Editor’s note: The article was updated Friday morning to add comment from city officials.
Every time the city floats the idea of moving its Greyhound bus terminal to a new temporary location, people inevitably have the same exasperated response: Just plant that jawn at 30th Street, already.
“The city needs to get off their hands and start discussing a bus terminal at 30th Street Station,” a Reddit commenter wrote last month, after news surfaced that the terminal might temporarily move to a parking garage in Old City. “This is ridiculous at this point.”
Congratulations, irritated transit advocates: The city seems to have heard you.
Philadelphia recently applied for, and was awarded, a $90,000 grant from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission “to evaluate three pre-identified potential locations for the intercity bus terminal within the 30th Street Station area.”
A consultant will do a feasibility analysis, pick a preferred site, and develop preliminary designs, per DVRPC. The project will also “greatly emphasize stakeholder outreach and engagement.”
The community engagement push would come after residents in Old City and, previously, in Northern Liberties complained that they were blindsided by draft proposals to place the bus terminal near their homes.
The idea of consolidating intercity bus companies in a publicly owned, brick-and-mortar terminal, with seating, bathrooms, ticket offices and other amenities — and conveniently located near Amtrak’s 30th Street Station — is nothing new.
In 2016, Amtrak itself proposed using a lot on Arch Street just north of the station, an idea the city and SEPTA later acknowledged in their 2021 transit vision plan. “The need for a new intercity bus facility has been on the table for years,” the plan noted.
But the problem gained new urgency last summer, when Greyhound shut down and sold off the bus station building on Filbert Street near Chinatown that carriers had been using for decades.
Since then buses have been picking up and dropping off passengers at curbsides, first on Market Street and more recently on Spring Garden Street, leaving riders exposed to the elements while they wait — and further stoking demands that the city finally create a proper terminal.
Perfect location, just needs tens of millions in road work
So when will this new terminal open near 30th Street Station?
No one knows yet when that might happen — or even if it will happen, according to a statement from the Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS) and the Department of Planning and Development.
“It is important to keep in mind that nothing is off the table,” the agencies told Billy Penn. “The city/OTIS recognizes that we need to plan for a permanent location. The 30th Street Station area tends to come up as a possibility and we are interested in studying it further.”
This type of DVRPC grant has a two-year timeline, but the city hasn’t yet confirmed the scope of the consultant’s work, they said.
Has the city already “pre-identified” three potential locations for a terminal?
Yes, although officials won’t say exactly where they are. OTIS and Planning would only say that they’re north, south and west of 30th Street Station. (Not a surprise, given that east of the station would put you in the middle of the Schuylkill River.)
However, some specific locations have been floated in the past.
The “30th Street Station District Plan” that Amtrak and its partners published in 2016 proposed a new intercity bus facility on a narrow lot north of the train station, which is technically on Schuylkill Avenue at Arch Street. It projected that the bus terminal would be built by 2025, along with other improvements like an adjoining rideshare pickup area and a nearby pedestrian plaza, on Arch Street next to the Cira Centre office tower.
The lot has several advantages, the report says: It could fit up to 11 bus bays, it’s right on the highway and near other modes of transportation, and has space for a terminal building with an indoor waiting area. Passengers could go directly to the Amtrak station via a new pedestrian bridge over Arch Street or by crossing the street.
However, the site would need substantial work first. To make it easily accessible to buses and pedestrians, PennDOT would need to reconfigure nearby I-76 and I-676 ramps, which in 2016 would have cost $32 million, the Inquirer reported.
While OTIS and Planning said Amtrak will be included in the evaluation process, it’s not clear if the Arch Street lot is still in play as a potential bus terminal.
Amtrak declined to comment specifically on the terminal. Spokesperson Beth Toll said the federal railroad operator “is always open to discuss options to improve mobility and connections with other transportation providers at our stations.” It judges such opportunities based on whether they’d be useful to passengers, support Amtrak’s service needs and plans, and “come with adequate investment and fair compensation.”
Toll said Amtrak is currently focused on its $550 million renovation of 30th Street Station, which kicked off late last year and is expected to run through 2027.
PennDOT spokesperson Brad Rudolph said it would be “premature” to release information related to the Arch Street terminal concept and related roadwork.
“PennDOT will continue to work with the city and the stakeholders in the 30th Street Station neighborhood on their most recent proposals, which we understand are still being developed,” he said.
Make room in an office tower?
Another option is to build a terminal west of 30th Street Station, somewhere along JFK Boulevard. Until a few years ago the street was used as a curbside pickup area by Bolt Bus and Megabus. (Megabus still does some pickups on Schuylkill Avenue near Walnut Street, a block south of the train station.)
