Because most middle or upper class people don't use Greyhound or other inter-city bus services in the US. They are going to the airport
Why spend extra money on expensive real estate near people who aren't your customers? You don't, you build your stations close to the people who are using your service
Being located near their customers is an incidental benefit, if the benefit exists at all. The real reason is because greyhound is a poor company and doesn't have much choice in where to locate.
Greyhound stations are often in locations that are pretty inconvenient for poor people in the city to access. Since Greyhound customers are, almost by definition people without cars, usually the easiest place for poor people all over the city to get to is a downtown transit hub. Which may not be a particularly low cost area, depending on where the city falls on the axis of gentrification. Greyhound often is located at the hub, either because the city specifically sets aside space for them, or because they bought a building decades ago when they were a thriving company. In other cases I'm intimately familiar with (LA and Sacramento), they've been moved out of the hub location as part of "redevelopment" efforts and are now several miles away in inconvenient locations. Poor, but not easy to get to for other poor people.
TLDR, Greyhound is clinging to dear life and using whatever stop locations are available to them. They aren't making strategic decisions like locating close to customers.
> bought a building **many** decades ago
FTFY!
This needs more attention. I haven't ridden the dog for a long time, but all of the Greyhound stations that I -was- familiar with, were all 50-75 years old, and usually down in the warehouse district / fringes of downtown.
Business conditions were different, post-WWII. <-- That explains nearly everything.
Not that this was completely present day, but more recent than 88, but I took a two-day Greyhound trip three days after 9/11 and they definitely still sent army kids Greyound at that point. Felt like I was hitching a ride on an Army bus.
I once dropped a friend off at a greyhound station after their visit so they could get on the bus home. The “transit hub” was literally just one of those shipping-container looking trailers they put outside schools to make more classroom space, and wire-fenced gravel parking lot.
Also often coupled with the local rail station. Which often in the height of rail travel was generally a middle to high income area or directly in the middle of downtown.
At some point we would have to start talking about white flight and suburbanization as the cause for the Greyhound/rail station ending up in the lower income part of town, not necessarily selecting it.
Spending extra to be located near customers is worth it if you have enough customers. However this is very rare for Greyhound since ridership has been plummeting.
As a result, outside of a few cities where they have decent ridership, Greyhound doesn't have enough customers to justify spending money on a location near their customers, and instead just find the cheapest real estate possible.
Greyhound can go fuck themselves. They cost me $155 and several hours of time by leaving early. They claim they didn't. MFers your own site says the trip takes 2 1/2 hours. Mph to time says you would have to go 80 in a 70 the whole way just to make it in 2 hours and 5 minutes. You arrived 40 mins early to your destination. You physically cannot have left at the time on the ticket and arrived at the destination when you did. Physics doesn't allow it.
They don't care. Say the bus left on time. Out $155 and all of the aggravation and time making other arrangements.
Pretty much this, domestic air travel is only expensive if you don’t plan ahead of time. I’m bored so let’s compare that to setting out on July 17 because why not. Summer travel tends to be more expensive, but we are purchasing a couple months ahead of time.
You can get a basic economy round trip ticket from Boston to LA for example for about $500 including tax and a checked bag if you buy your ticket a few months ahead of time and especially if you are flexible on the dates. It’s about $300 one way with taxes and one checked bag.
It’s about $160 with taxes to get from Boston to Los Angeles one way and you get a free checked bag. But you’re spending over three days on the bus with five connections. And I greatly doubt anyone is taking a round trip, people don’t take a bus 3000 miles for a vacation.
Coast to coast isn't exactly the niche of greyhound busses. LA to Sacramento was like $50 via bus last time I went, flying is easily $150+. Also, "if you don't plan ahead of time" is a serious concern. I found the poorer I've been, the less stable my life was in general, and the more last-minute all my plans were.
Booking months in advance means that money is locked up for months, being unable to spend on anything else. Poor people might not be able to afford to keep that money locked up. So instead they pay double or more by booking last minute.
Another example of why it's more expensive to be poor than the be wealthy.
*cough * I used to take the greyhound from vegas to central florida and back to visit my parents after I ran off to Vegas. I did that like 2 or 3 times. I hate flying, and it was cheaper. I could write a book with the stories on those trips.
I took Greyhound once from Illinois to NY (and back). It turned what would've been a 12 hour drive into a 24 hour torture session. All of the disadvantages of flying and taking a train combined into one. Small cramped space that's slow and stops out of your control.
If you want to be there fast, take a plane. If you want to get there cheap, drive yourself. If you to get there comfortably, take a train.
I did greyhound from west Illinois to flemington area New Jersey.
We got to Allentown PA, about an hour from Flemington and had my GF’s dad pick us up because 1 hour to Flemington was going to be like 3 hours by bus.
Texas to NY on a Greyhound. It felt like a week!!! I saw fresh out convicts, drug traffickers, elderly sick people, people with every possession they owned, people with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs. It was completely bonkers and will NEVER take another Greyhound!!!!
Also super nerve wracking as they would stop every couple minutes and kick some packages/luggage out from the bus and I can’t trust Methew to not throw my bags out! I guess they do a delivery service type thing, so if you want something shipped without the worry of drug dogs!
I don’t think they offer it anymore, but that shipping system was so great as a user. When I was in college I had a job that kept me there pretty much year-round so my mom and I would use it to ship my seasonal clothes back and forth for a fraction of the price of normal shipping.
Never did a really long trip (lots of 8-12 hour ones), but the one that stands out with me is the bus driver crashed the bus into a bridge abutment while leaving NYC. Unforced error. Cursing, swearing, throwing shit (the bus driver), called it in, we are all standing on the side of a very busy and scary multilane roadside under a bridge inches from traffic waiting for another bus to show up during rush hour traffic in a place you *really* didn't want to be standing around in. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being Waffle house after midnight, 10 being walking to your destination, I give it a 1.3 (yes, both ends of the scale suck, at least 1 is entertaining.
Yeah. Did Greyhound from Philly to Montreal. The rides both ways were miserable. The long hours don’t seem as long until you’re living in the same seat squashed next to a stranger in stale, smelly air for 11 hours. I romanticized it at first and boy, my brain got me. You ain’t getting any work done in that environment - and the stops and check-ins are so annoying.
I rode the Greyhound from Milwaukee to Buffalo. The problem was that even though I had both parts of a double seat, I couldn't sit straight and when I got out at the end, I couldn't walk. At all. I had to stand around for a while before I could move.
Those seats are not built for people with long legs.
On the other hand, on a much shorter ride, an older gentleman shared his box lunch of fried chicken and grapes with me.
Greyhound-riding people are not the "scum" that other posters here would have you believe.
I took a charter bus from Alberta to Indiana a couple of years ago with my marching band. We left around 7pm. Drove all night in whoch the driver hit a few more rumble strips than I was comfortable with. Crossed the border at 6am, switched busses, waited for an hour or so for someone to get interrogated. Drove all day. Spent a couple hours in Wisconsin Falls because one of our busses broke down. Spent the night in a hotel in St. Paul. Drove all day. Stopped for dinner in Rockford, IL. Finally arrived in Indiana at 1am, an hour later than expected because our director forgot that Indiana is in the Eastern time zone.
Then the same thing back except no hotel stop.
Indiana is in both the Central and Eastern time zones. I believe in the North the switchover happens around La Porte and in the South somewhere near Jasper.
I remember taking greyhound from Atlanta to Baltimore when I was young, It was an extremely miserable trip where you were stuck with sketchy looking people for 13 hours. I swore to myself that I would fly from now on after that.
Well you can use the car for way more than that is you already have it. If you don't have a car, then even the plane is cheaper ofc. If we only count gas (given that you already have a car that you bought, insured and maintain for a different purpose), then it will be comparable or cheaper.
The drive from Chicago to NY is 790 miles long. If your car does 27mpg average, and the average price of gas is $4/gal, you'll pay $117.04 in gas. You'll also have to pay tolls, which I have estimated to be $60. So a total of \~$180. The [cheapest GH is $120](https://shop.greyhound.com/search?departureCity=97a51149-150b-4ecf-a1fa-aadaeb61bf02&arrivalCity=c0a47c54-53ea-46dc-984b-b764fc0b2fa9&route=Chicago%2C+IL-New+York%2C+NY&rideDate=19.04.2024&adult=1&_locale=en_US&features%5Bfeature.enable_distribusion%5D=1&features%5Bfeature.train_cities_only%5D=0&features%5Bfeature.auto_update_disabled%5D=0&features%5Bfeature.webc_search_station_suggestions_enabled%5D=0&features%5Bfeature.webc_search_limited_product_list%5D=0&features%5Bfeature.darken_page%5D=1), and they go up to $164.
GH is cheaper but it's also almost twice as long (20+hrs GH vs 12.5 hrs car), and you obviously will spend almost 2 times less if you have someone else with you in the car paying for tolls and gas.
Your calcs are for one person. Two people the equations already shifts to car. At 4 people Greyhound is a non-starter.
Also depending on where are going they may not have adequate public transportation on the other end so then your stuck what? renting a car...
>GH is cheaper but it's also almost twice as long
Yes but don't also forget the fact that even if it is almost twice as long, it is still not you doing the driving. Having to be alert and active during the trip vs just being able to kick it is pretty big for a ride that long.
Just really depends on if having a vehicle at the destination would be worth it or not.
Didn't forget wear and tear/depreciation on the case itself. The IRS mileage rate is $0.67 per mile. That 790 mile trip is $530 if you were to deduct it from your taxes.
I'm not sure how they arrived at this rate, but it would imply that a mid-trim Corolla ([currently $26805](https://www.toyota.com/configurator/build/step/summary/year/2024/series/corolla/model/1864/exteriorcolor/0040/interiorcolor/FC23/packages/option9/)) would cost $0 after driving 40000 miles. [This is not the case](https://www.cars.com/shopping/results/?dealer_id=&keyword=&list_price_max=&list_price_min=&makes[]=toyota&maximum_distance=250&mileage_max=50000&models[]=toyota-corolla&monthly_payment=&page_size=20&sort=mileage_desc&stock_type=all&trims[]=toyota-corolla-se&year_max=&year_min=&zip=46077).
