6 September 12 - 18, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Running on Empty Can Dallas’ intercity buses bounce back? BY EMMA RUBY I f Hexel Colorado wants you to know one thing about himself, it’s that he doesn’t need a car. The East Dallas resident has been a fierce advocate for city planning that promotes walkability and biking. He is a lover of public transportation, serving on the DART citizens advisory committee. And, about once a quarter when he is looking to get out of town, he turns to intercity buses to get where he wants to go. Car-free journeys, he says, make him feel like he’s “living in a Simon and Garfunkel song.” Starting this fall, though, his service op- tions on intercity buses could be half of what they were a year ago. Ongoing plans to shutter the Downtown Dallas Greyhound station in October, coupled with Megabus’ abrupt removal from the Texas market, signal that the days of hitching a double-decker ride to Houston, Austin or San Antonio for a few bucks may have come to an end. Megabus pulled out of its Texas routes on Aug. 16, just days after its parent company, Coach USA, received permission to sell some of its assets when it filed for Chap- ter 11 bankruptcy. A spokesperson for Mega- bus told the Observer that pulling out of Texas was a “difficult business decision.” Meanwhile, travelers who turn to Grey- hound’s conveniently placed downtown sta- tion are still waiting to hear what their future travel will look like. (The German transit company FlixMobility acquired Greyhound in 2021.) In January, the com- pany announced that its lease, which ex- pires in October, was not renewed after 45 years in the location. “I think it’s concerning if losing one pro- vider means we have less service overall. Be- cause one of the advantages of living in an area with multiple companies is thinking of the combined headway [they offer],” Colo- rado told the Observer. “But my hope would be that it boosts the service [options] on one of the other providers.” Dallas travelers do still have several op- tions for intercity bus travel, although the seats are pricier than what was offered by Megabus. A one-way trip to Houston on a FlixBus runs in the $25–50 range, but a seat on Vonlane costs $125 and comes with a meal and a hostess. RedCoach buses have prices similar to those offered by FlixBus, and make stops at DFW Airport and UT Dallas. Dallas’ Bus Industry Has a Flat Tire A n annual study on the intercity bus industry published in February by Joseph Schwieterman, director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan De- velopment at DePaul University, found that in 2023, national passenger traffic rose to nearly pre-pandemic levels. But while Schwieterman applauded Texas’ luxury bus offerings, the uncertainty surrounding the downtown Dallas Greyhound station is problematic. The closure of the Dallas downtown sta- tion will follow the trend of closures seen last year nationwide. Bus terminals in Hous- ton, Knoxville, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Co- lumbus, Tampa and Louisville all shuttered in 2023, and “in most cases, municipal gov- ernments did little, and in some instances were openly hostile, to efforts to find a new location,” the report says. “When FlixMobility purchased the Grey- hound bus operation in 2021, it did not ac- quire some privately owned stations. Many stations were later sold by the company that previously owned Greyhound,” Schwieter- man’s report states. “During this same pe- riod, ‘not in my backyard’ opposition to bus stations grew.” A stigma surrounding the downtown Dallas Greyhound station is nothing new. The Dallas Morning News reports that the downtown bus station was deemed a “habitual criminal property” by the city in April 2023, forcing the facility’s owners to pay an annual fee and implement crime con- trol measures. Records show that Grey- hound challenged the decision, but the appeal was later dropped. Schwieterman’s report also states that “heavy traffic originating along the U.S./ Mexico border” has helped “sustain” the de- mand for Texas bus services. Nationally, buses are typically seen as an option exclu- sively for low-income individuals, contrib- uting to the stigma surrounding the industry. “In a lot of cases, I’ve got to blame local governments who kind of treat the intercity industry as third-class citizens,” Peter Pan- tuso, president of the American Bus Associ- ation, told NPR earlier this year. The Observer asked the city if any studies have been conducted to determine the fi- nancial