City wants Greyhound passengers to board buses outside Union Station after West Loop terminal closes

The city of Chicago wants Greyhound passengers to be allowed to wait inside Union Station before they board buses across the street after the carrier’s expected eviction from its West Loop terminal in mid-September.

Curbside service at the Chicago Transit Authority's transit center at Canal Street and Jackson Boulevard "is probably the most feasible" option but will require Greyhound to adjust its schedules around the CTA's, the city's chief operating officer, John Roberson, told the Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday.

The plan is not final. Negotiations continue among the city, Greyhound owner FlixBus and the CTA, Roberson said.

Moving bus operations to outside Union Station would allow passengers to use Union Station's restrooms and Great Hall as shelter from inclement weather, Roberson said. Greyhound already has a ticketing kiosk inside, he said.

"Based on what we've seen, we think that is the best option right now from the city's standpoint," he said.

The Union Station option would be a short-term solution while the city seeks to create a municipal-owned bus station somewhere else, he said.

Roberson shot back at critics, including Greyhound’s CEO, who have said the city is not prioritizing finding an alternative site for Greyhound's terminal, which handles around a half million passengers a year.

"Since Greyhound brought this situation to us, we have been actively engaged in examining a number of different options," Roberson said.

Tom Carney, the city's Transportation Commissioner, said his department has been working to make sure a deal is hashed out before Greyhound gets booted.

"It's not an easy problem to solve, but there is a lot of dialogue and work happening behind the scenes," Carney told the Sun-Times.

Amtrak, which owns Union Station, pushed back against the new proposal to use the CTA lanes on Jackson Boulevard, saying congestion there has worsened since Canal Street was closed last year for a major city reconstruction project.

"Adding dozens of intercity buses to Jackson Boulevard and saying hundreds of daily intercity bus users can take shelter in Union Station starting next month are both highly problematic suggestions the city has yet to present to us," Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said in a statement.

Greyhound declined to comment. CTA did not immediately comment.

The Greyhound station debacle began three years ago when the bus operation was sold to Germany-based FlixBus while the terminals were sold to another buyer. Greyhound has been losing its stations across the nation as its leases end, one by one, catching some cities off guard.

The city of Chicago considered buying the terminal at 630 W. Harrison St. but found it was not financially feasible due to the upgrades required to modernize the facility, Roberson said. The city’s Transportation Department sought federal money last year to help it buy the terminal but was not awarded the grant.

"We began to look at alternative sites that could accommodate, logistically, the schedule and number of buses that Greyhound wanted to operate," Roberson said. The challenge was that there was no indoor facilities at the curbs that could handle the number of buses, he said.

The city eventually settled on the CTA station outside Union Station as the best option.

"We understood they wanted to be close to Union Station, to other modes of transportation," Roberson said. "The challenge is, within that area, there aren't a lot of spaces that can accommodate the Greyhound service needs. ... And as we looked at it, we found there were some conflicts with the Greyhound service hours and schedules and the peak times that CTA operates, in morning and afternoon."

Transit advocates want the city to buy the terminal.

The Jackson Boulevard option would not work because it would result in "significant cuts and undesirable schedule changes," according to a July letter signed by two dozen groups urging Mayor Brandon Johnson to buy the terminal.

Another problem is that Union Station's Great Hall is only open to Amtrak and Metra passengers, the letter states, and closes in the early-morning hours. Traffic congestion around the station is also an issue.

Buying the terminal would be the cheapest long-term option, they wrote.

"The cost of purchasing and rehabbing the station is estimated at less than $40 million — a small fraction of what we regularly spend on major transit, airport, and highway improvement. This relatively small investment would generate a significant return for the city and region," the letter reads.