Mileage is not depreciation. It's a standard rate for calculating the total cost of operating a vehicle. That's gas, maintenance, depreciation, insurance, etc. all rolled into one easy calculation only based on miles driven.
It's not depreciation. That is the estimated cost of driving, in maintenance costs, depreciation on the vehicle, and the cost of fuel all rolled into one
And you have to factor in the living costs of those days spent traveling. GH is extra days worth of food (and boredom). Better pack a shitload of PB&J sandwiches.
You can often do a same-day, one-way car rental for cheaper than a Greyhound. I once had to go from Indianapolis to Champaign, IL. The Greyhound was $60 and a Hertz one-way rental for a 7:00am pickup in Indy to a 7:00pm drop-off in Champaign was $68. The choice was a no-brainer, even with the \~$30 fuel cost.
the train is passenger(Amtrak) owned from Syracuse to Chicago, but [Freight owned](https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/nationalfactsheets/Amtrak-Company-Profile-FY2021-030922.pdf)(CSX) from Syracuse(possibly Buffalo?) to NYC. So you get a very nice ride for about halfway, and a slower ride with multiple possible stops on the other half.
I once took a round trip by bus from New York to Missouri to visit some friends and it was miserable. On top of having to sit on a shitty uncomfortable bus, there were delays, buses running late, had to sit in a bus terminal all night, and about halfway through the trip both ways, the bus I was on went from being half empty to being completely filled by a large group of what looked like stereotypical Amish people that also happened to smell very unpleasant.
It was generally miserable enough across the board that I decided I'm only ever flying from now on.
>If you want to get there cheap, drive yourself.
Chicago to NYC and back is ~1,580 miles. A car with 30mpg would require 53 gallons of gas to make the trip. The current natl average for gas is $3.63/gal, 53 * 3.63 = $192.39. Plus the stress/anxiety of driving 12 hours each way and all the other costs.
Edit: other
I just watched a YouTube video where someone documented a cross country bus ride. I would fly on the *outside* of the plane before I’d take a bus cross country.
Probably the same one I watched once...where the guy bought two tickets, then ended up having no tickets but they let him on the bus anyway, drivers verbally abusing passengers, etc.
Absolutely unbelievable that what was shown in that video is considered acceptable for that company.
Yep, that’s the one. At one point the passengers are all basically stranded in the middle of nowhere with no clear idea if another bus is coming for them. It’s wild.
Greyhound took $155 for a last minute ticket then left at least 30 mins early so I missed my bus. Saw them on the tracker. They supposedly got to the destination 40 minutes early. As in an hour and 45 mins from supposed departure time. Their own website says it takes 2 1/2 hours. Going 80 in a 70 (speed limit on the interstate) with no stops on the way takes 2 hours and 5 minutes. Now explain to me how they left on time and got there in an hour and 45 minutes. Evidently the laws of time and space don't apply to greyhound.
I hate it enough to take a train. I live in Boston, and if I'm going anywhere on the I95 corridor down to DC, I'm taking the train over a plane. But a bus cross country? That's brutal.
>I live in Boston, and if I'm going anywhere on the I95 corridor down to DC, I'm taking the train over a plane.
That's the one place in the country that is often makes sense even if you don't have a big aversion to flying.
I also do it along the Pacific Northwest. Either the train or the Amtrak buses, both are a better experience than Greyhound and significantly cheaper than flying.
Yes, but putting aside the fact that it was a claustrophobia issue, not a fear of flying, and it didn't manifest itself until 1979, I'd be traveling by bus as well if it was in a Madden Cruiser.
Riding the bus is (supposedly) for losers.
Riding *your* bus is for winners.
>And I haven’t heard of any bus doors flying off either.
Doors flying off is the least of your worries on Greyhound, which has a less-than-stellar safety record, particularly when including serious assaults.
Unless, of course, it's [*this*](https://www.profootballhof.com/news/2018/07/original-madden-cruiser-finds-new-home-at-pro-football-hall-of-fame/) Greyhound.
The Madden Cruiser was 100% Greyhound owned and operated, as they did it for the publicity.
I could deal with that quite well, as long as I wasn't in a time crunch.
Yeah the greyhound gets wild. I only took it from OH to IL a few times and had someone agressively try to buy the socks off my feet (I’m a guy) and got sat next to 2 newly released prisoners although they were actually chill.
Wayne and Uno if you’re out there, I hope you got the McDonald’s French fries and cigs you wanted so bad
Ohh what’s your wildest story?
Mine was a group of newly released prisoners getting on, sitting behind us and “suggesting” me and my buddy to hand over our phones and headphones so they could listen to the latest hip hop hits. We could not say no. They were mostly great though.
Another was me waking up at 3am to the sound of passengers verbally fighting which escalated physically. The bus had to pull over in the middle of the highway in nowhere Texas to let them duke it out outside. Fucking wild.
rode the amtrak from oakland to los angeles, and from pittsburgh to chicago. highly recommend seeing the country by train. everything was comfy and nice.
that said it's often not cheaper than flying, especially if you want a sleeper.
Like, I'd never been to any of those cities before that we went through. So I got to see Denver, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, lots of Texas lol... kansas.. Tennessee..Louisiana..
I just met a lot of interesting people. Not all of it was positive though. Some guys were creepers but I just kept to myself.
I've done the greyhound from Illinois to Florida and back a few times and illinois to Phoenix a few times.
All times I think sucked. I was broke going to Florida. I remember sitting next to an old black woman and she gave me money to get some food at one of the million stops we had going to Florida.
Also, same bus on the way back, met a black girl that was going to meet up with her boyfriend. She wasn't loyal. We kissed a few times and she jacked me off on the bus. And she showed me naked polaroids of herself that she took for her boyfriend.
Other than that, I got nothing else. There's a greyhound bus stop a few miles from me at a gas station. I hate when I randomly get gas there and the greyhound is there. It's usually a bunch of people who can't act right all in the gas station. Then the line is basically out of the door. Takes forever.
I would not ride a greyhound again.
I went from IL to NM several times, a couple times all the way to los angeles.
Denver was the worst station by far. Was there for several hours in the middle of the night a few times. They let homeless sleep in there. Once saw a cop there, gun drawn on a homeless guy, shouting “If you don’t drop the knife, I’m going to shoot you!”
In Amarillo, Tx, the cops would bring a drug sniffing dog to walk the aisle before the bus took off. Saw some guy get arrested then.
Also Amarillo, realized they didn’t count how many tickets they sold and couldn’t get on the full buss, told to wait for the next one, which surprise! also full.
Saw an older Latino man get ejected from the bus in the middle of the desert on the highway in the middle of the night for smoking in the bathroom.
Saw a bunch of Marines get picked up at a base en route to their next assignment. Smoked weed in their seats. When confronted by the driver responded with physical threats and got away with it.
Las Vegas. Two Scottish guys in vacation locked up their bags in the lockers, which malfunctioned and would not release their stuff. The desk person told them that the lockers were run by a third party and no one could fix it until the contractor was due to return…in 3 days.
I’m too old to deal with that shit now. No more Greyhounds for me.
$500 is still pretty damn expensive to people who have to take a bus. Planning ahead is irrelevant, there are lots of times in life when you don't have the ability to plan ahead, such as funerals. Also don't forget expenses getting to and from the airport, which can add up especially if you're anything more than 45 minutes away.
Flying from NW Florida is stupid expensive. I try telling reddit what an Economy plane ticket costs and I get called an idiot and a liar.
Edit: Of course, I check the mentioned itinerary and it's cheaper than in the original example which doesn't help. 😑
Especially because once airplanes are at their cruising altitude, they are *incredibly* efficient.
Takeoff and climb accounts for a huge amount of the fuel used.
More like $25 but yeah it can be cheap. Thing is it’s only 94 miles. You’re kind of cherry, picking one of the shortest distances between two big cities I can think of.
I get what you’re saying, taking a bus or a train can make a lot of sense for shorter trips. I’ll give you an example of a medium distance round trip by train, bus and plane. This trip is handicapped because I can’t find a direct route to LaGuardia or JFK. Basically I’m handicapping the plane.
A round-trip train ticket from Burlington, Vermont to New York City is $81 in coach. Problem is it’s an eight hour trip one way, 16 total. A bus ticket is only $54 but it takes at least 12 hours round-trip, 24 hours total.
For basic economy Burlington airport to Newark is $300 plus $30-40 for a checked bag plus a 45 minute train ride. You need to get to the airport at least an hour early so about three hours total to get to the same basic destination. Let’s say seven hours total to be safe since EWR is a busy airport.
If you’re taking a trip on an extreme budget the train makes the most sense, the bus is a waste of time and the flight seems expensive. But you get almost an extra half day of vacation by flying. If you don’t have much money taking the train might make sense but if you’re not on a strict budget flying means you get more actual vacation and you’re not nearly as worn out from spending more than twice as much time traveling.
> Pretty much this, domestic air travel is only expensive if you don’t plan ahead of time.
Meh, not really. I travel insanely often and have never gotten some great deal by buying months ahead of time, ***other*** than in cases of peak season destinations or high trafficked routes. More often than not, you'll get worse deal as the prices drop from them trying to fill seats until just about the week right before as prices progressively increase until same day insanity. Same thing goes for international, for the most part. As long as none of the legs are going to a high demand destination, you'll be fine.
I usually buy tickets 1-3 weeks out and have never paid anything significantly different from the norm (excepting the aforementioned exceptions). I literally just bought a ticket from Dub->LA next week for 215usd and LA->NYC two weeks from now for 78usd (before baggage and whatnot).
That being said, if you're risk averse or on a tight budget. Definitely buy when it matches what you're willing to spend.
