(note: this is in the US, idk if it’s normal in other countries) I understand that some cities don’t have a station, in which case it makes sense, but I’m visiting family in a small city (college town) that just updated the train/bus station a few years ago, but the only bus from my major city drops me off on a random side street northwest 3 miles away from the station with no bus service/businesses around.
Why do they do this? The town has a bus station! It’s a major stop on the route! It’s super inconvenient and doesn’t make sense to me.
Because some intercity buses (Megabus) don’t want to pay for their own stations or even pay to use and existing intermodal facility.
That makes sense, as much as I hate it. It’s odd though since the route used to be served by a local coach company in partnership with Greyhound and would stop both at the intermodal station in the college town as well as the bus depot in the main city. The new operater is FlixBus, who bought Greyhound and presumably could have used the station/depot if they wanted; they must have been trying to cut costs on the route.
Intercity bussing in the USA is a shit show driven on cost alone. Based on what I’ve seen from Miles in Transit, I wouldn’t ride an intercity bus in the USA unless it was my only option.
Yeah, I’ve been using the bus to visit home for 6ish years now and there’s no consistancy year to year on how it’ll operate. I prefer the train, but there’s only 1 train each way/day and it ends up being a shit deal time-wise for me since the train arrives into the small city in the late evening and leaves early morning. I dream for the day the midwest gets its shit together