America's Greyhound bus stations are disappearing
cnn.com
cnn.com
The airlines are critical to a big country like the US when our passenger rail networks are so slow, so the government supports it. They should also support bus networks etc. I suspect much of their road policy is designed to support Americans buying cars, the second biggest purchase next to a house that most people buy. It's very cynical.
How does this follow? If they're critical and highly subsidized, that implies the value that people get out of tickets is much higher than what they're paying, so people should be willing to pay much higher prices if subsidies are ended.
Not great places unless you are into smoking crack with homeless people and getting threatened or stabbed by them.
Partly because the bus station opened up in the 50s and remains in the sketchiest part of the city. There was rarely any real motivation to move them.
I used to take the bus several times a year between LA and Carson City NV. A 12 hour bus ride that would take me from scenic downtown LA and eventually drop me off in Carson City at a closed bus station at 5 in the morning. The driver was able to sell tickets to folks that were just standing by the highway at designated stops in the middle of the desert on the way up. We used to stop in Mojave for dinner at the cafe next to the bus shack^H^H^H^H^Hstation. I'd pick up cool Space Shuttle on 747 postcards while I was there.
Overall the folks weren't too awful on that bus, but it surely made for a long night.
It's not the worst (i.e. a southern bus station), some parts of Chicago are the worst. It's just a god awful shitshow. I had a blast when I did it, yes there were crackheads, but you can make new friends with crackheads. There was a 'hood lady I made friends with and a sweet old foreigner grandma type visiting her kid... who didn't speak english.. so I helped her get there what with the 8 hour bus delay, which might be related to stations shutting down
If no one drives me, I will never go back.
That's not good enough. It needs to be 99%. Look at the other stories in this thread. Even 5% is enough to avoid it.
Moreover, you come across as someone driven by ideology rather than honesty. You jumped straight into a cliched talking point about how the man is maliciously trying to keep poor people down.
That’s a pretty high standard considering the behavior of highway drivers. How do you get around, friend?
A lot of them sound like: "Ick, I saw poor people, never again will I subject myself to that. I now restrict myself to modes of transport too expensive for those poors to use."
There was a point in my life where I rode Greyhound and Megabus to save money. There's already very little dignity to be found in long-distance bus travel, and removing facilities where people can rest during layovers just drives what little remains completely into the dirt. But hey, it may be unraveling the fabric of society, but at least we increased shareholder value.
Greyhound will never go there for one reason: it has a bar that sells alcohol.
CTA also does not have a presence in Union Station for the same reason, so no subway/el or local bus presence.
Metra and Amtrak are alcohol-friendly, and I've seen people boarding Metra carrying open containers quite often.
There is a bar in the pedway between the lake redline stop and the Washington blue line stop for instance. And the merchandise mart has several bars and a brown line stop.
I’d guess that the CTA doesn’t have a presence at Union Station because of the way we carved up regional transit, not because of done alcohol policy.
I can either use Trailways or a two hour drive to Aurora Metra from where I live (I've grown to prefer Aurora). When Trailways stops at the Napierville Metra, the driver commonly says that anyone who enters the bar at the station will not reboard the bus.
Aurora is also absolutely superior when I need to use O'Hare.
To be clear the bigger problem is that Greyhound will have to cut service in Chicago dramatically - they really need a terminal to support larger operations, they can’t have dozens of buses sitting in the road. There will be a few routes that dump people on the street, but companies like Megabus will probably cut service entirely.
Somewhat relatedly, I was in London several years ago, and their buses had a logo that said "Arriva - a DB [Deutsche Bahn] company". I found it funny that the Germans managed to "rule" over England (well, London - well, their bus network) after all.
How does that work?
I mean... were the companies sold for less than the realestate was worth?
Anything with old real estate is subject to this. Massachusetts had a similar issue with selling off a bunch of the old Catholic hospitals. The company bought the hospitals, extracted the real estate, and now they're closing all the hospitals. Oops.