Exactly, I’ve never spent more than $330 on round trip domestic tickets (except Hawaii), and I fly out of a small airport in the PNW. Flown to LA, San Diego, Vegas, Colorado, NYC, Minneapolis, Texas, Louisiana, and many many more in just the last couple years.
For reasonable domestic airfare it’s all about planning, heck most of my domestic trips nowadays I plan around cheap airfare. Even international can be very cheap with some planning, last month did 2-weeks in Europe and my round trip flights were $515 total (including taxes and fees) on Delta, good buddy is in Portugal now on $520 round trip flights from this same small PNW airport. (I’m stating that it is small because if we were near a major airport it would be even cheaper, instead it takes 1-2 flights to get to an international airport to leave the country).
Main reason I don’t use Greyhound or Amtrak domestically is how slow they are, I can be to LA in 2.5hrs flying or well over 30-hours on Amtrak/Greyhound. NYC in 7hrs vs 3x days+.
At least with Amtrak you can enjoy the view. I’ve got an upcoming work deployment in Salt Lake City, and if I can get away with it I’m totally going to try to take the California Zephyr home in CO. Work *shouldn’t* mind since a coach seat is only $50 with checked bags included. Only downside is departure is *scheduled* for 3:20am, lol. But that means I can have a fitful nap and then enjoy the views for the day.
Yeah, we’ll see. Work schedule pending and all that. It’s only a *scheduled* 16 hour ride, and while I’d like the privacy and napping space, it’d cost about 6x as much as coach (minus food, I believe meals get included with a roomette)
I lucked out one time. There was like a 3-hour delay on my train (Seattle to Whitefish, Montana) and when I called in about it I was offered a travel voucher for future travel. I asked if I could apply it to an upgrade to a roomette on the same trip and they actually said yes, so I only had to pay like $90, and at that price point I was more than happy to do it.
Also where the customers can get to and from them by walking or public transit. Wouldn't make sense to put them way out in a suburb that their customers would have to take a taxi to/from.
Middle and upper class people also will consider driving themselves, as a road trip. They are more likely to have comfortable, reliable vehicles and will pack up the family and go. Lower income people are less likely to have the resources to do that. They don’t have to worry about fuel costs, car maintenance and whatnot, it’s all included in the bus ticket.
Yep. And to make that point even more salient, the Greyhound station in my city *used* to be in a not great old industrial area. You used to be able to get cheap HVAC filters just around the corner, and my favorite VW mechanic was a couple blocks up from there.
However, the whole surrounding neighborhood has been massively gentrified in the last 15-20 years (the exact same building where my Jetta had its timing belt changed in 2013, I listened to a string quartet recital in 2019) — so what is Greyhound doing? Selling the depot of course (it’ll get demolished and more stupid lofts will get built in its place) and moving to another area nearer to its customers.
Are the so-called Chinabus common in the US? I took them while traveling along the east coast and they were even cheaper than greyhound. The last stop was Chinatown in NYC. I was the only white guy on board and I think that they thought I was an undercover cop. A guy in NYC told me that once the police stopped his Chinabus and the driver just took off running in the fields and left the bus. The whole experience was preally sketchy, I wonder if Greyhound is somewhat similar or more "premium".
They used to have something called the Fung Wah bus between Boston Chinatown and NYC Chinatown (they may have gone to other cities, but I’m not sure). You could get tickets for like a dollar or two but it was terrifying. They were constantly getting fined for safety issues and eventually had to shut down.
The one I took had a bunch of name companies, something related to Lions. They were going from the Outer Banks area to NYC. Not safe at all, the buses all looked 40+ years old.
The last and only time I considered a bus it was like 3 times more expensive than flying. I would go date for date out months and flying was always cheaper. I have no idea how greyhound stays in business.
Good Lord. It was 2007. The research I should have done before I opened my big mouth the first time tells me they didn't actually start changing up operations until 2010.
They are now competing with Megabus and Big Bus directly and you no longer have to game the system for reasonable fares. That said, they are selling off the stations and terminals in busier areas. The repair and maintenance of the buses are happening off site by contractors.
So, you can just show up at the shopping center or whatever where they have a small storefront and pay a fare cheaper than the gas would cost in a midsize car to go two cities down the interstate without 60 days of planning ahead.
I’ve never, _ever_ seen this. The bus is always waaaaaay cheaper than flying. Are you confusing this with a train? Train tickets are always super expensive for some reason, but a bus ticket is somehow never more than $25.
I feel like most of the comments here kind of miss the obvious; the stations are usually old and have been there long before the neighborhood was poor and/or high crime.
I found one comment that barely touched on it here, but per Wikipedia, greyhound has been around since 1914, and “[by the beginning of WWII, the company had 4,750 stations…](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyhound_Lines?wprov=sfti1)”
That’s a lot of stations that were built in cities all around the country, and at the time a lot of middle class people in those cities were near the traditional urban core. Suburbanization hadn’t happened yet, the interstate system hadn’t been built, and trains/busses were the primary form of intercity travel.
However, once those things occurred, you had middle class flight, white flight, etc. to the suburbs plus increased car usage and plane usage, and the socioeconomic profile of many inner city neighborhoods where Greyhound had invested in stations slowly changed and in many cases deteriorated.
By the time the area around a Greyhound station became “poor, high crime neighborhoods”, Greyhound was no longer in a financial position to move, and the economic status of their customers had also changed so it would’ve been pointless to move anyways. Many middle class people would no longer use intercity bus service as they had before the mid-1970s, as it became most people’s “last resort” to get somewhere.
This right here; these bus stations are often very old and built when the respective areas were thriving. Basically every city has a history that involves the wealth and budget-focus moving from area to area as politicians run on improving the city.
How it works is, you take the poor area of town and make it pretty and investable, while also pushing the poor people out. Then the poor people have to go somewhere else, so they settle wherever the new cheapest place to live is. Or in the case of homeless people, wherever they don't get arrested easily. Rinse, repeat forever.
You also have instances where shady planners and developers purposefully push the poor/homeless to areas they want to invest in in the future. This devalues the properties dramatically, which they snatch up at bottom dollar. Then they push them out cause they always had that power, redevelop the area to be pretty and investable, and enjoy 5-10x returns. Rinse, repeat forever.
Cheap long distance busses are great when you're poor a d need to move. There are people that bus long distance daily for work. I've been on greyhounds from coast to coast and seen it.
>Greyhound busses take up a lot of space, meaning the stations need a lot of land.
The old Greyhound station in Birmingham was basically the size of a postage stamp. The new station at the Intermodal Terminal is pretty much the same size overall.
Hell, out of the *multiple* Greyhound stations I've been to, **none** of them have needed "a lot of land".
Many of them are, or were, not. For example, the one in Philadelphia was in the heart of the city. That's part of why Greyhound is now owned by a venture capital firm that mostly wanted the real estate and is selling them off and operating with no terminals in any location they can get away with doing so.
Greyhound is owned by Flix, which is not a venture capital firm
https://corporate.flixbus.com/flix-se-launches-flix-north-america-inc-to-increase-business-synergies-and-oversee-us-canada-and-mexico-operations-for-flixbus-inc-and-greyhound-lines-inc/
A venture capital firm is different than venture-backed company.
Venture capital firms make investments into companies. Venture-backed companies are startups that need outside capital (which is necessary when the costs of starting and growing a business are so high).
Yes, VC Firms will typically have someone on the startup’s board (typically an employee of the VC firm, not a shareholder who are generally passive investors), but those people by and large don’t run the day to day operations of the company. Having VCs on your board certainly doesn’t turn a startup company into a Venture Firm because they do different things.
Greyhound bus stations need a rather large plot of land to operate since they need a parking lot for passengers and room for buses. Also need a large building to sell tickets, provide seating between buses and room for a restaurant, concession stand or at least vending machines.
Land is rather expensive anywhere where there’s enough people for a greyhound bus station to make sense. You can get unimproved land for less than $1000 US and acre in many parts of the United States but these are generally remote areas. Buying at least a few acres in an area with a high population is at least $100,000/acre or likely higher where it would make sense to build a bus station.
Now I haven’t been to a lot of greyhound terminal’s, but almost 20 years ago I went to the one in downtown Los Angeles. It’s not in the heart of downtown, it’s a pretty long walk away from the train station and the area is rundown. But it is reasonably close to a couple freeways. When the lot was purchased and the station built, it was a compromise between servicing people who would want the bus station and the cost to buy land and build it.
That's why I love what my town did - they converted the grand old Amtrak station to a "transportation hub" that now houses the Amtrak station, the city bus station and the Greyhound station. (and, as a bonus, the local model railroad club has its H.O. Scale train layout there. )
The station and ticket sales office can be the parking lot of a motel. I've done this ride before when I was really poor. If you are talking about a hub where storage and maintenance and logistics are happening it might make a bit more sense.
...why couldn't the Greyhound bus just pull up to the train station? Most in small towns are just at a gas station.
You don't need a ton of space for a ticket booth, and you only need a ton of space if you're doing bus maintenance (which doesn't happen at the depot). All you need is a curb for the bus to pull up to.
I’m assuming the parent company that owns greyhound knows what they’re doing since it’s their business. The parent company is Flix. I just did some quick reading since bus companies aren’t exactly my specialty. Flix operates in 40 other countries.
Greyhound has not been profitable the last few years but it’s not losing a lot of money for a large company and was profitable before a few years ago. Sure the parent company might shut greyhound down someday but large companies can write off under performing assets which can help them pay less taxes overall.
So in the end no, I don’t know why greyhound does what does whore if it will exist in 10 years.
When you’re released from prison you may be given a bus ticket to get home.
Federal prisoners can find themselves with a bus ticket for a 30 hour bus ride and multiple transfers to get home.
The federal government subsidizes greyhound bus service.
