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> "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

> "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.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yaomtc 3y ago
Why wouldn't transit advocates be in favor of more support for intercity transit?
- bluGill 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  > 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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
        > 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.
        3y ago
- asdajksah2123 3y ago
  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 3y ago
The article links Better Bus Coalition and Link Houston. https://betterbuscoalition.org/ https://betterbuscoalition.org/ https://linkhouston.org/about-us/ https://linkhouston.org/about-us/

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

yaomtc 3y ago

Why wouldn't transit advocates be in favor of more support for intercity transit?

bluGill 3y ago
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 3y ago
> 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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      > 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.
      - 3y ago
asdajksah2123 3y ago
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 3y ago

The article links Better Bus Coalition and Link Houston. https://betterbuscoalition.org/ https://betterbuscoalition.org/ https://linkhouston.org/about-us/ https://linkhouston.org/about-us/