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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 th

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38686993
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      > 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 3y ago
        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.
        alephnerd 3y ago
        There are multiple operators, not just Fung Wa.
      - xg15 3y ago
        So an intractable maze of tiny, locally run transport services (all separate and disconnected of course) along with a huge portion of hope that someone will build something. I don't know, but I wouldn't want to plan a trip, let alone a commute in that kind of environment.
        alephnerd 3y ago
        They're pretty well known if you're in the community and have been operating since before I was born.
      - lmm 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- adolph 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    Assuming these arrangements aren’t made and then not adhered to, I agree. Checks and balances, trust but verify, all that jazz.
  - supertrope 3y ago
    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 3y ago
  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)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mickdeek86 3y ago
    I routinely take a suburban or regional bus to and from O'Hare. It's way better than driving/parking and a Lyft from the suburbs automatically costs at least 50$, and I don't really give a damn about easy car access since I don't have one anyway. Incidentally, most American airports where I've ever looked do have decent bus service with or without a rail transit system, you just have to look/ask for it.
  - RandallBrown 3y ago
    > If they could afford a plane ticket they would just get on a plane For destinations with major airports it appears to be cheaper to fly than to bus, and that's before you consider the fact that a 24 hour drive with multiple transfers is only a few hour flight. The reason people are taking Greyhounds is because they're going somewhere that other transportation doesn't serve.
  - kevinventullo 3y ago
    Ohare also has a blue line stop. If you’re inside the terminal, you can get to many many parts of Chicago for free.
jklinger410 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  I don’t think he was complaining about the stations so much as the experience of riding a greyhound. Greyhound buses are invariably unpleasant in a variety of ways in my experience.
adrianmonk 3y ago
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 3y ago
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!
- sickofparadox 3y ago
  Going to their website and comparing it to Greyhound it appears that both of these services offer the same exact busses with the exact same prices. The websites are even identical. Are you certain this is a new service and not just a greyhound reseller or rebadged greyhound offering?
  - Taikonerd 3y ago
    Flix SE acquired Greyhound Lines Inc in 2021.
notatoad 3y ago
they really do need terminals at interchanges. not so much at the stops that are just stops. i used to take greyhound pretty frequently on one of these gas-station milk runs, and it worked okay. but when you've got a place where multiple routes converge, you've got to have some way to handle the scenario where bus A doesn't arrive at the exact same time as bus B or bus C. and beyond that, not having a comfortable and safe place to wait just ensures that bus service is only used by people who don't have any better option.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > ensures that bus service is only used by people who don't have any better option. This is more or less my impression of Greyhound already.
  - notatoad 3y ago
    Yes, because most greyhound stops have been undignified places for a long time
cjohnson318 3y ago
I had a layover of several hours in the middle of the night, in the dead of winter in Indiana, and it was very, very nice to have terminal to wait around in. The only thing open for a couple of blocks was a White Castle. If I had to hunker down for four hours outside in the snow, with everything closed, in sneakers and a light jacket, it would have been pretty rough.
Fatnino 3y ago
Amtrak basically sells mostly coach bus trips rather than train trips anyway.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38686993
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    > 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 3y ago
      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.
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        There are multiple operators, not just Fung Wa.
    - xg15 3y ago
      So an intractable maze of tiny, locally run transport services (all separate and disconnected of course) along with a huge portion of hope that someone will build something. I don't know, but I wouldn't want to plan a trip, let alone a commute in that kind of environment.
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        They're pretty well known if you're in the community and have been operating since before I was born.
    - lmm 3y ago
      [flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
adolph 3y ago
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 3y ago
  Assuming these arrangements aren’t made and then not adhered to, I agree. Checks and balances, trust but verify, all that jazz.
- supertrope 3y ago
  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 3y ago
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)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mickdeek86 3y ago
  I routinely take a suburban or regional bus to and from O'Hare. It's way better than driving/parking and a Lyft from the suburbs automatically costs at least 50$, and I don't really give a damn about easy car access since I don't have one anyway. Incidentally, most American airports where I've ever looked do have decent bus service with or without a rail transit system, you just have to look/ask for it.
- RandallBrown 3y ago
  > If they could afford a plane ticket they would just get on a plane For destinations with major airports it appears to be cheaper to fly than to bus, and that's before you consider the fact that a 24 hour drive with multiple transfers is only a few hour flight. The reason people are taking Greyhounds is because they're going somewhere that other transportation doesn't serve.
- kevinventullo 3y ago
  Ohare also has a blue line stop. If you’re inside the terminal, you can get to many many parts of Chicago for free.

jklinger410 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago

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 3y ago
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.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
I don’t think he was complaining about the stations so much as the experience of riding a greyhound. Greyhound buses are invariably unpleasant in a variety of ways in my experience.

adrianmonk 3y ago

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 3y ago

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!

sickofparadox 3y ago
Going to their website and comparing it to Greyhound it appears that both of these services offer the same exact busses with the exact same prices. The websites are even identical. Are you certain this is a new service and not just a greyhound reseller or rebadged greyhound offering?
- Taikonerd 3y ago
  Flix SE acquired Greyhound Lines Inc in 2021.

notatoad 3y ago

they really do need terminals at interchanges. not so much at the stops that are just stops. i used to take greyhound pretty frequently on one of these gas-station milk runs, and it worked okay. but when you've got a place where multiple routes converge, you've got to have some way to handle the scenario where bus A doesn't arrive at the exact same time as bus B or bus C. and beyond that, not having a comfortable and safe place to wait just ensures that bus service is only used by people who don't have any better option.

sokoloff 3y ago
> ensures that bus service is only used by people who don't have any better option. This is more or less my impression of Greyhound already.
- notatoad 3y ago
  Yes, because most greyhound stops have been undignified places for a long time

cjohnson318 3y ago

I had a layover of several hours in the middle of the night, in the dead of winter in Indiana, and it was very, very nice to have terminal to wait around in. The only thing open for a couple of blocks was a White Castle. If I had to hunker down for four hours outside in the snow, with everything closed, in sneakers and a light jacket, it would have been pretty rough.

Fatnino 3y ago

Amtrak basically sells mostly coach bus trips rather than train trips anyway.