impact of Greyhound pulling out of downtown, or whether city officials know how many riders will be affected by the change, but the city declined to comment. A spokesperson for Greyhound was unable to say what the company’s future operation plans in Dallas will be. The Greyhound booking website currently allows individu- als to book a ticket out of the downtown sta- tion after October’s expected closure. “I assumed that Greyhound would just find some other facility, maybe Union Sta- tion. That’s what I hope happens, because then that becomes making lemonade out of lemons,” Colorado said. “I would be disap- pointed, I’d be very sad if they stopped run- ning service.” Paving the Road for a Comeback I n his report, Schweiterman predicts that the growing emphasis on environmen- tally friendly travel will open up a new wave of ridership for intercity buses. He also believes that public policies towards the in- tercity bus industry will gradually shift in the favor of buses, although whether that shift will happen in time to amp up Dallas’ offerings is unclear. A partnership between a local transpor- tation entity and an intercity bus company wouldn’t be new to Dallas. Before CO- VID-19, Dallas Area Rapid Transit licensed the use of two bus bays in the CBD East transfer facility to Megabus. Colorado is “puzzled” why a similar agreement hasn’t been reinstated since the pandemic. “DART has the available bus space at their transfer centers, CBD West, CBD East, Union Station,” Colorado said. “I think it would be a boon for both systems. You have people coming from other cities, they could use the DART. … It feels like such a home run solution that I do wonder if there’s some bigger roadblocks that I’m missing there.” Megabus seems to be gone for good — the Observer was told via statement that the company will let us know “if anything changes” — but a spokesperson for DART told us that the group has been in talks with Greyhound to try to keep the bus company in Dallas. “There has been some discussions be- tween our organizations about creating a similar agreement,” the spokesperson said. “It worked out well with Megabus, so that is an open and active conversation on our end.” ▼ DRUGS WORSENING CRISIS NORTH TEXAS COUNTIES ARE RECORDING RISING NUMBERS OF DRUG-RELATED OVERDOSE DEATHS, DESPITE STATEWIDE DATA LEVELING OFF. BY EMMA RUBY G rim data released in several new studies shows that Dallas County is continuing to feel the impact of the opioid and fentanyl crisis, despite state and national data making positive turns. A recently released report by Dallas County Health and Human Services and the Recovery Resource Council found that Dallas County has seen a significant in- crease in overdose death rates, which surged 81% between 2019 and 2023. The synthetic opioid fentanyl, which accounted for 11.4% of opioid-related deaths in 2018, contributed to as many as 79.8% of deaths last year, the study adds. Fentynal’s impact is even more signifi- cant when looking at the counties surround- ing Dallas, says Cindy Ledat of the Recovery Resource Council. The nonprofit behavioral healthcare provider publishes annual needs assessments of each of Texas’ regions. Dallas County makes up Region 3 alongside Cooke, Grayson, Fannin, Wise, Denton, Collin, Hunt, Palo Pinto, Parker, Tarrant, Rockwall, Kaufman, Erath, Hood, Johnson, Ellis, Na- varro and Somervell counties. “As of 2023, 79.8% of all opioid-related deaths [in Region 3] are now attributed to fentanyl. … We are increasing at a faster rate than Texas at this point,” Ledat told the Ob- server. “In the past couple years we’ve been behind Texas, but [in 2023] we actually sur- passed Texas in terms of our rate of fen- tanyl-related deaths. And for our region, it’s really difficult to attribute that to one spe- cific cause.” What Is Contributing? L edat, who helped author both the Dal- las County and Region 3 studies, said a lack of accessibility to healthcare and addiction care is exacerbating Dallas’ over- dose problem. The study states that the “complexity” of Dallas’ socio-political land- scape has “significantly impacted both opi- oid use and prevention efforts.” “Dallas is the only county that is majority non-white in terms of their demographic and ethnic population. And so what that means though is that we have large areas that are historically underserved,” Ledat said. “We see lower rates of educational | UNFAIR PARK | courtesy Greyhound Greyhound has operated out of the downtown Dallas terminal for 45 years. Its lease expires in October. >> p8
