A new shelter space for passengers riding Greyhound and other intercity bus lines is coming to Philly’s bus terminal area this week, city officials say.
There’s no sign that the terminal area on Spring Garden Street itself is moving, despite statements from Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems officials earlier this year that they wanted to relocate the bus stop by September.
However, this Monday and Tuesday workers will install a heated trailer on Front Street just north of Spring Garden where riders can wait for buses. They’ll also move an existing mobile restroom unit to a spot next to the trailer, an OTIS spokesperson said.
“The new, climate-controlled mobile waiting area will provide improved shelter ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday and winter months, in line with ongoing conversations and feedback from neighbors, bus carriers, and passengers,” spokesperson Matt Cassidy said.
That block of Front Street will be changed to allow only one-way traffic, he said.
Cassidy said city staffers recently met with members of the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association to discuss the trailer installation.
The intercity bus pickup and dropoff area is at the southeastern corner of Northern Liberties. The NLNA has lobbied Mayor Cherelle Parker to move the bus terminal somewhere else, citing the “terrible conditions” including “lack of shelter, seating, and proper sanitary facilities” at the outdoor pickup and dropoff area on Spring Garden Street.
Multiple locations, many complaints
The curb along Spring Garden between Front and Second streets has served as the terminal for Greyhound, Peter Pan, Megabus, and FlixBus for almost a year now.
For decades, most intercity buses stopped at the Greyhound station building on Filbert Street in Center City, near Reading Terminal and Chinatown. In June 2023 Greyhound shut down the station as the company’s new owners sought to cut costs and sell off its real estate holdings across the country.
Buses initially switched to a section of Market Street between 6th and 7th streets, which drew intense complaints for lacking shelter or bathrooms, blocking the sidewalk and a SEPTA bus stop, and leaving crowds of passengers to wait outside in the summer heat.
Last November the terminal was moved to Spring Garden, leading to similar complaints. “Buses have been loading on and blocking the streets, bike lanes, and sidewalks of Northern Liberties, with no clear end in sight,” the NLNA wrote in a petition to Parker this past August.
The city later installed the bathroom trailer with a guard shack on a nearby side street, and there is a small waiting area with some seating in a private bus ticket office on Spring Garden Street.
In March, NLNA, OTIS and the Philadelphia Parking Authority floated the idea of building a long-term temporary terminal with a modular ticketing building in a parking lot on Spring Garden, next to the current pickup area. But OTIS subsequently withdrew that plan and said the terminal would be relocated away from Northern Liberties entirely by Labor Day.
Status of Old City proposal remains unclear
The city subsequently considered using a Philadelphia Parking Authority garage on 2nd Street near Walnut Street in Old City as a bus station.
The structure has several bus parking bays, a bathroom, and space where passengers could wait. But the idea again drew loud opposition from businesses and residents in the area, including a crowd that packed a daycare next door to the garage in July to decry the potential harms from the station and the roughly 70 buses a day that would have to drive down narrow 2nd Street to pick up riders.
The current status of that concept is unclear. At the time, Councilmember Mark Squilla said the National Park Service, which owns the garage, would require a traffic study and a community impact study before it could evaluate whether to allow the site to be used as a bus station, he said. The city would have to commission consultants to do those studies.
OTIS did not provide any new information about the potential move to 2nd Street or the possibility of relocating the terminal from Spring Garden Street.
Transit advocates, elected officials, and many residents have called for the city to build its own bus station, ideally near Amtrak’s 30th Street train station.
Around May of this year the city received a $90,000 grant from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission to evaluate three potential locations for an intercity bus terminal near 30th Street.
Officials declined to identify the spots, but past locations that the city has explored or that have come up in planning efforts include a lot just north of the Amtrak station and a parking garage in an office building to the west.