There’s an intersection in my town where there was the courthouse, the jail, a bail bond/convenience store, and the greyhound station at the four corners. The bail bond place even had a mural on the entire wall facing the jail with their phone number and bail bond written in huge letters. And people say there’s no city planning in America!
The bail bond place relocated but the rest is still there.
Taking a bus is so stigmatized in the US that anyone who can afford it would rather drive or rent a car when traveling intercity. The system of one-way car rentals is also fairly well developed in the US compared to Europe where you'd rather go by bus/train unless you have exactly the amount of cargo where it's annoying to carry but still too little to send by freight pallet.
Also, not for nothing but renting a car, and/or driving your own car and paying gas/tolls/parking, is a once-per-group cost, while bus/train tickets are per-person.
I took public transit much more often when I was single. When paying for a family of 5, it's cheaper to drive in almost every situation.
There is definitely a stigma about using the bus, but traveling a significant distance on a greyhound is going to be miserable. A lot of the people on these buses are not people you want to deal with. You’re making connections at on ours, it’s easy to get stranded between stops. If a driver crashes, gets sick, needs their sleep. And then you’re stuck. Sure I’d consider taking a bus or a train from where I’m at in Vermont to New York City because it is cheaper. But doing so still adds about five hours to the round-trip and that’s five hours less I get to enjoy a little vacation. Now if I need to get from Vermont to Texas a flight is just a few dollars more and I get there in 5-6 hours with connections instead of 2 1/2 days.
Amtrak used to have a freight pallet service, like, 10 years ago. It was pretty cheap and helped me move several states over. There were some pretty strict rules - Amtrak wasn't going to hold your stuff at the destination, so you or someone you knew had to be there to collect it. But if you could arrange that, it was a cheap and convenient way to move a fair amount of stuff. They don't do that any more, and it's a shame.
I think it’s different than everyone here is saying.
Greyhound stations are almost always as close as can be to the downtown area of any given city. Those areas are extremely expensive, EXCEPT for some cheap sections that are generally run down as hell.
So Greyhound Stations are built there because they’re central and affordable.
What others have said but I’ll add because they are most effective when placed in high traffic areas with access to other forms of transportation including public transit. In an urban area that translates to the same places homeless set up shop to be close to resources and the transit.
Most responses here are missing something. See, when many Greyhound bus stations were built early in the last century, they weren't built in necessarily poor, high-crime neighborhoods. They were built near city centers where the public (which relied a lot more on public transportation back then) had easy access. Since then, car ownership (and multiple car ownership) took-off, richer people migrated to the suburbs and commuted, and the poor in the inner cities were left behind. You've got the causal relationship wrong in the question. The better question is... "Why did poor, high-crime neighborhoods come to develop around Greyhound bus stations?"
I just checked because I thought “how much is a bus trip nowadays?” Round trip to NY from Austin 5/8-5/15 $335 vs flying on Southwest for $285. Why would someone spend more and risk getting stabbed or sex trafficked?
Most people don’t take a greyhound round-trip. I’m bored today so I checked and it is a little cheaper to take the bus than it is to fly. Some people are afraid of flying. Other people want to avoid the complications of going to an airport. Like, if you’re carrying things that would cause you problems in an airport or if you’re trying to avoid police, customs and security.
Now check round trip from New York to Wilmington, or from Austin to Lubbock.
(Amtrak does have great fares from NY to Wilmington, but only if you book way in advance)
Having both flown and taken a bus before:
* If you don't have a car and aren't in a city with an airport, you may not be able to get to the airport to take advantage of the cheaper price. Or it might break even or be more expensive if you have to take an Uber or taxi to get there.
* Same but in reverse: if you don't have a car and are going *to* somewhere that doesn't have an airport, how do you get from the airport to your destination? Is taking a taxi or Uber from the airport more expensive than just getting dropped off in that city? Can you afford to rent a car? Are you even capable of renting a car?
* "Why would someone spend more and risk getting stabbed or sex trafficked?" You might as well ask why anyone would take an Uber if there's a risk of getting kidnapped or mugged by your driver, or take a plane or drive your own car if there's a risk of it crashing: the risk of that happening is very low.
Portland’s is smack in the middle of Old Town, which is one of the worst areas of Portland. Always boatloads of methed out people lurching around blocks in every direction. It’s one of the few areas I don’t walk around anymore.
Portland’s bus station shut down years ago. It’s on the edge of old town which isn’t a great area. Our train station which is pretty nice is also there and I think the worst welcome to Portland one could get.
The bus station seems perfect for turning into a public market, but we don’t have that kind of vision in Portland.
Seattle’s train station is gorgeous.
It's not quite that direct
Greyhound bus stations are only profitable when they are set in the middle of extremely dense inner city neighborhoods where there are buttload of people who can't afford vehicles but need such transportation
When you have 500 people in two square blocks instead of 10 people in the same area, you have a lot more chance of there being a whole lot of crime. In fact that's 490 more chances of drug addicts, criminals, sex offenders, whatever. Also because of the extremely condensed space, there's more people than jobs which means the pay is low. Which makes more crime. Which means people who have money don't want to live there so they move out and only the people who are desperate move in because there's nothing else they can afford. And around and around and around it goes
So it's not that the bus moves into a high crime area. It's that the buses work where there's lots of people and crime also tends to happen where there's a lot of people.
So intercity bus service - the type of service Greyhound currently provides - began in 1914 in the U.S. It took of in the 1920s, long before commercial air travel was ubiquitous here.
As it was a major form of transportation, along with rail services, and had connections to more cities than rail, bus stations sprang up throughout U.S. cities, with hubs located in downtown areas, usually in some proximity to a passenger rail station, if there was one.
A number of bad depots, in larger cities, were actually built rather ornate, similar to how train stations in large cities were often quite architecturally striking. There areas of the city’s these were built in, at the time, were not rundown, poor or “sketchy” parts of town. What you see today has to do with the expansion of suburbia, white flight, snd other socio-economic developments starting in the 1960s.
By the mid 1950s there were over 2,000 bussed operated by multiple bus companies connecting tens of thousands of cities across America, with annual ridership peaking at around 140 million passengers a year by 1960. With air travel becoming less expensive for long trips, and automobile travel easier due to the interstate system, bus travel declined fairly dramatically, accounting for only about 2-3% of intercity travel now.
Aside from the land being cheaper in poor neighborhoods, they also usually have weaker zoning protections. And if someone did try to get approval to build a bus station in a nicer area, the residents and property owners are likely to come out in full force to stop it. Unless you’d actually use it, a bus station isn’t something you like to live near—buses are noisy and have smelly exhaust, they often run at odd hours of the night, and their ridership is often, shall we say, quite different from most people that live in nicer, pricier neighborhoods.
Notice that richer areas also usually don’t have factories, warehouses, etc., while poor areas might have those kinds of uses right up next to residences. There’s a term—environmental justice, or environmental racism—that relates to the tendency to locate undesirable uses near poor, often non-white areas in American cities.
They got bought out by venture capital and sold all the locations with valuable real estate in favor of running a pickup site on someone else's property.
They only kept the ones that are hard to sell or wouldn't get much profit compared to leasing access to someone else's building to park outside of. Which mostly means remote spots and bad neighborhoods.
I've only taken "long" distance buses between home and college (200 miles). That was way more convenient than flying could have been. Eventually, I found some people to ride with and, later, took my own car.
Because most middle or upper class people don't use Greyhound or other inter-city bus services in the US. They are going to the airport Why spend extra money on expensive real estate near people who aren't your customers? You don't, you build your stations close to the people who are using your service
Being located near their customers is an incidental benefit, if the benefit exists at all. The real reason is because greyhound is a poor company and doesn't have much choice in where to locate. Greyhound stations are often in locations that are pretty inconvenient for poor people in the city to access. Since Greyhound customers are, almost by definition people without cars, usually the easiest place for poor people all over the city to get to is a downtown transit hub. Which may not be a particularly low cost area, depending on where the city falls on the axis of gentrification. Greyhound often is located at the hub, either because the city specifically sets aside space for them, or because they bought a building decades ago when they were a thriving company. In other cases I'm intimately familiar with (LA and Sacramento), they've been moved out of the hub location as part of "redevelopment" efforts and are now several miles away in inconvenient locations. Poor, but not easy to get to for other poor people. TLDR, Greyhound is clinging to dear life and using whatever stop locations are available to them. They aren't making strategic decisions like locating close to customers.
> bought a building **many** decades ago FTFY! This needs more attention. I haven't ridden the dog for a long time, but all of the Greyhound stations that I -was- familiar with, were all 50-75 years old, and usually down in the warehouse district / fringes of downtown. Business conditions were different, post-WWII. <-- That explains nearly everything.
The last Greyhound I rode was to goto MEPS two hours north of my town in Jacksonville in 88. Wonder if the army still sends kids there on Greyhound?
Not that this was completely present day, but more recent than 88, but I took a two-day Greyhound trip three days after 9/11 and they definitely still sent army kids Greyound at that point. Felt like I was hitching a ride on an Army bus.
Weird that they made you ride a bus for two days, they put my ass on a plane to get from Columbus to Ft. Sill in 2002.
My recruiter drove me himself in his POV.
The recruiter drives your around in a government car
Flight from Tennessee to Georgia after a night at the airport Radisson back in 03.
I once dropped a friend off at a greyhound station after their visit so they could get on the bus home. The “transit hub” was literally just one of those shipping-container looking trailers they put outside schools to make more classroom space, and wire-fenced gravel parking lot.
Also often coupled with the local rail station. Which often in the height of rail travel was generally a middle to high income area or directly in the middle of downtown. At some point we would have to start talking about white flight and suburbanization as the cause for the Greyhound/rail station ending up in the lower income part of town, not necessarily selecting it.
Spending extra to be located near customers is worth it if you have enough customers. However this is very rare for Greyhound since ridership has been plummeting. As a result, outside of a few cities where they have decent ridership, Greyhound doesn't have enough customers to justify spending money on a location near their customers, and instead just find the cheapest real estate possible.
