Officially, the city is considering three potential locations to build a permanent bus terminal for Greyhound and other intercity carriers.
But for many who attended an open house on the project Wednesday night, one option was the clear favorite.
“The 30th Street Station option right here is, for me, the most logical, because it connects to the existing transit and transportation grid,” Brewerytown resident Miles Owen said. Next to him, a posterboard on an easel showed a conceptual design for a new terminal near the city’s Amtrak station and SEPTA’s 30th Street Regional Rail stop.
“All the other ones, they have a few benefits here or there, they connect to one station or one sort of thing. This connects to everything. And from here, people can come into the city and then go everywhere else,” said Owen, a planning instructor at UPenn who has previously worked for the city and Amtrak.
The open house at the Independence Visitor Center in Old City kicked off the public engagement process for the project to design, fund, and eventually build a new station, which is expected to take several years.
Most intercity buses currently pick up and drop off passengers from sidewalk curbs near the eastern end of Spring Garden Street. They will soon shift back to the old Filbert Street station near Chinatown, which the Philadelphia Parking Authority is renovating in preparation for reopening in May.
But Mason Austin, the director of transportation for the City Planning Commission, noted that the PPA’s lease will end in 10 years, and can only be extended for up to 5 additional years.
“It feels far away,” Austin said, but “it’s not too early to start thinking about a new station, and where the ‘forever home’ of the bus station in Philadelphia will be.”
Transit access vs. welcoming neighborhood
Planners had initially looked at 280 possible locations around the city and gradually whittled them down to three. In addition to the site at 30th and Arch streets, they’re considering parking lots at 8th and Arch and at 15th and Vine.
Bella Vista resident Nancy Biller said she’s interested in the project because her son often travels on Peter Pan and other carriers, and she occasionally has out-of-town visitors who need rides to Spring Garden Street to catch their buses.
“I’m thankful to Mayor Parker that at least something will be open on Filbert Street for all the happenings in 2026,” she said. The city and the PPA have said they want to reopen the station in time for this summer’s World Cup games, America250 celebrations, and several other large events.
Biller said she understands the advantages of 30th Street — “more capacity, and access directly to Regional Rail and transport” — but said the grid of Market, Arch, and 29th and 30th streets is very busy with traffic, “kind of yucky,” and not particularly welcoming for people arriving in the city.
“But, you know, coming into 8th and Arch, you’ve got Chinatown, you’ve got Reading Terminal, you’ve got the Liberty Bell a few steps away,” she said. “I think it’s a good location.”
Olney resident Kim Simmons took basically the opposite position, saying the 8th and 15th street locations are “just a little too cluttered, close to Chinatown.” Chinatown community leaders have complained about buses routing through the neighborhood on their way to and from Filbert Street, and may have similar concerns about 8th Street.
Simmons said she preferred 30th Street because it would have “more space and more accessibility and convenience.” She mentioned the site’s connections to Amtrak, NJ Transit, SEPTA Regional Rail, buses and subway, as well as I-76, which runs along the site’s eastern edge.
She said she has family in New Jersey and New York and frequently travels by bus to see them. In addition to having a convenient station, she’s also concerned about issues that public transport systems struggle with generally, such as homelessness and people smoking or using drugs.
Simmons jotted down her concerns on a Post-it and added the note to the collections of stickers accumulating on posterboards set up around the room. “Whether it’s public transportation or private, safety is always paramount. Safety, accessibility, comfort and cleanliness,” she said.
Also stopping by was City Councilmember Jeffery Young, who convened a council hearing on the project last May. He said he wanted to hear where residents wanted to site the station, and declined to say which option he liked best.
“I would prefer a location that is central to public transportation and has ease of access to the highways,” he said. “We’ll see which one of the three meets more of those criteria.”
Very exciting and very expensive
Austin acknowledged the broad interest in building an intercity bus terminal next to Amtrak’s 30th Street Station, as well as the challenges to realizing the concept. It would mean reinforcing and possibly extending an existing elevated deck over working train tracks, and might require reconfiguration of nearby PennDOT highway ramps.
“It’s a big project. It’s a very exciting option that has a lot of barriers to it. It’d be very expensive. Building over a railway is complicated. We have not had serious discussions with Amtrak yet to know if they’d be interested,” he said.
“But it’s there — it would just require an expansion and reinforcement of what’s there. And the connections with Amtrak and with the highway — there’d be a lot of upside to that option, in addition to a lot of the barriers,” he said. “There’s no perfect site. We looked at 280. None of them are perfect. All of them have a mixture of upsides and downsides. There are a lot of both, in that case.”
Austin noted that the planning process is still in an early stage and will be shaped by many considerations, including residents’ concerns and priorities that emerge in the coming months, and feedback from potential real estate developers who might be interested in building housing or retail as part of the station project.
The Department of Planning and Development has said that a larger development could help pay for construction and terminal operations, supplementing payments from bus companies and funding from the city and other government sources.
“We have not done any kind of market analysis yet to see what the needs are or what the developer interest would be,” Austin said. “At this point, we’re just looking for sites where, with a blank enough of a canvas, developers will be able to do what they want once we figure out exactly what that is, and allowing for the priority of the bus station to be there operating as well.”
Wednesday’s open house was “a really critical step,” but only a first step, he said.
Officials have said they plan to have a second public meeting later this year to present revised versions of the three conceptual designs and take more feedback. The city has also launched an online survey, with responses due March 13, and is taking comments at BusStation@phila.gov.
The Planning Commission will eventually publish a report with its recommendations. Once city officials settle on a preferred site, they can begin the search for needed funding, which is likely to run to tens of millions of dollars.
