A passenger waits outside the Greyhound bus station in the West Loop, June 20, 2023.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Not everyone has access to a car. And those who do are constantly encouraged to take public transportation and reduce carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions that destroy the environment.
A public transit system that is reliable, clean and safe is essential. Chicago shouldn’t have commuters saying “I can’t rely on it anymore,” as one ridee told WBEZ last year about our 76-year-old city’s public transit system.
Much the same can be said about the importance of intercity bus transit. For those without cars, or who either cannot afford or don’t want to fly, the ability to rely on Greyhound must remain an option.
Yet the city — and the state — don’t seem to care about the very real possibility of Greyhound being evicted within months from its longtime Harrison Street bus terminal, as a scathing report by DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development found.
Other bus lines, including FlixBus (which now owns Greyhound), Barons Bus, Burlington Trailways and others, are at risk of being evicted too.
The Illinois intercity bus system is “on the verge of crisis” if that happens, the report states, slamming the city for a “do nothing” approach to the problem and criticizing the state for putting the issue on the back burner as well.
And who stands to lose the most? Lower-income riders, those who don’t drive and the disabled, as the report points out. In other words, the same constituencies this progressive city administration says they want to help.
If the Greyhound station is shuttered, Chicago will become the largest U.S. metropolis without an intercity bus terminal — at a time when bus travel is expected to increase and return to pre-pandemic levels by 2026, the Chaddick Institute predicts.
Here’s a chance for the city and the state to work together to keep the station, which sits on valuable land in the booming West Loop, operating — or to find a new home for Greyhound and other bus lines.
The Chicago Department of Transportation said last year that it was in talks with Greyhound and was “actively assessing and exploring solutions,” Sun-Times architecture critic and editorial board member Lee Bey wrote in an April 2023 column.
Yet CDOT said more or less the same in a statement it issued Tuesday. That’s not reassuring — it sounds like the status quo from a year ago still prevails.
It’s especially troubling given that FlixBus said no “meaningful progress” has been made to find a permanent bus depot. We’re also wondering why the city wasn’t able to secure a federal grant that could have helped finance the purchase of the station at 630 W. Harrison St., or another site.
A world-class city that is smack-dab in the middle of the country has to function as a viable transportation hub — not a transportation flub — for all modes of travel, including intercity buses. Travelers coming into Chicago need alternatives to airports, interstates and Union Station, the city’s Amtrak home.
Bus travel has a long history in America, and bus stations, unlike airports, don’t induce the “anxiety caused by multiple levels of security and bustling connections,” as a 2021 National Geographic article notes. Some 16 million people use intercity buses each year. And in the face of similar station-closing threats, other cities — Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York — have taken swift action, such as station improvements, the Chaddick Institute report points out.
Time is running out. Twenty Lake Holdings, which owns the Harrison Street bus terminal, wants to sell the facility for residential redevelopment and Greyhound’s lease will expire in October.
But the city has to take the wheel fast.
CTA passengers have “ghost buses.” Without adequate service in Chicago, hundreds of thousands of Greyhound riders could be ghosted too.
The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines.