CLEVELAND — Tim Danforth expected to be in Cleveland for just a few hours this week.
Instead, he got stranded at the Greyhound station Downtown Monday — along with other passengers booked on a bus to Pittsburgh.
During his long wait, Danforth wasn’t impressed. He couldn’t find anyone to talk to about bus schedules. The floors were filthy. Most of the water fountains didn’t work.
“It almost looked like a set for a post-apocalyptic TV show,” Danforth said.
Across the country, Greyhound is leaving its historic stations. Here in Cleveland, the company is weighing a move to a public transit hub a few blocks east of its longtime home. But Danforth and other riders say the local station already feels like an afterthought.
They’re shocked by conditions at the building — and frustrated about the customer service experience with a company they rely on to get around.
“I don’t think I have felt this utterly uncared-for by any business entity I have ever engaged with in my life,” Danforth said by phone Tuesday, two days into his unexpectedly long quest to get home to Sutton, West Virginia.
A Greyhound spokesman said the company “is aware of an issue involving the delay of a bus routed from Cleveland to Pittsburgh.” In an emailed statement, he said passengers were notified about the delay by text message.
As for the station?
“While we do not own the building, Greyhound strives to ensure the facilities are cleaned throughout the day,” the spokesman wrote.
It’s true that Greyhound isn’t the owner. But the company leases the property — and is responsible for maintaining it, according to the landlord, an affiliate of Playhouse Square.
On Wednesday afternoon, Tamara Martin was waiting in the station’s lobby. She was traveling from Louisville, Kentucky, to Lorain for a high school reunion.
“I walked in, and I thought to myself, ‘Oh my God, are they closing?’” she said.
Most of the vending machines are gone. So are several of the toilet seats in the women’s bathroom.
“It’s horrible,” Martin said. “They don’t even have toilet paper.”
Her next bus to Elyria was running two hours behind. She called for a ride instead.
“I’m traveling home on the 24th,” Martin said. “And I’m coming nowhere near here.”
'At this point, it's just funny'
Danforth and his partner, Erin, made the trip to Cleveland to take care of some legal paperwork Downtown.
It took them three buses to get here from their small West Virginia town. They arrived around 3:30 Monday morning and were scheduled to depart just after noon the same day.
But Danforth said their bus never boarded. Instead, passengers waited for hours.
“One gentleman I spoke to was missing his son’s graduation,” Danforth said. “Which is heartbreaking. That’s an awful thing to miss, and an awful reason to miss it.”
He said there were no announcements about the buses. Most of the overhead lights were off. Some passengers gave up and left. Others kept calling the company for help.
“It was like one nightmare piled on top of the other,” he said. “The longer we were sitting there, I just started to notice that the building was falling apart from the inside out.”
After more than 12 hours, a group of travelers decided to split the cost of an Uber to Pittsburgh. Danforth and his partner joined in.
But they still aren’t home. By Wednesday afternoon, the couple had made it as far as Bridgeport, West Virginia. They still needed to catch a local bus to Sutton – and service was limited because of the Juneteenth holiday.
“Honestly, at this point, it’s just funny,” Danforth wrote in a text message. “Like, cartoonishly bad.”
He’s not planning to ride Greyhound again soon. If he does, he’ll avoid Cleveland.
“If you can get off at a different station, do so,” he said.
'Their new base of operations'
It’s unclear when Greyhound will leave the Art Deco depot on Chester Avenue.
And Playhouse Square, which bought the property in April, hasn’t said what it plans to do with the building, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
“We are committed to working with Greyhound and the city of Cleveland toward a smooth and successful transition to their new base of operations, whenever that should be,” Cindi Szymanski, a Playhouse Square spokeswoman, wrote in an email.
Greyhound is required to give 30 days’ notice before it leaves. Playhouse Square has not received any such notice, Szymanski said.
The company and Barons Bus, which also uses the station, are talking to the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority and Cleveland State University about moving to the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Transit Center at East 21st Street and Prospect Avenue.
But an RTA spokesman said that’s not a done deal.
“No decisions have been made at this time,” he wrote in an email Wednesday.
The Greyhound spokesman echoed that. He said the company is still working with other organizations “to find a workable solution.”