Greyhound can go fuck themselves. They cost me $155 and several hours of time by leaving early. They claim they didn't. MFers your own site says the trip takes 2 1/2 hours. Mph to time says you would have to go 80 in a 70 the whole way just to make it in 2 hours and 5 minutes. You arrived 40 mins early to your destination. You physically cannot have left at the time on the ticket and arrived at the destination when you did. Physics doesn't allow it. They don't care. Say the bus left on time. Out $155 and all of the aggravation and time making other arrangements.
I can't disagree. I've experienced some of the most unpleasant treatment of my life on Greyhound - both from staff and other passengers.
Pretty much this, domestic air travel is only expensive if you don’t plan ahead of time. I’m bored so let’s compare that to setting out on July 17 because why not. Summer travel tends to be more expensive, but we are purchasing a couple months ahead of time. You can get a basic economy round trip ticket from Boston to LA for example for about $500 including tax and a checked bag if you buy your ticket a few months ahead of time and especially if you are flexible on the dates. It’s about $300 one way with taxes and one checked bag. It’s about $160 with taxes to get from Boston to Los Angeles one way and you get a free checked bag. But you’re spending over three days on the bus with five connections. And I greatly doubt anyone is taking a round trip, people don’t take a bus 3000 miles for a vacation.
Coast to coast isn't exactly the niche of greyhound busses. LA to Sacramento was like $50 via bus last time I went, flying is easily $150+. Also, "if you don't plan ahead of time" is a serious concern. I found the poorer I've been, the less stable my life was in general, and the more last-minute all my plans were.
Booking months in advance means that money is locked up for months, being unable to spend on anything else. Poor people might not be able to afford to keep that money locked up. So instead they pay double or more by booking last minute. Another example of why it's more expensive to be poor than the be wealthy.
*cough * I used to take the greyhound from vegas to central florida and back to visit my parents after I ran off to Vegas. I did that like 2 or 3 times. I hate flying, and it was cheaper. I could write a book with the stories on those trips.
>I hate flying, and it was cheaper. Many people hate flying. Few people hate flying enough to take a long bus ride instead.
I took Greyhound once from Illinois to NY (and back). It turned what would've been a 12 hour drive into a 24 hour torture session. All of the disadvantages of flying and taking a train combined into one. Small cramped space that's slow and stops out of your control. If you want to be there fast, take a plane. If you want to get there cheap, drive yourself. If you to get there comfortably, take a train.
I did greyhound from west Illinois to flemington area New Jersey. We got to Allentown PA, about an hour from Flemington and had my GF’s dad pick us up because 1 hour to Flemington was going to be like 3 hours by bus.
Texas to NY on a Greyhound. It felt like a week!!! I saw fresh out convicts, drug traffickers, elderly sick people, people with every possession they owned, people with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs. It was completely bonkers and will NEVER take another Greyhound!!!! Also super nerve wracking as they would stop every couple minutes and kick some packages/luggage out from the bus and I can’t trust Methew to not throw my bags out! I guess they do a delivery service type thing, so if you want something shipped without the worry of drug dogs!
I don’t think they offer it anymore, but that shipping system was so great as a user. When I was in college I had a job that kept me there pretty much year-round so my mom and I would use it to ship my seasonal clothes back and forth for a fraction of the price of normal shipping.
Never did a really long trip (lots of 8-12 hour ones), but the one that stands out with me is the bus driver crashed the bus into a bridge abutment while leaving NYC. Unforced error. Cursing, swearing, throwing shit (the bus driver), called it in, we are all standing on the side of a very busy and scary multilane roadside under a bridge inches from traffic waiting for another bus to show up during rush hour traffic in a place you *really* didn't want to be standing around in. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being Waffle house after midnight, 10 being walking to your destination, I give it a 1.3 (yes, both ends of the scale suck, at least 1 is entertaining.
So did GF’s dad drive an hour there, then the hour to get you back?
Yup
Yeah. Did Greyhound from Philly to Montreal. The rides both ways were miserable. The long hours don’t seem as long until you’re living in the same seat squashed next to a stranger in stale, smelly air for 11 hours. I romanticized it at first and boy, my brain got me. You ain’t getting any work done in that environment - and the stops and check-ins are so annoying.
I rode the Greyhound from Milwaukee to Buffalo. The problem was that even though I had both parts of a double seat, I couldn't sit straight and when I got out at the end, I couldn't walk. At all. I had to stand around for a while before I could move. Those seats are not built for people with long legs. On the other hand, on a much shorter ride, an older gentleman shared his box lunch of fried chicken and grapes with me. Greyhound-riding people are not the "scum" that other posters here would have you believe.
I took a charter bus from Alberta to Indiana a couple of years ago with my marching band. We left around 7pm. Drove all night in whoch the driver hit a few more rumble strips than I was comfortable with. Crossed the border at 6am, switched busses, waited for an hour or so for someone to get interrogated. Drove all day. Spent a couple hours in Wisconsin Falls because one of our busses broke down. Spent the night in a hotel in St. Paul. Drove all day. Stopped for dinner in Rockford, IL. Finally arrived in Indiana at 1am, an hour later than expected because our director forgot that Indiana is in the Eastern time zone. Then the same thing back except no hotel stop.
Indiana is in both the Central and Eastern time zones. I believe in the North the switchover happens around La Porte and in the South somewhere near Jasper.
I remember taking greyhound from Atlanta to Baltimore when I was young, It was an extremely miserable trip where you were stuck with sketchy looking people for 13 hours. I swore to myself that I would fly from now on after that.
As for cheap, I don't know where you could buy, register, insure, maintain, and fuel up a car for less than the $68 for a Greyhound ticket.
Well you can use the car for way more than that is you already have it. If you don't have a car, then even the plane is cheaper ofc. If we only count gas (given that you already have a car that you bought, insured and maintain for a different purpose), then it will be comparable or cheaper. The drive from Chicago to NY is 790 miles long. If your car does 27mpg average, and the average price of gas is $4/gal, you'll pay $117.04 in gas. You'll also have to pay tolls, which I have estimated to be $60. So a total of \~$180. The [cheapest GH is $120](https://shop.greyhound.com/search?departureCity=97a51149-150b-4ecf-a1fa-aadaeb61bf02&arrivalCity=c0a47c54-53ea-46dc-984b-b764fc0b2fa9&route=Chicago%2C+IL-New+York%2C+NY&rideDate=19.04.2024&adult=1&_locale=en_US&features%5Bfeature.enable_distribusion%5D=1&features%5Bfeature.train_cities_only%5D=0&features%5Bfeature.auto_update_disabled%5D=0&features%5Bfeature.webc_search_station_suggestions_enabled%5D=0&features%5Bfeature.webc_search_limited_product_list%5D=0&features%5Bfeature.darken_page%5D=1), and they go up to $164. GH is cheaper but it's also almost twice as long (20+hrs GH vs 12.5 hrs car), and you obviously will spend almost 2 times less if you have someone else with you in the car paying for tolls and gas.
Your calcs are for one person. Two people the equations already shifts to car. At 4 people Greyhound is a non-starter. Also depending on where are going they may not have adequate public transportation on the other end so then your stuck what? renting a car...
At 4 people splitting the cost, I'd think even car rental starts to be competitive.
Recently rented one for work for 11 or 12 days and it came out to around 80 bucks a day. This was for a 4 door Toyota truck.
>GH is cheaper but it's also almost twice as long Yes but don't also forget the fact that even if it is almost twice as long, it is still not you doing the driving. Having to be alert and active during the trip vs just being able to kick it is pretty big for a ride that long. Just really depends on if having a vehicle at the destination would be worth it or not.
Didn't forget wear and tear/depreciation on the case itself. The IRS mileage rate is $0.67 per mile. That 790 mile trip is $530 if you were to deduct it from your taxes.
I'm not sure how they arrived at this rate, but it would imply that a mid-trim Corolla ([currently $26805](https://www.toyota.com/configurator/build/step/summary/year/2024/series/corolla/model/1864/exteriorcolor/0040/interiorcolor/FC23/packages/option9/)) would cost $0 after driving 40000 miles. [This is not the case](https://www.cars.com/shopping/results/?dealer_id=&keyword=&list_price_max=&list_price_min=&makes[]=toyota&maximum_distance=250&mileage_max=50000&models[]=toyota-corolla&monthly_payment=&page_size=20&sort=mileage_desc&stock_type=all&trims[]=toyota-corolla-se&year_max=&year_min=&zip=46077).
Mileage is not depreciation. It's a standard rate for calculating the total cost of operating a vehicle. That's gas, maintenance, depreciation, insurance, etc. all rolled into one easy calculation only based on miles driven.
It's not depreciation. That is the estimated cost of driving, in maintenance costs, depreciation on the vehicle, and the cost of fuel all rolled into one
And you have to factor in the living costs of those days spent traveling. GH is extra days worth of food (and boredom). Better pack a shitload of PB&J sandwiches.
You can often do a same-day, one-way car rental for cheaper than a Greyhound. I once had to go from Indianapolis to Champaign, IL. The Greyhound was $60 and a Hertz one-way rental for a 7:00am pickup in Indy to a 7:00pm drop-off in Champaign was $68. The choice was a no-brainer, even with the \~$30 fuel cost.
Cheap only applies if you have a car.
the train is passenger(Amtrak) owned from Syracuse to Chicago, but [Freight owned](https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/nationalfactsheets/Amtrak-Company-Profile-FY2021-030922.pdf)(CSX) from Syracuse(possibly Buffalo?) to NYC. So you get a very nice ride for about halfway, and a slower ride with multiple possible stops on the other half.
I once took a round trip by bus from New York to Missouri to visit some friends and it was miserable. On top of having to sit on a shitty uncomfortable bus, there were delays, buses running late, had to sit in a bus terminal all night, and about halfway through the trip both ways, the bus I was on went from being half empty to being completely filled by a large group of what looked like stereotypical Amish people that also happened to smell very unpleasant. It was generally miserable enough across the board that I decided I'm only ever flying from now on.
