How are buses viewed in the United States? Two recent stories offer hints. First, communities in the Chicago area are restricting buses from dropping off migrants.

Second, inter-city bus travel will be more limited as stations are bought and the land redeveloped:

An investment firm know for buying up newspaper publishers then gutting them is behind the recent shuttering of dozens of Greyhound bus stations across the country, a new report has revealed.

Twenty Lake Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital, purchased 33 Greyhound stations across the U.S. from transport company FirstGroup in 2021, reported Axios…

Since the change of ownership two years ago, Greyhound has closed scores of its central bus stations around the country, either by cutting services completely, or moving to far out sites as a cost-saving measure to sell off the depots to real estate developers…

But as demand fell – with passengers numbers dropping by a third from 1960 to 1990 and then halving again between 1980 and 2006 – and running costs increased, they became less economically viable to run.  

Given the American emphasis on driving, buses offer opportunities to move a lot of people along existing road networks. This limits the needs for fixed railroad tracks and buses can make more stops.

Yet, I have discussed before who is willing to ride buses and who avoids them if they have the resources to drive. A story from several years ago highlights these persistent patterns:

Like most transit hubs, buses and bus stations are shared spaces where members of different neighborhoods or social classes mix—which has made them important symbolic battlegrounds in civil rights history.

Black Americans, escaping the Jim Crow South for better opportunities in the north and west, used Greyhound buses during the Great Migration. The Freedom Riders used Greyhound buses to protest segregation and to test new protections on interstate passenger travel. In 1961, a mob beat and firebombed the Riders’ bus in Anniston, Alabama, attempting to trap the passengers, who escaped through the windows and door; the Riders had to be evacuated from Anniston through a convoy…

The accessibility of bus services and the mutability of their routes have historically made it an effective method for cities to move systemic problems elsewhere. Prior to the 1996 Olympics, for example, Atlanta leaders aimed to make the city more hospitable to the world by reducing its hospitality to people experiencing homelessness. The city bought thousands of one-way bus tickets to other locales to remove homeless populations from sight.

With more emphasis in the United States on driving individual vehicles – and this is a marker of self-sufficiency and freedom – buses can get short shrift. For those who cannot afford cars and other travel options, buses can offer opportunities – if they are available.