I used to like taking the bus, and over the past decades I took more bus rides into the big city than I can count. Greyhound was the carrier of choice, with a history of service going back to 1914 when a Swedish immigrant named Erik Wickman started a short service to take iron ore miners on a two mile trip. He gained two partners and expanded the line into what we have known today.
After major strikes, bankruptcy and several mergers and acquisitions, the company is now owned by a group that brought FlixBus to our area. Some time in-between the near total shutdown of public transit in 2020 and the present, the new company started paring everything down. This is where bus travel gets complicated.
I used to ride from a terminal in a town about twenty minutes from me. It was a pleasant building, and the wait was always as comfortable as the ride. Near the end of its life, the terminal even picked up monitors updating passengers on departures and arrivals.
The first thing to go was that bus terminal on which people depended for decades. It was abruptly closed; it was on the side of the turnpike, held a massive parking lot and was a hub to buy your tickets, get a cab, grab a snack or whatever you needed while going from one place to another. In the months when travel resumed, we stood forlornly in front of that terminal and looked inside, helplessly, at the huge potted plants which had been left to starve to death, their corpses on the floor like deflated party decorations.
The location of the operation was not actually moved as much as it was treated as an afterthought, since people had to board and depart from someplace. Busses began picking up passengers in the rear parking lot of a hotel across the turnpike from the original location. There was no ticket counter–and, in fact, no staff–and no seating or restrooms. The only positive thing about the new spot was the overhanging protection of solar panels throughout the lot, under which passengers could park their vehicles and stay dry.
This did not last long, however. As I noted in a prior post in the spring, I printed out my bus ticket in advance and brought it to the location to find that they had moved again and offered no information as to where they were, so I could not reach the new terminal in time to make my trip. The pickup and drop-off spot was moved, again, to a public bus stop hub some 15-20 minutes north, with no services and simply parking spaces and no clear place in which to queue up for departure. I was out the cost of roundtrip fare for something which was not my fault, as they refused me a refund.
Folks in Philadelphia are now facing the same inconvenience. The original terminal was located on a parcel of land near a spot which is now being considered for a sports complex within the city (why they simply don’t keep all the sports arenas in one zone, I have no idea). It had a ticket counter, vending machines and restrooms. The new location also has no personnel, no restrooms and no seating. Passengers mill about on an area of pavement on busy Market Street with no sense of purpose or belonging. Nobody wants to ride with a company which considers its passengers to be of so little value. The regional paper scathingly called the change a disgrace, and I agree with them, as do many passengers who board there and used to transfer to the terminal I once used to connect with other destinations.
So it appears that Greyhound bus passengers have now been abandoned. Nobody seems to care, and no future improvement seems to be in sight.
I suppose I should look at train travel.
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 
Bus to Nowhere
Posted at 4:54 pm by kayewer, on July 15, 2023
I used to like taking the bus, and over the past decades I took more bus rides into the big city than I can count. Greyhound was the carrier of choice, with a history of service going back to 1914 when a Swedish immigrant named Erik Wickman started a short service to take iron ore miners on a two mile trip. He gained two partners and expanded the line into what we have known today.
After major strikes, bankruptcy and several mergers and acquisitions, the company is now owned by a group that brought FlixBus to our area. Some time in-between the near total shutdown of public transit in 2020 and the present, the new company started paring everything down. This is where bus travel gets complicated.
I used to ride from a terminal in a town about twenty minutes from me. It was a pleasant building, and the wait was always as comfortable as the ride. Near the end of its life, the terminal even picked up monitors updating passengers on departures and arrivals.
The first thing to go was that bus terminal on which people depended for decades. It was abruptly closed; it was on the side of the turnpike, held a massive parking lot and was a hub to buy your tickets, get a cab, grab a snack or whatever you needed while going from one place to another. In the months when travel resumed, we stood forlornly in front of that terminal and looked inside, helplessly, at the huge potted plants which had been left to starve to death, their corpses on the floor like deflated party decorations.
The location of the operation was not actually moved as much as it was treated as an afterthought, since people had to board and depart from someplace. Busses began picking up passengers in the rear parking lot of a hotel across the turnpike from the original location. There was no ticket counter–and, in fact, no staff–and no seating or restrooms. The only positive thing about the new spot was the overhanging protection of solar panels throughout the lot, under which passengers could park their vehicles and stay dry.
This did not last long, however. As I noted in a prior post in the spring, I printed out my bus ticket in advance and brought it to the location to find that they had moved again and offered no information as to where they were, so I could not reach the new terminal in time to make my trip. The pickup and drop-off spot was moved, again, to a public bus stop hub some 15-20 minutes north, with no services and simply parking spaces and no clear place in which to queue up for departure. I was out the cost of roundtrip fare for something which was not my fault, as they refused me a refund.
Folks in Philadelphia are now facing the same inconvenience. The original terminal was located on a parcel of land near a spot which is now being considered for a sports complex within the city (why they simply don’t keep all the sports arenas in one zone, I have no idea). It had a ticket counter, vending machines and restrooms. The new location also has no personnel, no restrooms and no seating. Passengers mill about on an area of pavement on busy Market Street with no sense of purpose or belonging. Nobody wants to ride with a company which considers its passengers to be of so little value. The regional paper scathingly called the change a disgrace, and I agree with them, as do many passengers who board there and used to transfer to the terminal I once used to connect with other destinations.
So it appears that Greyhound bus passengers have now been abandoned. Nobody seems to care, and no future improvement seems to be in sight.
I suppose I should look at train travel.
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Author: kayewer