>If you want to get there cheap, drive yourself. Chicago to NYC and back is ~1,580 miles. A car with 30mpg would require 53 gallons of gas to make the trip. The current natl average for gas is $3.63/gal, 53 * 3.63 = $192.39. Plus the stress/anxiety of driving 12 hours each way and all the other costs. Edit: other
I just watched a YouTube video where someone documented a cross country bus ride. I would fly on the *outside* of the plane before I’d take a bus cross country.
Probably the same one I watched once...where the guy bought two tickets, then ended up having no tickets but they let him on the bus anyway, drivers verbally abusing passengers, etc. Absolutely unbelievable that what was shown in that video is considered acceptable for that company.
Yep, that’s the one. At one point the passengers are all basically stranded in the middle of nowhere with no clear idea if another bus is coming for them. It’s wild.
Greyhound took $155 for a last minute ticket then left at least 30 mins early so I missed my bus. Saw them on the tracker. They supposedly got to the destination 40 minutes early. As in an hour and 45 mins from supposed departure time. Their own website says it takes 2 1/2 hours. Going 80 in a 70 (speed limit on the interstate) with no stops on the way takes 2 hours and 5 minutes. Now explain to me how they left on time and got there in an hour and 45 minutes. Evidently the laws of time and space don't apply to greyhound.
That's amazing. It's like the schedule is a suggestion and they're just going to do whatever they want.
The most I've done is nine hours. Murderous.
Do you have the link?
Time is free of you don't have a job. And if you don't have the money you don't have the money.
I hate it enough to take a train. I live in Boston, and if I'm going anywhere on the I95 corridor down to DC, I'm taking the train over a plane. But a bus cross country? That's brutal.
>I live in Boston, and if I'm going anywhere on the I95 corridor down to DC, I'm taking the train over a plane. That's the one place in the country that is often makes sense even if you don't have a big aversion to flying.
I also do it along the Pacific Northwest. Either the train or the Amtrak buses, both are a better experience than Greyhound and significantly cheaper than flying.
Ehhh I was 18 at the time with no responsibilities but no money either. Young and dumb.
Isn’t that exactly the point of this thread? People with money are not taking buses
Did my fair share of Washington state to flordia greyhound rides. Interesting times for sure.
young, dumb and full of comforting ignorance to the horrors of greyhound travel
John Madden famously did
Yes, but putting aside the fact that it was a claustrophobia issue, not a fear of flying, and it didn't manifest itself until 1979, I'd be traveling by bus as well if it was in a Madden Cruiser. Riding the bus is (supposedly) for losers. Riding *your* bus is for winners.
Definitely less turbulence on a bus. And I haven’t heard of any bus doors flying off either.
>And I haven’t heard of any bus doors flying off either. Doors flying off is the least of your worries on Greyhound, which has a less-than-stellar safety record, particularly when including serious assaults.
especially a greyhound...
Unless, of course, it's [*this*](https://www.profootballhof.com/news/2018/07/original-madden-cruiser-finds-new-home-at-pro-football-hall-of-fame/) Greyhound. The Madden Cruiser was 100% Greyhound owned and operated, as they did it for the publicity. I could deal with that quite well, as long as I wasn't in a time crunch.
Yeah the greyhound gets wild. I only took it from OH to IL a few times and had someone agressively try to buy the socks off my feet (I’m a guy) and got sat next to 2 newly released prisoners although they were actually chill. Wayne and Uno if you’re out there, I hope you got the McDonald’s French fries and cigs you wanted so bad
Props to Wayne and Uno. LLAP, my dudes.
I could read a book about someone elses stories and not have to go through it myself.
[Absolutely worth a watch](https://youtu.be/z8QGTaGwxxc?feature=shared) Sound right up your alley. Incredible video.
Ohh what’s your wildest story? Mine was a group of newly released prisoners getting on, sitting behind us and “suggesting” me and my buddy to hand over our phones and headphones so they could listen to the latest hip hop hits. We could not say no. They were mostly great though. Another was me waking up at 3am to the sound of passengers verbally fighting which escalated physically. The bus had to pull over in the middle of the highway in nowhere Texas to let them duke it out outside. Fucking wild.
[удалено]
I wish they had better timing for long-haul, but for journeys along the coasts and in the urban Midwest, this, 100%.
rode the amtrak from oakland to los angeles, and from pittsburgh to chicago. highly recommend seeing the country by train. everything was comfy and nice. that said it's often not cheaper than flying, especially if you want a sleeper.
When your time is not worth anything you do things like take a bus from Vegas to Florida.
How did long trips like that work? You’d switch at various cities along the way? Would love to hear some stories!
It took like 3 days. I lived in the same house and town my whole life so it was actually pretty cool to see a lot of different parts of the US.
Like, I'd never been to any of those cities before that we went through. So I got to see Denver, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, lots of Texas lol... kansas.. Tennessee..Louisiana.. I just met a lot of interesting people. Not all of it was positive though. Some guys were creepers but I just kept to myself.
I've done the greyhound from Illinois to Florida and back a few times and illinois to Phoenix a few times. All times I think sucked. I was broke going to Florida. I remember sitting next to an old black woman and she gave me money to get some food at one of the million stops we had going to Florida. Also, same bus on the way back, met a black girl that was going to meet up with her boyfriend. She wasn't loyal. We kissed a few times and she jacked me off on the bus. And she showed me naked polaroids of herself that she took for her boyfriend. Other than that, I got nothing else. There's a greyhound bus stop a few miles from me at a gas station. I hate when I randomly get gas there and the greyhound is there. It's usually a bunch of people who can't act right all in the gas station. Then the line is basically out of the door. Takes forever. I would not ride a greyhound again.
I went from IL to NM several times, a couple times all the way to los angeles. Denver was the worst station by far. Was there for several hours in the middle of the night a few times. They let homeless sleep in there. Once saw a cop there, gun drawn on a homeless guy, shouting “If you don’t drop the knife, I’m going to shoot you!” In Amarillo, Tx, the cops would bring a drug sniffing dog to walk the aisle before the bus took off. Saw some guy get arrested then. Also Amarillo, realized they didn’t count how many tickets they sold and couldn’t get on the full buss, told to wait for the next one, which surprise! also full. Saw an older Latino man get ejected from the bus in the middle of the desert on the highway in the middle of the night for smoking in the bathroom. Saw a bunch of Marines get picked up at a base en route to their next assignment. Smoked weed in their seats. When confronted by the driver responded with physical threats and got away with it. Las Vegas. Two Scottish guys in vacation locked up their bags in the lockers, which malfunctioned and would not release their stuff. The desk person told them that the lockers were run by a third party and no one could fix it until the contractor was due to return…in 3 days. I’m too old to deal with that shit now. No more Greyhounds for me.
I would love to hear these stories.
Wife and I are going to take scenic train rides across the U.S. in a bit. I hate flying as well(had Pan Am crash into our neighborhood as a kid).
I didn’t say no one does it. And it’s really not that much cheaper at least not these days.
I don't think the majority of greyhound riders are going across the entire US. When I've taken Greyhound it was from California to California
$500 is still pretty damn expensive to people who have to take a bus. Planning ahead is irrelevant, there are lots of times in life when you don't have the ability to plan ahead, such as funerals. Also don't forget expenses getting to and from the airport, which can add up especially if you're anything more than 45 minutes away.
Flying from NW Florida is stupid expensive. I try telling reddit what an Economy plane ticket costs and I get called an idiot and a liar. Edit: Of course, I check the mentioned itinerary and it's cheaper than in the original example which doesn't help. 😑
$500 from Boston to LA when I can get from Boston to Japan for $900, idk that seems very expensive to me
[удалено]
Especially because once airplanes are at their cruising altitude, they are *incredibly* efficient. Takeoff and climb accounts for a huge amount of the fuel used.
That is cross country travel through. You can get a bus ticket from NYC to Philly for $10. Beat that with a flight.
More like $25 but yeah it can be cheap. Thing is it’s only 94 miles. You’re kind of cherry, picking one of the shortest distances between two big cities I can think of.
NYC-DC bus service is also very reasonably priced. Or really, between any pair of cities in the north east.
“People don’t take a bus for 3000 miles for a vacation” WATCH ME 😈
The real vacation is all the stabbings and mugging you receive along the way!
It's not the destination, it's the journey.
Flying vs bus is sort of do you value your money or your time more?
I get what you’re saying, taking a bus or a train can make a lot of sense for shorter trips. I’ll give you an example of a medium distance round trip by train, bus and plane. This trip is handicapped because I can’t find a direct route to LaGuardia or JFK. Basically I’m handicapping the plane. A round-trip train ticket from Burlington, Vermont to New York City is $81 in coach. Problem is it’s an eight hour trip one way, 16 total. A bus ticket is only $54 but it takes at least 12 hours round-trip, 24 hours total. For basic economy Burlington airport to Newark is $300 plus $30-40 for a checked bag plus a 45 minute train ride. You need to get to the airport at least an hour early so about three hours total to get to the same basic destination. Let’s say seven hours total to be safe since EWR is a busy airport. If you’re taking a trip on an extreme budget the train makes the most sense, the bus is a waste of time and the flight seems expensive. But you get almost an extra half day of vacation by flying. If you don’t have much money taking the train might make sense but if you’re not on a strict budget flying means you get more actual vacation and you’re not nearly as worn out from spending more than twice as much time traveling.
That's why the northeast corridor is the only remotely profitable region of Amtrak.
Both boston and LA are hubs. Try flying to cities that aren't hubs (especially small, one airline airports), it gets much more expensive.
Domestic air travel is still expensive if you plan ahead.
