In today’s episode of eating the poor: Have you noticed your city’s bus terminal lately? No? That’s because it may no longer be there. Greyhound and other major private bus services are quietly vacating their terminals. Already the bus terminals in cities like Cincinnati, Louisville, Philadelphia, Houston, Portland, Charlottesville, and Tampa have shut down. Even ones that act as major hubs like Chicago and Dallas have disappeared. Hedge funds have been buying up the centrally located transit hubs for redevelopment purposes. It just happened again this past April in Cleveland.
Intra- and intercity bus service often go unnoticed by the general public but are critical for a significant portion of our population: most bus riders earn less than $40,000 annually and are disproportionately people of color, disabled, or unemployed. Bus lines provide a real, tangible benefit to millions of people and it’s by far the most cost-effective way to travel, as flights are expensive and American trains provide limited service. However, bus service is consistently underfunded. This has led to fewer people being able to use the services, which have made terminals vulnerable to closures.
As a result, bus terminals have been closing at a rapid pace. Each closure unravels service for other city bus services and routes, and thus has caused a perpetuating death spiral for the whole industry. As disastrous as the terminal closures have been for the people who depend on bus service, their demise has been a gold mine for the investment firms that are acquiring them, usually in prime locations downtown, for pennies on the dollar.
It’s bad enough that hedge funds are buying up hundreds of thousands of starter homes across the nation just so they can gouge people on rent, but do they have to take away our mass transit options, too?
It’s widely known that Republican politicians harbor a unique dislike for public transportation. The fight against buses joined the culture war when Republican gubernatorial candidates, like Scott Walker and Rick Scott, made opposition to President Obama’s transit initiative a centerpiece of their platform. Some of their opposition is practical: they tend to prioritize rural concerns over urban issues, and they abhor the unions that are attached to many public transportation jobs.
However, the majority of their problem with mass transit is that it epitomizes the philosophy that the government can actually work. There is no more essential government service than transportation, hence the phrase that a politician’s main job is to ensure “that the trains run on time.” As journalist Jason Mark put it, the GOP hates public transit because it has the word “public” in it.
The contempt for buses was apparent during the pandemic, when the government rescued commercial airlines with over $60 billion. Yet buses, which make 600 million passenger trips per year and employ over 100,000 people, received $100 million—or just 16% of what the airlines were given.
National Geographic partly blamed the pandemic for the massive bus station closings and layoffs, “with its social-distancing imperatives and calls for fresh, circulated air, [it] decimated the industry.” Yet the bus service portion of our national infrastructure has been in decline for decades.
This past December, Greyhound suspended service for a year in Jackson, Mississippi, but after the terminal closed it also left Little Rock, Arkansas. Cincinnati’s terminal closed in 2022, and the station replacement became a small trailer far away in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
Most terminal closures are resulting in a shift to a curbside pickup model located farther from city centers, making it less accessible through other mass transit options. This leaves riders without facilities for basic needs such as food or restrooms or even sometimes shelter from inclement weather.
If buses are rescheduled or delayed there isn’t easy communication to riders waiting for their transportation. Curbside bus service can clog up city streets with passengers and their luggage, snarl traffic, increase pollution, and frustrate local business owners. In Philadelphia, a Greyhound terminal closure and switch to curbside service after its lease ended turned into a “humanitarian disaster” and “municipal disgrace” with people waiting on street corners. (The curbside plan has been such a disaster that Philadelphia city officials have scrambled to come up with an alternative.)
Yet the human disaster has been a boon for the investment groups that have been able to snatch up the valuable real estate. In 2022, Twenty Lake Holdings bought 33 Greyhound stations in prime locations for only $140 million.
Twenty Lake is a subsidiary of Alden Global, and though I’m fairly sure you haven’t heard about them directly, you might have heard about what they do. This “vulture capitalist” hedge fund was made infamous for buying up and dismantling newspapers across the country. They now appear to have set their sights on another public service that they can profit off destroying.
The sales and subsequent closures of bus terminals have raised concerns among advocates who fear that predominantly low-income Greyhound riders may lose access to what has been an affordable intercity transit option. They rely on buses for essential travel during emergencies or in areas with no alternative transit options. For some parts of the country, Greyhound is the only option if you don’t have a car.
Coincidentally, the United States has the worst public transit in the developed world. Here in the U.S., it is often viewed more as a social welfare program than a vital transportation service, particularly by conservative lawmakers and voters. This perception has led to limited investment in public transportation, especially in newer cities in the west and South. Even in established cities, there has been a tendency to dismantle existing transit systems in favor of building highways to cater to suburban commuters.
For the terminals that are closing or have already closed, there’s already big plans. The 37,000 square feet station bus terminal in downtown Cleveland is being torn down to be replaced by an apartment building and nightclub. The one in Cincinnati will be a parking lot. The one in Richmond, Virginia, was immediately relisted for sale after it was bought at a bargain basement price in an area slated for redevelopment.
Joseph Schwieterman, a professor at DePaul University specializing in intercity bus travel, expressed concern to CNN about the simultaneous occurrence of these developments. “You’re taking mobility away from disproportionately low-income and mobility-challenged citizens who don’t have other options.”
Transit advocates argue that intercity bus systems are crucial for providing mobility to low-income Americans. Surveys conducted by Midwestern governments and reviewed by DePaul University indicate that over a quarter of bus riders would be unable to make trips without the service. Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School, emphasized to The Drive the sacrifice of an essential piece of transit infrastructure in favor of higher profits. “I don’t know the specific details of each building, but it is clear what is happening here: an important piece of transit infrastructure is being sacrificed in the name of higher profits.”
Maybe there would be more outrage if the local press featured this practice of selling off vital transportation facilities in order to make a few rich people even richer. A lot of people are going to be harmed by this, but at least you’ll have the memories of the jingle:
