By GERALD NEILY
While the City has banished Greyhound from downtown to a new bus terminal on an isolated South Baltimore peninsula, Megabus.com is showing how to run a bus company – announcing more than a doubling of service to 32 daily trips from Baltimore to New York with no terminal at all, just convenient access.
It’s another example of how government subsidies, including Federal stimulus money, tend to rumble right past the neediest transit travelers.
Megabus ignores the City bus terminal on the shores of the Middle Branch, which is bypassed by light rail trains zooming over the adjacent water, and has instead located their operation on Cherry Hill Road right next to the light rail stop a mile to the south. Imagine that – an intercity bus system that actually connects with the intracity transit system.
Several years ago, the City took away Greyhound’s Fayette Street downtown bus terminal conveniently located near the convergence of the entire MTA transit system when they relocated them to the peninsula bus terminal.
High-end Amtrak riders favored
Meanwhile, most of the public sector’s multi-billion dollar intercity transit subsidies go to Amtrak, in an attempt to lure riders out of their cars. Amtrak typically charges $64 on upward to almost $200 to go from Baltimore to New York, while the Megabus fare is as little as $19. The government Amtrak strategy caters to the high-end well-heeled expense accounted business travellers, while Megabus and other carriers focus on the mass low to middle class market. As part of the new federal stimulus plan, Amtrak’s subsidy is expected to grow.
The City’s long range Middle Branch plan proposes that the current Greyhound bus terminal be replaced with yet another new bus terminal in the same isolated area away from the light rail line, as new waterfront development takes place. The City has ignored the idea of locating the new bus terminal near a light rail station, despite the fact that there is plenty of vacant land at the Cherry Hill station now used only as an overhead power line right-of-way.
But Megabus is demonstrating that having any terminal facility at all is unnecessary, pursuing low fares and good local connections instead.
