is the one served by
| Greyhound. Either way you have to get from the bus station
| or airport to your ultimate destination.
| kube-system wrote:
| Why would boomers do this if the silent generation didn't?
| Terr_ wrote:
| > As the Boomers age out of driving
|
| Tangentially, I believe anticipating that desperate customer-
| base is the #1 reason of the last ~15 years of investors piling
| onto "self-driving car" bandwagons.
|
| That's in contrast to the reason of "the appropriate technology
| finally exists to do it." Perhaps investments will _make_ the
| technology appear in time to catch that demographic wave... but
| I don't think it's guaranteed.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I'm not sure that Greyhound needs large bus terminals.
|
| A couple years ago, a canceled Amtrak necessitated me taking a
| very long Greyhound ride. I started at the Greyhound station in
| LA and got dropped off at a McDonalds in the very small town of
| Lordsburg New Mexico.
|
| Other than one bus transfer in Tucson all the stops were at gas
| stations or parking lots. Their terminals were actually much
| worse stops because people tended to congregate there and
| Greyhounds attract an _interesting_ group of people.
|
| It was a horrible experience overall, but the stops were very
| much not the problem.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree with you, but there is something
| to be said for considering this critical infrastructure. If the
| bus stops are going to be strip mined for the real estate
| value, then there should be some sort of agreement to find
| better termination points for this transit. In Chicago, Union
| Station and both Ohare and Midway airports come to mind, as
| they are multi modal and also have taxi and public
| transportation systems plugged into them already. You can hop
| on the blue line at Ohare or the orange line at Midway. Union
| Station plugs into Metra and Amtrak.
|
| If America has traditionally relied on the private sector for
| this (robust bus terminal hubs), we'll have to revisit the
| public sector delivering in its place. "Minimum Viable
| Infrastructure" or something like that.
| gbacon wrote:
| It's a decaying service that even a "stubborn transit
| user"[0] does not want. Propping up this zombie is actively
| harmful.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38686993
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Two questions:
|
| How do we continue to serve a transportation consumer
| population that can only afford bus tickets?
|
| If we decide to continue to serve this population, how do
| we do it in a manner consistent with developed world
| standards?
|
| If the zombie must die to be reborn, reasonable. But to
| double tap it in the head and these people go without long
| haul transportation seems untenable. And high speed rail
| isn't getting built any sooner than a decade from now. In
| the meantime, those not of means need long haul
| transportation to be solved for.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > How do we continue to serve a transportation consumer
| population that can only afford bus tickets?
|
| Where there's demand, there will be some service to
| substitute.
|
| In college and early in my career, I was too cheap to buy
| a flight ticket to NYC and too disorganized to book an
| Amtrak ahead of time, so I'd use the Vietnamese and
| Chinatown buses. Banh Mi was included.
|
| Most Little Saigons and Chinatowns are connected to each
| other by ethnic community run bus companies. They're a
| fraction of the price of a Greyhound and much cleaner.
|
| Low Income Latino and (back in Canada) Punjabi
| communities also have similar businesses running.
| yardie wrote:
| If you're talking about the Fung Wa it has been out of
| service for a few years. Maybe there is an even smaller
| operator running under the radar.
| adolph wrote:
| A bus company that arranges "virtual stations" with
| restaurants, gas stations, etc., will be less capital
| intensive and more flexible than one that builds out static
| infrastructure. That doesn't prevent partnerships for
| multimodal.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Assuming these arrangements aren't made and then not
| adhered to, I agree. Checks and balances, trust but verify,
| all that jazz.
| supertrope wrote:
| It depends on the motivation. Business decisions focused
| only on minimizing cost usually mean they choose to
| sacrifice quality. If an ad hoc network of locations is
| setup to enlarge the network, provide flexibility, or keep
| quality high it's a good sign.
|
| Greyhound is stuck as the transportation method of last
| resort. They are known for providing uncomfortable and slow
| trips so they cannot attract the type of customer who will
| pay more, which leaves them unable to invest in a better
| experience.
| bluGill wrote:
| Greyhound/bus customers do not want Ohare as the terminal. If
| they could afford a plane ticket they would just get on a
| plane, they don't want high priced parking. (there is still
| an hour through security, but they are already at the airport
| so time to get to the airport no longer counts).
|
| If they have access to good transit then they want the bus to
| pick them up with only a few transfers needed on local
| transit. Otherwise they want easy access for cars and free
| parking. Most places in the US do not have good transit
| options so that puts us into car territory and downtown
| generally has terrible car access. (Of course you used
| Chicago as an example - one of the few exceptions)
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Yes, people much prefer being dropped off in the parking lot of
| a smoke shop than an official terminal or building.
|
| It's also a great point that if it is an official building, the
| people who get on and off Greyhounds (who you don't like) will
| be there. But if it's not an official building, they won't ever
| find out that's where the Greyhounds are at, so they won't be
| there.
|
| I suppose since clean and secure drop off and pick up spots are
| completely out the window, the best solution is just to use
| some other miscellaneous location that can never be clean
| and/or secure.
