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America's Greyhound bus stations are disappearing

cnn.com

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Re: America's Greyhound bus stations are disappearing

#31

Post by linotype »

yaksha wrote: post #18
linotype wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVs aren’t wasteful. The US alone consumes 9 million gallons of gas a day. It’s not sustainable. If we don’t transition in the next fifty years no one will be driving except for the extraordinarily wealthy.

Do you have references backing up the claim of such gas consumption not being sustainable?

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...

Oil is made over millions of years and we’re on track to deplete it in under 200 years. We’ll never completely deplete it because the oil that’s left will be uneconomical to extract, but that’s functionally the same thing.

Re: America's Greyhound bus stations are disappearing

#32

Post by sct202 »

aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #7
kibwen wrote: post #3

> The threat of a closure has reached a stress point in Chicago because Greyhound, the largest intercity carrier in the United States, no longer owns its terminals in the city and dozens of others. Greyhound, owned by German company Flix Mobility (which also owns FlixBus), has sold its terminals to investors for lucrative redevelopment in recent years, including dozens to investment firm Alden Global Capital. Alden i…

> and removing facilities where people can rest during layovers just drives what little remains completely into the dirt. To be clear the bigger problem is that Greyhound will have to cut service in Chicago dramatically - they really need a terminal to support larger operations, they can’t have dozens of buses sitting in the road. There will be a few routes that dump people on the street, but companies like Megabus w…

Flixbus/Greyhound will do as they have done in other cities, and rent a large parking lot, plop a trailer house and a few port-a-potties and call it a station.

Re: America's Greyhound bus stations are disappearing

#33

Post by netsharc »

kibwen wrote: post #3

> The threat of a closure has reached a stress point in Chicago because Greyhound, the largest intercity carrier in the United States, no longer owns its terminals in the city and dozens of others. Greyhound, owned by German company Flix Mobility (which also owns FlixBus), has sold its terminals to investors for lucrative redevelopment in recent years, including dozens to investment firm Alden Global Capital. Alden i…

Hah, I'm amazed FlixBus got that big. Their original model is Uber but for buses, i.e. sell tickets for bus rides, and instead of owning buses, they pay bus companies to drive the routes for them (also having their buses be covered in their corporate vinyl wrap).

Somewhat relatedly, I was in London several years ago, and their buses had a logo that said "Arriva - a DB [Deutsche Bahn] company". I found it funny that the Germans managed to "rule" over England (well, London - well, their bus network) after all.

Re: America's Greyhound bus stations are disappearing

#34

Post by chasil »

kasey_junk wrote: post #23
chasil wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Union Station in Chicago would be the obvious place to put Greyhound. Greyhound will never go there for one reason: it has a bar that sells alcohol. CTA also does not have a presence in Union Station for the same reason, so no subway/el or local bus presence. Metra and Amtrak are alcohol-friendly, and I've seen people boarding Metra carrying open containers quite often.

Is there some rule that CTA can’t have a station in a building with a bar? Because most of the loop subway stations skirt that pretty close. There is a bar in the pedway between the lake redline stop and the Washington blue line stop for instance. And the merchandise mart has several bars and a brown line stop. I’d guess that the CTA doesn’t have a presence at Union Station because of the way we carved up regional tr…

I don't know about CTA, but Greyhound absolutely will not tolerate it.

I can either use Trailways or a two hour drive to Aurora Metra from where I live (I've grown to prefer Aurora). When Trailways stops at the Napierville Metra, the driver commonly says that anyone who enters the bar at the station will not reboard the bus.

Aurora is also absolutely superior when I need to use O'Hare.

Re: America's Greyhound bus stations are disappearing

#35

Post by mlazos »

I’m glad for this, bus companies have been fighting train development for decades to prop up their garbage service. Hopefully if they get broken up and sold for parts we can have sensible public transit in this country which doesn’t rely on roads and sitting in traffic.

Re: America's Greyhound bus stations are disappearing

#37

Post by [deleted] »

chasil wrote: post #17
kibwen wrote: post #3

> The threat of a closure has reached a stress point in Chicago because Greyhound, the largest intercity carrier in the United States, no longer owns its terminals in the city and dozens of others. Greyhound, owned by German company Flix Mobility (which also owns FlixBus), has sold its terminals to investors for lucrative redevelopment in recent years, including dozens to investment firm Alden Global Capital. Alden i…

Union Station in Chicago would be the obvious place to put Greyhound. Greyhound will never go there for one reason: it has a bar that sells alcohol. CTA also does not have a presence in Union Station for the same reason, so no subway/el or local bus presence. Metra and Amtrak are alcohol-friendly, and I've seen people boarding Metra carrying open containers quite often.

[deleted]

Re: America's Greyhound bus stations are disappearing

#39

Post by baggy_trough »

linotype wrote: post #31
yaksha wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have references backing up the claim of such gas consumption not being sustainable?

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc... Oil is made over millions of years and we’re on track to deplete it in under 200 years. We’ll never completely deplete it because the oil that’s left will be uneconomical to extract, but that’s functionally the same thing.

They said the same “50 years to go” thing in the 70s. Yes, of course the naturally occurring supply is finite. But we don’t know where the limit is.

Re: America's Greyhound bus stations are disappearing

#40

Post by searealist »

sevensor wrote: post #28
searealist wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't use greyhound because of the other people who use greyhound. Making this a public utility only worsens this problem.

Thank you for saying this, I was hoping somebody would bring class into it. Intercity bus lines aren’t subsidized because poor people ride buses between cities, and as a society we prefer not to subsidize poor people’s physical mobility. Physical mobility is a prerequisite for social mobility, after all.

I suspect you are not aligned with me. I am saying that lower-class people, on average, have behavior that middle-class people don't want to be exposed to. Look at some of the stories in this thread.
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