DETROIT – The plans surrounding the Greyhound bus station in Detroit are on hold once again.
It’s an area that’s been eyed for redevelopment for over a decade. The long-standing plan had been to move Detroit’s Greyhound bus station to the New Center area, but that plan is on hold, at least for now.
The Greyhound station building is owned by the Michigan Department of Transportation. It’s old, run down, and despite its needs for renovations, it’s one of the better Greyhound stations in the region since many have closed.
Those closures are leaving riders literally standing on the side of the road in good weather or bad.
A company called Flix Mobility bought Greyhound last year and sold off some of its valuable assets -- inner-city bus stations -- to a hedge fund. The stations are now closing and getting renovated.
Greyhound customer Dana Russell told Local 4 what it’s like in cities like Philadelphia, Tampa, and in this case, Houston.
“When I got there, there was not a station, the bus just dropped us off and left us there, and we had to wait for the next bus,” Russell recalled.
DePaul University’s Joseph Schwieterman is an intercity transportation expert and says lower-income bus passengers are getting the short end of a very bad stick here:
“If you don’t have a set of keys, the bus is often the only way out of town,” Schwieterman said. “And we see that people use it for personal visits, visiting family in emergencies and they need a predictable experience like we enjoy with cars and air travel.”
As for Detroit’s Greyhound station, the state of Michigan intended to move it to a vacant lot next to the Amtrak station off Woodward Avenue and turn it into what they called an intermodal transit center, consolidating the QLine, Greyhound and other similar bus companies, but that plan is on hold.