| bluGill wrote:
| The greyhound terminals I've been to have been worse than a
| smoke shop. They were in run down locations in the bad part
| of downtown - well most US downtowns are bad parts of town
| after dark as they focus so much on office work that nobody
| is there after 6pm.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| You started at a Greyhound station in LA (that you probably
| could have gotten to via public transportation, but maybe you
| live near there or were close enough to uber or take a taxi) &
| were let out at a restaurant which, according to google maps,
| is a 10 minute walk from hotels, city hall and other points of
| interest. As horrible as your experience was, it was much
| better than what is being described in the article & what many
| riders have to go through.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| My experience at the LA Greyhound station was pretty
| miserable. It would have been just as good had it been at an
| existing train station, gas station, or somewhere else that
| is also reachable by public transit.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Terminals are pretty important for transfers if it's a hub.
|
| It's probably no coincidence that Los Angeles has a terminal
| and Lordsburg, New Mexico doesn't.
|
| If you're going from Las Vegas, NV to Palm Springs, CA, there
| are no direct Greyhound routes (that I could find). You're
| going to go to a hub city (like LA), get off the bus, and sit
| in the terminal a while before you board another bus.
| McDonald's doesn't want you doing that, and McDonald's might
| not even be open.
|
| However, Greyhound could save money on real estate by moving
| hubs to the suburbs. They could still have stops downtown in
| big cities, but have the bigger facility where land is cheaper.
| marssaxman wrote:
| The newer Flixbus service does not seem to believe they need
| terminals; their Seattle-bound buses simply pull up to the curb
| on a particular side street in Chinatown. It's a reasonable
| location, close to city transit stops and not far from the
| Amtrak station, but the only permanent infrastructure is a
| plain white sign reserving the spot for "charter bus" parking.
| I walked by the spot every day for a couple of weeks before I
| had any idea it served as a bus terminal!
| mauvehaus wrote:
| The Cleveland station is a stunning example of the Streamline
| Moderne style the article mentions. Highly worth a visit if
| you're in town:
|
| https://www.cleveland.com/life-and-culture/erry-2018/10/f6f3...
| mayormcmatt wrote:
| Thanks for presenting the term to that type of architecture:
| I've not known what's it's called and really, really love the
| look. Timeless, to my eyes.
| gumby wrote:
| TL;DR: Once again, private equity strip mines ifrastructure.
| gbacon wrote:
| Resources cease being infrastructure when demand for the
| services they're configured to provide falls far enough.
| bufordtwain wrote:
| Noel Philips' recent youtube video about his cross country
| Greyhound trip gives a realistic view of Greyhound. It's not at
| all flattering.
| paulette449 wrote:
| Travel YouTuber Noel Philips documented his experience on a long
| distance greyhound journey published a couple of weeks ago. ("I
| spent 5 Days on America's Longest Greyhound Bus. It was hell."
| [1]). Noel expressed huge empathy for the folks he shared the
| journey with recognizing that here is a desperate need for
| Greyhound's services, their customers tend to come from low/no
| income backgrounds and the company by and large treats them with
| contempt.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8QGTaGwxxc
| hbarka wrote:
| "Last year, Alden subsidiary Twenty Lake Holdings purchased 33
| Greyhound stations for $140 million. 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 the iconic downtown buildings."
|
| "Twenty Lake Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital,
| purchased 33 Greyhound stations from the U.K. conglomerate
| FirstGroup late last year."
|
| https://www.axios.com/2023/11/18/greyhound-alden-bus-station...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/21/firstgroup-...
| screye wrote:
| I don't see the article addressing how crime and homelessness
| play into downtown bus transit.
|
| Downtown greyhound terminals are the most consistently
| delipidated and crime prone (seeming) parts of the city.
|
| As a poor student, I took a ton of grey hound buses and the
| central drop off locations always looked shady.
|
| Big bustling cities would drop you in the middle of the city's
| worst poverty. While smaller crumbling cities treat the greyhound
| stop as homeless central.
|
| I'll say, my experience is more so in the North East corridor
| which is more densely populated and the bus networks are well
| used.
|
| As long as greyhound buses are the choice transportation of the
| drug addicted, there is no amount of sugar that will make them
| seem appealing.
|
| Even as an stubborn transit user, I have sworn off intercity
| buses in both the US and surprisingly Europe too. Just the smell
| is enough of a deterrent.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The article has some point, but to yours I doubt they point out
| how cities use intercity busses to dump homeless off on other
| cities:
|
| https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/democracy-now/clip/cities-giv...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| This seems like bad policy, because it's my prediction that
| highway self-driving and EV drivetrains will make intercity
| bussing much cheaper. The transport / fuel costs will be 1/2 to
| 1/3, the labor cost will probably drop from some amount of
| automation, and the repair/maintenance costs of EV drivetrains is
| a lot lower.
|
| The recharge time isn't a big deal with passenger transport,
| since there is the station dropoff/pickups and the stops at
| places to eat.
|
| With some degree of good highway self driving or remote driving,
| you could even use smaller vans that are less capital intensive.
| Or even an intercity car service.
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