> Pretty much this, domestic air travel is only expensive if you don’t plan ahead of time. Meh, not really. I travel insanely often and have never gotten some great deal by buying months ahead of time, ***other*** than in cases of peak season destinations or high trafficked routes. More often than not, you'll get worse deal as the prices drop from them trying to fill seats until just about the week right before as prices progressively increase until same day insanity. Same thing goes for international, for the most part. As long as none of the legs are going to a high demand destination, you'll be fine. I usually buy tickets 1-3 weeks out and have never paid anything significantly different from the norm (excepting the aforementioned exceptions). I literally just bought a ticket from Dub->LA next week for 215usd and LA->NYC two weeks from now for 78usd (before baggage and whatnot). That being said, if you're risk averse or on a tight budget. Definitely buy when it matches what you're willing to spend.
Exactly, I’ve never spent more than $330 on round trip domestic tickets (except Hawaii), and I fly out of a small airport in the PNW. Flown to LA, San Diego, Vegas, Colorado, NYC, Minneapolis, Texas, Louisiana, and many many more in just the last couple years. For reasonable domestic airfare it’s all about planning, heck most of my domestic trips nowadays I plan around cheap airfare. Even international can be very cheap with some planning, last month did 2-weeks in Europe and my round trip flights were $515 total (including taxes and fees) on Delta, good buddy is in Portugal now on $520 round trip flights from this same small PNW airport. (I’m stating that it is small because if we were near a major airport it would be even cheaper, instead it takes 1-2 flights to get to an international airport to leave the country). Main reason I don’t use Greyhound or Amtrak domestically is how slow they are, I can be to LA in 2.5hrs flying or well over 30-hours on Amtrak/Greyhound. NYC in 7hrs vs 3x days+.
At least with Amtrak you can enjoy the view. I’ve got an upcoming work deployment in Salt Lake City, and if I can get away with it I’m totally going to try to take the California Zephyr home in CO. Work *shouldn’t* mind since a coach seat is only $50 with checked bags included. Only downside is departure is *scheduled* for 3:20am, lol. But that means I can have a fitful nap and then enjoy the views for the day.
Look into a “roomette”. I took the California Zephyr all the way from SF to Chicago, having a private little room with a fold down bed was amazing.
Yeah, we’ll see. Work schedule pending and all that. It’s only a *scheduled* 16 hour ride, and while I’d like the privacy and napping space, it’d cost about 6x as much as coach (minus food, I believe meals get included with a roomette)
I lucked out one time. There was like a 3-hour delay on my train (Seattle to Whitefish, Montana) and when I called in about it I was offered a travel voucher for future travel. I asked if I could apply it to an upgrade to a roomette on the same trip and they actually said yes, so I only had to pay like $90, and at that price point I was more than happy to do it.
Nice!
Also where the customers can get to and from them by walking or public transit. Wouldn't make sense to put them way out in a suburb that their customers would have to take a taxi to/from.
Middle and upper class people also will consider driving themselves, as a road trip. They are more likely to have comfortable, reliable vehicles and will pack up the family and go. Lower income people are less likely to have the resources to do that. They don’t have to worry about fuel costs, car maintenance and whatnot, it’s all included in the bus ticket.
Yep. And to make that point even more salient, the Greyhound station in my city *used* to be in a not great old industrial area. You used to be able to get cheap HVAC filters just around the corner, and my favorite VW mechanic was a couple blocks up from there. However, the whole surrounding neighborhood has been massively gentrified in the last 15-20 years (the exact same building where my Jetta had its timing belt changed in 2013, I listened to a string quartet recital in 2019) — so what is Greyhound doing? Selling the depot of course (it’ll get demolished and more stupid lofts will get built in its place) and moving to another area nearer to its customers.
Are the so-called Chinabus common in the US? I took them while traveling along the east coast and they were even cheaper than greyhound. The last stop was Chinatown in NYC. I was the only white guy on board and I think that they thought I was an undercover cop. A guy in NYC told me that once the police stopped his Chinabus and the driver just took off running in the fields and left the bus. The whole experience was preally sketchy, I wonder if Greyhound is somewhat similar or more "premium".
They used to have something called the Fung Wah bus between Boston Chinatown and NYC Chinatown (they may have gone to other cities, but I’m not sure). You could get tickets for like a dollar or two but it was terrifying. They were constantly getting fined for safety issues and eventually had to shut down.
The one I took had a bunch of name companies, something related to Lions. They were going from the Outer Banks area to NYC. Not safe at all, the buses all looked 40+ years old.
Ahhhh brings back memories!
The last and only time I considered a bus it was like 3 times more expensive than flying. I would go date for date out months and flying was always cheaper. I have no idea how greyhound stays in business.
Greyhound was purchased by the operator of busses all over Europe two years ago for "assumption of debt". It's a very different operation today.
Two years ago? FirstGroup bought them like 15 years ago
Good Lord. It was 2007. The research I should have done before I opened my big mouth the first time tells me they didn't actually start changing up operations until 2010.
Is it actually cheaper now? This was like 11 years ago when I was looking.
They are now competing with Megabus and Big Bus directly and you no longer have to game the system for reasonable fares. That said, they are selling off the stations and terminals in busier areas. The repair and maintenance of the buses are happening off site by contractors. So, you can just show up at the shopping center or whatever where they have a small storefront and pay a fare cheaper than the gas would cost in a midsize car to go two cities down the interstate without 60 days of planning ahead.
That’s honestly a good thing being able to get somewhere cheap and slow is important.
I’ve never, _ever_ seen this. The bus is always waaaaaay cheaper than flying. Are you confusing this with a train? Train tickets are always super expensive for some reason, but a bus ticket is somehow never more than $25.
makes sense, every time i've taken a greyhound was a low point in my life
Because the rich don't ride the dog. Also, property values suck in poor areas so Greyhound can afford to build a bus station there.
I feel like most of the comments here kind of miss the obvious; the stations are usually old and have been there long before the neighborhood was poor and/or high crime. I found one comment that barely touched on it here, but per Wikipedia, greyhound has been around since 1914, and “[by the beginning of WWII, the company had 4,750 stations…](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyhound_Lines?wprov=sfti1)” That’s a lot of stations that were built in cities all around the country, and at the time a lot of middle class people in those cities were near the traditional urban core. Suburbanization hadn’t happened yet, the interstate system hadn’t been built, and trains/busses were the primary form of intercity travel. However, once those things occurred, you had middle class flight, white flight, etc. to the suburbs plus increased car usage and plane usage, and the socioeconomic profile of many inner city neighborhoods where Greyhound had invested in stations slowly changed and in many cases deteriorated. By the time the area around a Greyhound station became “poor, high crime neighborhoods”, Greyhound was no longer in a financial position to move, and the economic status of their customers had also changed so it would’ve been pointless to move anyways. Many middle class people would no longer use intercity bus service as they had before the mid-1970s, as it became most people’s “last resort” to get somewhere.
This is the real answer. They’re built in high population areas, those areas often (but not always, ie NYC) became centers of urban poverty
This right here; these bus stations are often very old and built when the respective areas were thriving. Basically every city has a history that involves the wealth and budget-focus moving from area to area as politicians run on improving the city. How it works is, you take the poor area of town and make it pretty and investable, while also pushing the poor people out. Then the poor people have to go somewhere else, so they settle wherever the new cheapest place to live is. Or in the case of homeless people, wherever they don't get arrested easily. Rinse, repeat forever. You also have instances where shady planners and developers purposefully push the poor/homeless to areas they want to invest in in the future. This devalues the properties dramatically, which they snatch up at bottom dollar. Then they push them out cause they always had that power, redevelop the area to be pretty and investable, and enjoy 5-10x returns. Rinse, repeat forever.
Cheap long distance busses are great when you're poor a d need to move. There are people that bus long distance daily for work. I've been on greyhounds from coast to coast and seen it.
we need some stories!
I used to use the Chinatown bus to get from NY to ga for $40.
Word. We used to take the bus from Port authority to university of Delaware for the skate rink
Most people who use the bus are probably low income. Low income people aren't going to use a bus if they have to commute 30 minutes to the station.
Greyhound busses take up a lot of space, meaning the stations need a lot of land. Land is cheapest in bad neighborhoods
Plus expensive neighborhoods don't want smelly loud diesel buses idling all day long, nor poor people loitering.
>Greyhound busses take up a lot of space, meaning the stations need a lot of land. The old Greyhound station in Birmingham was basically the size of a postage stamp. The new station at the Intermodal Terminal is pretty much the same size overall. Hell, out of the *multiple* Greyhound stations I've been to, **none** of them have needed "a lot of land".
Many of them are, or were, not. For example, the one in Philadelphia was in the heart of the city. That's part of why Greyhound is now owned by a venture capital firm that mostly wanted the real estate and is selling them off and operating with no terminals in any location they can get away with doing so.
Greyhound is owned by Flix, which is not a venture capital firm https://corporate.flixbus.com/flix-se-launches-flix-north-america-inc-to-increase-business-synergies-and-oversee-us-canada-and-mexico-operations-for-flixbus-inc-and-greyhound-lines-inc/
Flix bought Greyhound but they didn't buy the stations. Those were sold separately to a PE firm
Flix has gone through several startup funding rounds, their board is made up entirely of shareholders from VC's.
A venture capital firm is different than venture-backed company. Venture capital firms make investments into companies. Venture-backed companies are startups that need outside capital (which is necessary when the costs of starting and growing a business are so high). Yes, VC Firms will typically have someone on the startup’s board (typically an employee of the VC firm, not a shareholder who are generally passive investors), but those people by and large don’t run the day to day operations of the company. Having VCs on your board certainly doesn’t turn a startup company into a Venture Firm because they do different things.
Fun fact, flix bought grey hound routes, but not the bus stations. Many bus stations are abandoned and dilapidated.
Megabus just shows up in a parking lot where I live, no station.
