Editorial: Don't forget passengers as Greyhound moves

The Greyhound bus station has been a drag on downtown for years. So it is hardly surprising that downtown business owners would celebrate the Sacramento City Council's multimillion-dollar deal to move the station to Richard's Boulevard. It's been a long time coming.

But what about intercity bus riders? What about the poor, the disabled, students and others who depend upon low-cost intercity buses to get where they need to go? How will they get to the new bus station when it opens a year or so from now?

When built, the new Greyhound Bus Terminal will sit on an out of the way corner at Richards Boulevard and 5th Street, wedged between the Sacramento River and the city's water treatment facility just east of Interstate 5 and west of 7th Street. Bus riders will not find it nearly as easy to get to as the current downtown terminal, where many public transit operations converge.

Currently, Sacramento Regional Transit has just one bus route that runs from downtown, then north on I-5 to Richards. It runs every half-hour on weekdays and hourly on weekends. A second bus route goes down 7th Street every half-hour during commute times but only hourly in the afternoon. It doesn't run at all on weekends. A light rail line is planned for the Richards Boulevard area, but that won't be built until 2010 at the earliest, a year after the Greyhound Terminal is relocated.

For people without alternative transportation options – and travelers who take the bus often have no other alternatives – schlepping baggage and kids to the new bus terminal on Richards with its limited transit service will be a challenge.

City planners have worked hard on a finance plan to buy the Richards Boulevard site, lease it to a developer, subsidize infrastructure improvements, grading, road sidewalks and utilities, etc. But no one in the city planning agency appears to have given much thought to how Greyhound's customers will get to the new terminal.

No one has talked to RT about increasing bus service to the new location. That needs to happen soon, certainly before the terminal is ready to open next year.

There is also a concern among many transportation planners that once Greyhound gets settled on Richards, the city will renege on plans to move it into the new intermodal station planned for the railyards. That would be a mistake.

Sacramento's downtown Greyhound Terminal had a well-earned reputation for attracting drifters and crime. That's always a risk for any transit facility open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But intercity bus travel is an important part of the transportation system. Passenger trains and air travel do not provide service to all cities and small towns. Intercity buses fill the gaps, especially for the poor. If gasoline prices continue to soar, long-distance buses will become an even more essential part of the transportation mix for larger swaths of the population.

When Sacramento opens its long promised new intermodal station, long distance buses – Greyhound included – must be part of the mix.