Jason Williams

jwilliams@enquirer.com

Megabus.com left passengers out in the cold and rain for hours on Christmas Eve at its main Cincinnati bus stop – renewing calls from transit advocates for the coach operator to move to a permanent station inside the Riverfront Transit Center.

A bus scheduled to travel to Atlanta on Wednesday was delayed and then eventually cancelled because of a driver medical condition, Megabus.com spokesman Sean Hughes told The Enquirer.

Megabus uses a parking lot at 691 Gest Street in Queensgate as its main pickup and dropoff location Downtown. There are no indoor facilities or bus shelters at the location, and passengers complained about being stranded there Wednesday night.

Cynthia Jones wrote on Megabus.com's Facebook page on Thursday that passengers waited for seven hours, and the company was "ill-equipped and unprofessional in handling our desires for shelter and a darn bus." She said she was traveling from Cleveland to Atlanta and "would not recommend this mode of transportation."

Megabus.com refunded fares for all passengers and offered them the option to reschedule the trip, Hughes said. "Megabus.com sincerely apologizes for any inconvenience this may have caused our passengers," he said. "However, safety of our passengers and employees is our No. 1 priority."

Megabus has taken some public-relations hits in the past year over its Downtown stop location. The latest issue prompted transit-advocacy group Cincinnatians for Progress to call for Megabus to find a permanent home inside the Riverfront Transit Center at The Banks.

"It is not in the best interests of travelers, the neighborhood or Megabus to have people – especially children – waiting and stranded with no access to safety, shelter, restroom facilities or food and water," said Over-the-Rhine resident Derek Bauman, chairman of Cincinnatians for Progress. "A random street corner is certainly no way to welcome visitors to Cincinnati."

Bauman added: "We call for city leaders, the bus companies and Metro to come together to find a way to utilize the Riverfront Transit Center for the purpose it was intended. It simply is the right thing to do for everyone involved."

The $23 million transit center underneath Second Street at The Banks has been mostly unused since opening in 2003. The indoor facility can accommodate 20 buses and 1,600 passengers at one time, but does not have public restrooms. Nearby Smale Riverfront Park, however, has public restrooms. Several restaurants also are located nearby at The Banks.

Transit advocates also are calling for Greyhound to move its permanent stop to the transit center. Greyhound currently uses an aging station at East Court Street and Gilbert Avenue near the Horseshoe Casino.

Talks continue between Megabus.com and Metro about the potential of the coach operator moving into the transit center, Hughes said.

Those negotiations have been going on for months, however, and it's believed Metro's transit center rental fee is too high for what Megabus.com is willing to pay. The company currently does not pay anything for its pickup and dropoff locations in Queensgate and on the University of Cincinnati campus.

Megabus has had difficulty finding a permanent home for its Downtown stop. In the past year, Megabus also has used outdoor stops on Central Parkway near the WCET-TV studios and Fourth and Race streets by the old Tower Place mall. The company moved its stop to Queensgate in October because the Central Parkway stop had become what Cincinnati Vice Mayor David Mann called "untenable." He cited a lack of facilities for the problems.

In fall 2013, Megabus.com moved its stop from Fourth and Race after Downtown residents complained about Megabus drivers idling their engines for several minutes, crowded sidewalks and illegal parking.

Chicago-based Megabus.com promotes low-cost ticket prices and more city-to-city direct routes than Greyhound and other competitors. Megabus.com is able to offer dirt-cheap fares – sometimes as low as $1 one-way – partly because it keeps overhead costs down by preferring not to pay to lease stop locations in cities across the U.S.

Megabus, however, does lease some locations, and prefers to position pickup and dropoff sites near local transit stops, company officials say. In Buffalo, for example, Megabus, Greyhound and other intercity bus companies all share the city's main transportation center.