Cowford wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2011 6:15 pm
I'll rely on my back-of-the-envelope skills here: Greyhound appears a bit player... only three RTs/day vs. Concord's 18. That would indicate they have about a ~15% bus market share. Now, if you assume each bus has about 45 seats and average a 60-65% load factor, that's ~400-450,000 one-way trips/yr, with Greyhound only 55-65K of that. Amtrak hosts 165,000, so that would indicate Amtrak has a market share of about 28% of the bus/train market, with Concord having 62% and Greyhound another 10%.
MEC407 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 04, 2011 3:48 pm
Cowford wrote:Do you think the bus companies would want to abandon their current locations in favor of a Commercial Street location?
That's actually a great question. On one hand, why would Concord want to give up what they already own in favor of paying rent somewhere else and having less-convenient access to the highway? On the other hand, maybe Greyhound wouldn't mind having a bigger/better location and having easy access to Downeaster passengers.
I dug up those posts from 2011 to provide some forum context for these two Portland Press Herald articles, the first from December 17 2019 and the second from May 6 2020:
Portland Press Herald wrote:PORTLAND — The longtime home of the Greyhound Bus terminal is on the market, leaving the future of Greyhound operations in the city up in the air.
. . .
The station at 950 Congress St. provides bus service to Lewiston, Augusta, Waterville and the Bangor area to the north and Wells, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Boston, Massachusetts, to the south. It also provides package shipping services.
Crystal Booker, communication specialist for Greyhound Lines Inc., said it is premature to talk about Greyhound’s Portland operations after the building sells.
“As we continue service to Portland, it is too early to discuss any details regarding any changes in service locations at this time,” she said. “We serve approximately 10,000 customers from this location, incoming and departing, each year.”
(emphasis added)
Portland Press Herald wrote:PORTLAND — Maine Health, Maine Medical Center’s parent company, bought the Greyhound bus station at 950 Congress St. for $1.4 million last month. The property will continue to be used as a bus station for the time being.
“(Maine Medical Center) has no immediate plans for the property, and has leased it back to the longtime Greyhound manager, who plans to continue operating the bus service from that location,” said Matt Wickenheiser, the hospital’s senior manager for communications and public affairs.
. . .
“There was considerable interest in the listing, all local,” said Boulos Company partner/broker Nate Stevens, who represented Greyhound in the sale.
More than 32,000 vehicles each day pass the property, located at the busy intersection of St. John and Congress streets. Prospective buyers ranged from area developers looking to raze the building for redevelopment to smaller parties who wanted to repurpose the existing building, he said.
. . .
The 950 Congress St. site is on the very western edge of a city zone that Maine Medical Center indicated as a “potential future redevelopment” area in its 2017 Institutional Development Plan.
If redeveloped, allowed uses of the property under city zoning regulations include residences, retail or commercial offices, professional services, restaurants, hotels/motels, health facilities, bakeries or breweries, marijuana businesses and, by conditional use, drive-thous.
Links for both articles:
https://www.pressherald.com/2019/12/17/ ... -for-sale/
https://www.pressherald.com/2020/05/06/ ... -portland/
My comments:
1) 10K passengers to/from Portland every year is a lot less than I expected, and indeed a lot less than any of us estimated.
2) That run-down old station is not the highest and best use of that parcel. Not even close.
3) I don't think it's surprising to anyone in Maine that the parcel was purchased by MaineHealth. There's very little in that neighborhood that MaineHealth
hasn't purchased at this point.
4) Greyhound could probably gain a lot of passengers—assuming they want to (?)—by relocating to a future consolidated transportation center. I don't think Concord Coach or Amtrak would lose any passengers to Greyhound; rather, Concord and Amtrak would gain new passengers coming from locations elsewhere on the Greyhound network who transfer to CC or AMTK to get to places on those networks. Plus, Greyhound would most likely gain all sorts of operational flexibility and service expansion potential that they don't currently have at 950 Congress due to the size limitations of the parcel.