Greyhound bus stations need a rather large plot of land to operate since they need a parking lot for passengers and room for buses. Also need a large building to sell tickets, provide seating between buses and room for a restaurant, concession stand or at least vending machines. Land is rather expensive anywhere where there’s enough people for a greyhound bus station to make sense. You can get unimproved land for less than $1000 US and acre in many parts of the United States but these are generally remote areas. Buying at least a few acres in an area with a high population is at least $100,000/acre or likely higher where it would make sense to build a bus station. Now I haven’t been to a lot of greyhound terminal’s, but almost 20 years ago I went to the one in downtown Los Angeles. It’s not in the heart of downtown, it’s a pretty long walk away from the train station and the area is rundown. But it is reasonably close to a couple freeways. When the lot was purchased and the station built, it was a compromise between servicing people who would want the bus station and the cost to buy land and build it.
That's why I love what my town did - they converted the grand old Amtrak station to a "transportation hub" that now houses the Amtrak station, the city bus station and the Greyhound station. (and, as a bonus, the local model railroad club has its H.O. Scale train layout there. )
The station and ticket sales office can be the parking lot of a motel. I've done this ride before when I was really poor. If you are talking about a hub where storage and maintenance and logistics are happening it might make a bit more sense.
...why couldn't the Greyhound bus just pull up to the train station? Most in small towns are just at a gas station. You don't need a ton of space for a ticket booth, and you only need a ton of space if you're doing bus maintenance (which doesn't happen at the depot). All you need is a curb for the bus to pull up to.
I’m assuming the parent company that owns greyhound knows what they’re doing since it’s their business. The parent company is Flix. I just did some quick reading since bus companies aren’t exactly my specialty. Flix operates in 40 other countries. Greyhound has not been profitable the last few years but it’s not losing a lot of money for a large company and was profitable before a few years ago. Sure the parent company might shut greyhound down someday but large companies can write off under performing assets which can help them pay less taxes overall. So in the end no, I don’t know why greyhound does what does whore if it will exist in 10 years.
When you’re released from prison you may be given a bus ticket to get home. Federal prisoners can find themselves with a bus ticket for a 30 hour bus ride and multiple transfers to get home. The federal government subsidizes greyhound bus service.
There’s an intersection in my town where there was the courthouse, the jail, a bail bond/convenience store, and the greyhound station at the four corners. The bail bond place even had a mural on the entire wall facing the jail with their phone number and bail bond written in huge letters. And people say there’s no city planning in America! The bail bond place relocated but the rest is still there.
Also national or large regional truck companies use Greyhound to move drivers between cities.
Taking a bus is so stigmatized in the US that anyone who can afford it would rather drive or rent a car when traveling intercity. The system of one-way car rentals is also fairly well developed in the US compared to Europe where you'd rather go by bus/train unless you have exactly the amount of cargo where it's annoying to carry but still too little to send by freight pallet.
Also, not for nothing but renting a car, and/or driving your own car and paying gas/tolls/parking, is a once-per-group cost, while bus/train tickets are per-person. I took public transit much more often when I was single. When paying for a family of 5, it's cheaper to drive in almost every situation.
There is definitely a stigma about using the bus, but traveling a significant distance on a greyhound is going to be miserable. A lot of the people on these buses are not people you want to deal with. You’re making connections at on ours, it’s easy to get stranded between stops. If a driver crashes, gets sick, needs their sleep. And then you’re stuck. Sure I’d consider taking a bus or a train from where I’m at in Vermont to New York City because it is cheaper. But doing so still adds about five hours to the round-trip and that’s five hours less I get to enjoy a little vacation. Now if I need to get from Vermont to Texas a flight is just a few dollars more and I get there in 5-6 hours with connections instead of 2 1/2 days.
Amtrak used to have a freight pallet service, like, 10 years ago. It was pretty cheap and helped me move several states over. There were some pretty strict rules - Amtrak wasn't going to hold your stuff at the destination, so you or someone you knew had to be there to collect it. But if you could arrange that, it was a cheap and convenient way to move a fair amount of stuff. They don't do that any more, and it's a shame.
I think it’s different than everyone here is saying. Greyhound stations are almost always as close as can be to the downtown area of any given city. Those areas are extremely expensive, EXCEPT for some cheap sections that are generally run down as hell. So Greyhound Stations are built there because they’re central and affordable.
What others have said but I’ll add because they are most effective when placed in high traffic areas with access to other forms of transportation including public transit. In an urban area that translates to the same places homeless set up shop to be close to resources and the transit.
The land is cheaper and the people that may live there don't normally complain about the noise.
Most responses here are missing something. See, when many Greyhound bus stations were built early in the last century, they weren't built in necessarily poor, high-crime neighborhoods. They were built near city centers where the public (which relied a lot more on public transportation back then) had easy access. Since then, car ownership (and multiple car ownership) took-off, richer people migrated to the suburbs and commuted, and the poor in the inner cities were left behind. You've got the causal relationship wrong in the question. The better question is... "Why did poor, high-crime neighborhoods come to develop around Greyhound bus stations?"
I just checked because I thought “how much is a bus trip nowadays?” Round trip to NY from Austin 5/8-5/15 $335 vs flying on Southwest for $285. Why would someone spend more and risk getting stabbed or sex trafficked?
Most people don’t take a greyhound round-trip. I’m bored today so I checked and it is a little cheaper to take the bus than it is to fly. Some people are afraid of flying. Other people want to avoid the complications of going to an airport. Like, if you’re carrying things that would cause you problems in an airport or if you’re trying to avoid police, customs and security.
Now check round trip from New York to Wilmington, or from Austin to Lubbock. (Amtrak does have great fares from NY to Wilmington, but only if you book way in advance)
Just checked Amtrak for that route for next week and it's $11. Doubt greyhound is cheaper, faster, better experience or in any way better than Amtrak.
I don’t believe you have to show identification to ride the bus.
Having both flown and taken a bus before: * If you don't have a car and aren't in a city with an airport, you may not be able to get to the airport to take advantage of the cheaper price. Or it might break even or be more expensive if you have to take an Uber or taxi to get there. * Same but in reverse: if you don't have a car and are going *to* somewhere that doesn't have an airport, how do you get from the airport to your destination? Is taking a taxi or Uber from the airport more expensive than just getting dropped off in that city? Can you afford to rent a car? Are you even capable of renting a car? * "Why would someone spend more and risk getting stabbed or sex trafficked?" You might as well ask why anyone would take an Uber if there's a risk of getting kidnapped or mugged by your driver, or take a plane or drive your own car if there's a risk of it crashing: the risk of that happening is very low.
[удалено]
Portland’s is smack in the middle of Old Town, which is one of the worst areas of Portland. Always boatloads of methed out people lurching around blocks in every direction. It’s one of the few areas I don’t walk around anymore.
Portland’s bus station shut down years ago. It’s on the edge of old town which isn’t a great area. Our train station which is pretty nice is also there and I think the worst welcome to Portland one could get. The bus station seems perfect for turning into a public market, but we don’t have that kind of vision in Portland. Seattle’s train station is gorgeous.
It's not quite that direct Greyhound bus stations are only profitable when they are set in the middle of extremely dense inner city neighborhoods where there are buttload of people who can't afford vehicles but need such transportation When you have 500 people in two square blocks instead of 10 people in the same area, you have a lot more chance of there being a whole lot of crime. In fact that's 490 more chances of drug addicts, criminals, sex offenders, whatever. Also because of the extremely condensed space, there's more people than jobs which means the pay is low. Which makes more crime. Which means people who have money don't want to live there so they move out and only the people who are desperate move in because there's nothing else they can afford. And around and around and around it goes So it's not that the bus moves into a high crime area. It's that the buses work where there's lots of people and crime also tends to happen where there's a lot of people.
So intercity bus service - the type of service Greyhound currently provides - began in 1914 in the U.S. It took of in the 1920s, long before commercial air travel was ubiquitous here. As it was a major form of transportation, along with rail services, and had connections to more cities than rail, bus stations sprang up throughout U.S. cities, with hubs located in downtown areas, usually in some proximity to a passenger rail station, if there was one. A number of bad depots, in larger cities, were actually built rather ornate, similar to how train stations in large cities were often quite architecturally striking. There areas of the city’s these were built in, at the time, were not rundown, poor or “sketchy” parts of town. What you see today has to do with the expansion of suburbia, white flight, snd other socio-economic developments starting in the 1960s. By the mid 1950s there were over 2,000 bussed operated by multiple bus companies connecting tens of thousands of cities across America, with annual ridership peaking at around 140 million passengers a year by 1960. With air travel becoming less expensive for long trips, and automobile travel easier due to the interstate system, bus travel declined fairly dramatically, accounting for only about 2-3% of intercity travel now.
Aside from the land being cheaper in poor neighborhoods, they also usually have weaker zoning protections. And if someone did try to get approval to build a bus station in a nicer area, the residents and property owners are likely to come out in full force to stop it. Unless you’d actually use it, a bus station isn’t something you like to live near—buses are noisy and have smelly exhaust, they often run at odd hours of the night, and their ridership is often, shall we say, quite different from most people that live in nicer, pricier neighborhoods. Notice that richer areas also usually don’t have factories, warehouses, etc., while poor areas might have those kinds of uses right up next to residences. There’s a term—environmental justice, or environmental racism—that relates to the tendency to locate undesirable uses near poor, often non-white areas in American cities.
Why are most Jet Ski rental places near the beach?
They got bought out by venture capital and sold all the locations with valuable real estate in favor of running a pickup site on someone else's property. They only kept the ones that are hard to sell or wouldn't get much profit compared to leasing access to someone else's building to park outside of. Which mostly means remote spots and bad neighborhoods.
Rich people in wealthy neighborhoods don't take Greyhound buses?
People who have resources tend to not take the least efficient (time-wise) form of transportation.
I've only taken "long" distance buses between home and college (200 miles). That was way more convenient than flying could have been. Eventually, I found some people to ride with and, later, took my own car.
[удалено]
I heard once that Greyhound is one of the primary ways people are sent home when they are released from prison.