![]() ![]() Not long before it closed, she said, a man had had his throat slit in the bathroom. ![]() The driver, who didn’t want to give her name, said it used to be a reliable spot to pick up a fare, going all the way back to when she started driving a cab in the early 1980s. Last week, a lone cab driver was resting outside the empty station, bouncing a baseball against the station wall and catching it in a mitt. Squilla says he contacted the property owner, but they had no interest in helping out the group involved with the arena proposal agreed to fence it off temporarily. He first learned that the station had closed when Chinatown residents called to ask about securing the property. In the meantime, Squilla says, nearby residents worry the property could become a blight on the neighborhood. It’s on the site of a proposed new arena for the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team, but that is a controversial pitch that’s far from becoming a sure thing. The property is centrally located, between Center City and Chinatown, with the most permissive zoning designation in the city. Philadelphia’s vacated Greyhound station is owned by a New York-based holding company, according to property records. A different company, Twenty Lake Holdings, based in Connecticut, bought much of the remaining property and has begun marketing it for sale in different cities. Greyhound’s parent company sold the service but not the real estate to FlixBus in 2021. Greyhound's dominance as an intercity bus service began to decline when lower-cost competitors began attracting more riders. Many Greyhound stations were established decades ago on valuable downtown real estate. Why Is Greyhound Leaving Its Downtown Depots? Greyhound's empty Philadelphia station sits on valuable downtown real estate. Officials in cities with remaining Greyhound terminals should prepare to find new ways and new places to accommodate evolving bus services, Schwieterman says. And more potential closures are on the horizon, according to Joseph Schwieterman, who studies the intercity bus industry and is director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University. Greyhound has left other downtown stations over the last few years in Knoxville, Houston and Columbus, among other places. We need to come up with a better solution,” Squilla says. “We can’t allow an operation to exist that’s, first of all, not safe, and second of all, is not good for our residents and businesses and their customers. The Market Street location - a “humanitarian disaster” and “municipal disgrace” in the words of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s architecture critic - won’t be their permanent home. The other curbside services, including Peter Pan, Megabus and FlixBus, which now owns Greyhound, have been bounced from place to place over the last several years. It turned out that Greyhound had signed a short-term lease to join the other curbside services at the ground level of a parking garage that’s slated for eventual redevelopment. He soon started getting complaints from a group of federal buildings adjacent to the Market Street pickup, as well as from neighboring businesses, nearby residents and bus riders themselves. Mark Squilla, a city councilmember whose district includes both the old Greyhound terminal and the new curbside pickup spot, says he’d known for years that the station was eventually going to move, but was caught by surprise by the timing. With a growing number of buses idling at the curbside, taking up a travel lane that’s supposed to be dedicated to bikes and local public transit buses, city officials had a problem on their hands. Suddenly, travelers who’d been accustomed to shelter, shade and restrooms found themselves on the sidewalk, waiting sometimes hours in escalating heat for a bus. In Philadelphia it started late last month, when Greyhound left its long-term home at a station in Center City and joined a group of curbside bus operators on Market Street near Independence Hall. And riders, and cities, are left holding the bag. Greyhound, long the leading name in intercity bus service, is gradually vacating most of its remaining bus terminals around the country. Other big cities are facing the closures of downtown stations as well.The new pickup site in Philadelphia has left riders with fewer amenities and interfered with traffic flow and public transit.Greyhound has begun picking up passengers at the curbside in many places, following the model of its competitors. ![]()
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