Why are Greyhound bus stations almost always in poor, high crime neighborhoods?
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because cars kill kids, and urban grids don’t restrict where cars can go so they go everywhere and put the city kids at constant risk, so people who can move to the suburbs do so, but the suburbs are built in rural places that actively prevent black people from living there so the black people have to stay in the city, but they don’t have wealth or power so the white people put freeways through their neighborhoods to get suburban office drones through their neighborhoods more quickly and without spending money there and they disinvest in the urban services and infrastructure at the state and county level and BOOM the old city is now a shithole and hey isn’t that where they built the greyhound station all those years ago?
Aside from the land being cheaper in poor neighborhoods, they also usually have weaker zoning protections. And if someone did try to get approval to build a bus station in a nicer area, the residents and property owners are likely to come out in full force to stop it. Unless you’d actually use it, a bus station isn’t something you like to live near—buses are noisy and have smelly exhaust, they often run at odd hours of the night, and their ridership is often, shall we say, quite different from most people that live in nicer, pricier neighborhoods.
Notice that richer areas also usually don’t have factories, warehouses, etc., while poor areas might have those kinds of uses right up next to residences. There’s a term—environmental justice, or environmental racism—that relates to the tendency to locate undesirable uses near poor, often non-white areas in American cities.
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What others have said but I’ll add because they are most effective when placed in high traffic areas with access to other forms of transportation including public transit. In an urban area that translates to the same places homeless set up shop to be close to resources and the transit.
I’ve only taken “long” distance buses between home and college (200 miles). That was way more convenient than flying could have been. Eventually, I found some people to ride with and, later, took my own car.
The land is cheaper and the people that may live there don’t normally complain about the noise.
When you’re released from prison you may be given a bus ticket to get home.
Federal prisoners can find themselves with a bus ticket for a 30 hour bus ride and multiple transfers to get home.
The federal government subsidizes greyhound bus service.
I think it’s different than everyone here is saying.
Greyhound stations are almost always as close as can be to the downtown area of any given city. Those areas are extremely expensive, EXCEPT for some cheap sections that are generally run down as hell.
So Greyhound Stations are built there because they’re central and affordable.
Rich people in wealthy neighborhoods don’t take Greyhound buses?
One thing I don’t see said yet is that often wealthy communities do not allow bus stations in their community out of fear that it will bring crime and/or “””crime””” (a dog whistle for minorities). Wealthy communities *want* to limit access. If poor people *can* ride the bus to that community, they *will*, and then there will be dirty dirty poors walking around the neighborhood, committing crimes, and taking all their stolen goods back home on the bus. It could also mean people without the means to own a vehicle will be more likely to move there permanently, since they would have access to transportation.
Whether or not these fears are reasonable doesn’t matter. People believe them, and prevent busses and railways in their communities.
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