Greyhound Riders Believe West Side Cleveland Station Replacement Would Be Inconvenient

The Greyhound Station on Chester. For now. Credit: Mark Oprea

While the fate and future use of Cleveland’s Greyhound station building will be molded by Connecticut-based investor group Twenty Lake Holdings, questions have lingered around where exactly its replacement will be. We now know an answer.

And that replacement could be 11 miles outside of Downtown. This week, Axios Cleveland reported that the central depot for charter buses will likely be relocated to the RTA Puritas–W 150th Station, roughly a 40 minute trek via transit from the original spot on Chester Ave.

Robert Fleig, an RTA spokesperson, told Scene in a statement via email that the transit authority is in talks with a local charter line to sort out the aftermath of the Greyhound Station’s disappearance from its downtown spot, where it’s been since 1948.

“GCRTA remains in discussions with Barons Bus Inc. to lease use of an existing bus lane and bus layover locations at the Puritas Station,” he wrote, “to provide a multi-modal transfer location for GCRTA, Barons and Greyhound customers.”

“The details of the agreement have yet to be finalized,” Fleig noted.

There will also be several routes linked to the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Transit Center, about a 18-minute walk east of the current station.

The Greyhound terminal in mid-November. Passengers that day expressed worry over a possible relocation 11 miles out of Downtown Cleveland. Credit: Mark Oprea

Cleveland’s Greyhound isn’t alone in its downtown exodus. Many of the 32 stations around the U.S. accumulated by Alden Global Capital, who grabbed Cleveland’s station for $1.7 million in January, have been shuttered, with alternative stations popping up in suburban locations.

Despite the developmental promise of the Greyhound site’s future—into a possible six-story apartment building and a jazz club—such station closures, whether in Chicago or Columbus, are bound to lead to logistical headaches for passengers without cars, or those reliant on proximity for last-mile travel.

“It’s like an inconvenience,” Tracy, 41, from Pittsburgh, told Scene in the Greyhound lobby, waiting for the bus back home. “I’m going to be honest with you, I’ll probably start catching the [Amtrak] again.”

For someone who’s been riding Greyhound since she was a kid, Tracy said she’s noticed an overall drop in quality from the charter over the years. She said she returns to Cleveland every week, to see friends and family in South Euclid, and relies on solid service to make it back on time to her job in Pittsburgh. (Her scheduled bus that day was, she said, at 11:30 a.m.)

The news of the station closure seemed to be a kicker for Tracy. Since the summer, she’d been witnessing drivers arrive late or call the police on unruly riders. And earlier this year, Tracy’s sister, she said, was injured when a Greyhound bus driver got into a minor accident.

“She hurt her back, her neck. Everything messed up,” she said. It’s why Tracy had to get a ride from a friend that day: “My sister ain’t even driving right now: She in therapy.”

Another passenger waiting for an afternoon bus, a man traveling to Columbus who preferred to remain anonymous, balked at the idea of having to buy another bus ticket.

“How far?” he said, undoing an earphone. When he understood the station might be moved to the Puritas Red Line stop, the man said, “Well, I don’t even know where that is.”

The terminal itself, an Art Deco masterpiece placed on the a National Register of Historic Places in 1999, appeared empty and neglected one recent afternoon, as seven travelers waited for their buses to arrive. Security guards and ticket operators were away from their booths. A timetable near the door read a mismatched date and time. (May 8th instead of November 14th.) Many of the transportation maps flanking the exit doors seemed printed in another decade.

Twenty Lake and partner Glimcher, the parties interested in remaking the parcels surrounding the station into an apartment complex, could begin the design review process as early as next spring.

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