Bus travelers couldn’t escape the heat in Greyhound’s new waiting room — the sidewalk on Market Street

Somebody left a wooden chair on the sidewalk, so at least Charlene Reynolds had a place to sit Thursday as she waited for the 2:15 p.m. Greyhound to Baltimore, much delayed at that point.

It was about 92 degrees, the sun beating down, and there was no restroom and just the tiniest bit of shade from the overhang of a storefront physical therapy office on Market Street.

“There’s nothing here,” said Reynolds, 65, a Philadelphia native who was on her way back to Hagerstown, Md., after visiting family. “People can’t be standing here for hours like this. It isn’t right. And what are they going to do about winter, when there’s snow?”

Around her, people called out questions to employees in polo shirts and yellow safety vests, who mostly said, “The bus is coming.”

On June 27, Greyhound shuttered the Filbert Street bus station that had been its home for 35 years and moved to an office at 618 Market St., where the bus line has a ticket window and some ticket-sales machines, alongside rival Peter Pan.

“The company is changing its operating model from a terminal bus operation to a curbside bus operation,” Greyhound wrote in letter notifying an employee union and the city Commerce Department last month, the news site Billy Penn first reported.

Greyhound did not respond to The Inquirer’s request for comment on Thursday.

The bus company employed 59 people at the old station and planned to lay off 10 workers in the relocation, the letter said. The depot’s 2022 payroll was $2.4 million.

The old station is surrounded by fencing. It lies in the footprint of the proposed Sixers arena, and Greyhound would have had to find new quarters when its lease expired in a few years anyway, assuming that the project goes forward.

The move pushed travelers on Greyhound, Peter Pan and Flixbus, owned by Greyhound’s parent company, onto the new sidewalk waiting room. Riders have complained about the austere conditions and a chaotic scene as long-haul buses pull in to the curb to pick up and off-load passengers — with no departure-and-arrival monitors or public-address announcements.

Reynolds was going to Baltimore for a three-hour layover before connecting with the Bay Runner Shuttle, which serves smaller cities around Maryland. She said she’d be home about 9 p.m., if everything went well. Baltimore has a bus station with amenities, she said.

Tina Ball was annoyed that the 2:15 bus was late. She needed to take it to Washington to switch to another bus to get to Durham, N.C., where she moved a year ago from Philadelphia. “I wish they could have texted us about what’s going on,” Ball said. “I’d have shown up an hour later and gotten a water ice or something.”

Finally, an employee came and told the group of travelers their bus would be another 40 to 45 minutes. She said she’d called the driver, and there had been a problem with the bus, but it was on the way.

Coincidentally, Ball is a bus driver for a New York-to-Atlanta service. She knows it’s a difficult job but thought there should have been more real-time information. “Everybody’s frustrated and confused, and at the ticket window, they don’t really answer questions.” She engaged with a chat bot to see whether she could find an earlier Peter Pan bus going her way but had no luck.

Greyhound has faced increased competition from new transportation companies that offer cheaper tickets by picking up and letting off passengers at curbsides and in parking lots and avoiding the expense of fixed bus stations. In a similar vein, more established airlines have been squeezed by carriers who can offer lower fares, in part by using outlying airports in metro areas.

“I’m tired,” Reynolds said. “This kind of heat just makes me tired.”