That area to the west of the station is the site of Schuylkill Yards, a multi-property development by Cira Centre developer Brandywine Realty Trust on land owned by Drexel University. A 28-story office and apartment tower was completed last year at 3025 JFK and a life sciences building at 3151 Market St. is supposed to be finished next year.
Brandywine plans to eventually put up more buildings in the area, including a proposed 35-story office and retail tower at 3001 JFK. That’s a three-minute walk from the back of the Amtrak station. Could that building be designed to accommodate a bus terminal on the ground floor?
City officials say they will include Brandywine in the evaluation process, and the company has reportedly supported having a bus terminal in one of its properties in the past.
In 2020, Brandywine and the University City District contacted city officials about creating a station in the company’s parking garage at 30th and Chestnut, the Inquirer reported. When Greyhound decided to close its Filbert Street facility a couple years later, the city asked the bus carrier to help fund the new station with an added ticket surcharge, but the company refused.
In its promotional materials, Brandywine highlights Schuylkill Yard’s good transit access, but a spokesperson declined to discuss the bus terminal. “We will not be interviewing at this time,” she said in an email.
Near the Arch Street lot, Amtrak also has a 1,500-space parking garage behind the Cira Centre that might be able to accommodate a bus terminal.
Other cities make them pay
The DVRPC’s brief description of the grant doesn’t say if finding funding for the terminal will be part of the feasibility analysis. But that question could be essential to the project’s success.
Money has been central to the city’s current intercity bus crisis, which was touched off by the acquisition of Greyhound by Flixbus in 2021.
Flixbus, like Megabus and other carriers, was already keeping its expenses down by paying the city relatively low fees to use curbsides for pickup, rather than leasing terminal space. After the Greyhound acquisition, it promptly ended the company’s station leases in Philadelphia and many other cities and moved to a curbside model as well.
Other cities, facing similar challenges, have responded to the rise in curbside pickup in various ways.
Some, like Philadelphia, have allowed it, given carriers permits to stop at certain locations, and charged them fees. Others decided to provide few or no curbside permits, and instead ticketed and fined bus companies that insisted on picking up passengers on the streets.
Boston, for example, used police enforcement against curbside pickup to pressure the carriers to use its city-owned terminal, South Station, where they must pay fees to lease gates and ticket counters, as well as per-trip departure fees.
Philadelphia has never been able to take a similar course because it has lacked sufficient station space, even when the Filbert Street facility was still open, according to a 2022 review of several cities’ intercity bus operations.
If Philly does create a new terminal, OTIS could decide to stop issuing curbside permits and require Greyhound and other carriers to pay fees to use the new station. The companies could comply, or could try to insist that the city pay for the station itself or face the prospect of losing bus service entirely.
“Access to publicly owned intermodal facilities is crucial for providing communities across the U.S. with intercity bus service,” a Greyhound spokesperson told CNN last year. “We strongly urge local and regional governments to support intercity bus access to these centers.”
Status quo for now
Meanwhile, most long-haul buses in Philly continue picking up and dropping off passengers on Spring Garden Street near Front Street in Northern Liberties, as they have since November.
In March, OTIS and the Philadelphia Parking Authority were working to create a long-term temporary bus terminal at a parking lot on Spring Garden using modular buildings that could be erected quickly. They soon dropped the plan, and announced they intended to relocate the bus pickup area away from Northern Liberties entirely by Labor Day.
In April, officials said they wanted to use a parking garage/bus stop on 2nd Street in Old City as a temporary terminal, according to Councilmember Mark Squilla and others who were consulted on the idea. The garage, which is owned by the National Park Service and operated by the PPA, already has bus parking spots and space for a passenger waiting area.
Nearby residents and property owners quickly organized to oppose the terminal, saying they had not been consulted and that the bus station would be too close to a daycare center and other businesses. City officials say they haven’t yet done community engagement because the idea of using the garage is still being studied.
“While we hear the criticism around the 2nd Street location, it is important to set the record straight,” OTIS and Planning said. “We have said — and will adhere to — involving the community before any bus station is activated. However, the 2nd Street location still has challenges that need to be overcome before it can be considered a serious potential location and community meetings at this stage would be premature.”
“That being said, we are looking forward to engaging the community on any and all locations that are viable,” they said.
The city has been discussing the idea with the Department of Interior, which the National Park Service is part of, officials said. A local National Park Service spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The parking garage is among multiple sites city officials are evaluating for use as a temporary bus terminal, OTIS and Planning said. Their goal is still to move the terminal by September, but that “is not set in stone since there are many factors still at play.”
Editor’s note: The description of Greyhound’s lease cancelation has been corrected.
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