JC to be served by Greyhound

Friday, March 22, 2013

Greyhound bus service is coming to Jefferson City.

The company said Friday it will begin operating one round trip schedule through its Greyhound Connect Service, traveling between Springfield and Ottumwa, Iowa, starting Monday, April 1.

From Springfield, this new route will serve Mountain Grove, Cabool, Licking, Rolla, Jefferson City, Columbia, Moberly, Macon and Kirksville en route to Ottumwa.

The bus will stop in Jefferson City at Convenience Food Mart Conoco, 701 Eastland Drive.

New 24 passenger coaches with amenities that include electrical plug ins will be used.

According to company officials, the Greyhound Connect service is primarily located in regions of states in need of daily, scheduled and affordable transportation.

This route is being provided using Federal Transit Administration (FTA) funds through MoDOT.

It allows companies, such as Greyhound to provide intercity bus transportation to locations not currently within its traveling markets.

An adult ticket to go from Springfield to Ottumwa ranges from $80 to $104.

A ticket for Jefferson City to Ottumwa would cost $50 to $66.

Pick up would be at approximately 10:20 a.m. and arrival in Ottumwa would be around 3 p.m. with a 30 minute lunch layover in Columbia.

For complete ticket information go to greyhound.com

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jfester 2 months, 4 weeks ago

All aboard for Ottumwa, Iowa. I remember riding the Greyhound through St. Louis to Centralia, Illinois, in 1980.

Are we going forward.........or backwards

Oh yes, Springfield, Liking, Mtn. Grove.

Isn't Otummwa the city that has the John Deere manufacturing plant with hundreds of $25/hr jobs? Wish we had something like that here in JC. You would think we would, with thw state technical college here and nearby Rolla Engineering school and MU Ag school.

kentheco 2 months, 4 weeks ago

In a time where tax dollars are few, here we go again, spending money to support a business. I would ask if there was a study to see if this route was viable, but knowing the government, they would have spent the tax money even if it were not needed. By the way, how many tax dollars will MoDOT spend for each rider? I see this an another waste of limited funds, much like Missouri tax dollars building a new bridge for the Union Pacific Railroad.

sancho 2 months, 4 weeks ago

This is great news. College students will not need a car or a parent to transport them if they attend school in any of the listed cities. Plus people can connect to other forms of transportation: I can take the Greyhound to Columbia, then connect with MegaBus or a shuttle to St. Louis or Kansas City or tons of other places.

Believe it or not there are people who don't want to use or own a car. The more transportation options available, the better they can get where they want to go. There's a lot of low income people who can't afford a car, or if they do have a car, it's not one they want to risk driving out of town, it's old and breaks down. Having Greyhound service in Jefferson City allows them to travel out of town if they need to.

jfester and jclifer, as you guys drown in your sorrow, wallowing in your 1/2 filled glasses, the rest of us will continue to move forward. And if we don't want to use or own a car, we'll do fine.

kentheco 2 months, 4 weeks ago

You must have lots of time to kill getting to where you need to go; some of us do not have that luxury, or have to be somewhere at a set time and then return home the same day. Maybe you would like to help pay for our transportation?

JCLifer 2 months, 4 weeks ago

Mrs. Sancho, I agree 100% with your first two paragraphs. (Except I never understood why people think it is better to die close to home in their old unsafe cars that break down.) We do need additional options of mass public transit. Sometimes it is relaxing to drop a few pills and/or smoke a joint or two and ride a bus or train, instead of battling all the crazies texting and driving drunk out on the highways. It is quite elitist to think everyone should have a $30k car that costs over 55 cent a mile to operate.

The personal attack in your third paragraph was uncalled for, but I forgive you because you know not what you do.
Have a nice weekend and build a snowman or something.

sancho 2 months, 4 weeks ago

I forgive you too Mr. Jc. Sometimes you are such a sweetheart.

Kentheco, I retired after working fuilltime 31 years and another 4 years parttime before that. So I do have some time, when not doing volunteer work or helping my husband with home businesses. I try to plan trips to avoid requiring someone to take me to the airport. And if I can use public transportation, and it adds a few hours for me, but saves my husband from having to take 1/2 day or more to shuttle me around, I'll do it.

There's plenty of people who will benefit from this, whether they work or not, whether they have a reliable car or not.

As for your first post Kentheco, complaining about this community benefiting from our tax dollars being spent here, it is our tax dollars. I have no problem with getting it spent on this program to help people here and in other cities along the route.

kentheco 2 months, 3 weeks ago

I too am retired and am happy that this will work for you, but should I have to pay a portion of your ticket price? The past has shown that there is not a sufficient need for bus service from Jefferson City, if there was, and it was profitable, there would already be bus service.

3blindmice 2 months, 4 weeks ago

Filling a need. Beyond amtrack, which you have to book in well advance and which goes mostly east/west, there are few other options. Wonder if this will be available on football saturdays. @sancho the further you get from jc the more you encounter car free people. In seattle i think its 1 and 4 don't own a car. In my neighborhood i believe less than half do. Its the future. People are moving to carless cities and taking all the brain power and education with them. There is a reddit for the people who want to get educated. Its /r/lowcar. I fund plenty of roadage with the taxes i pay. I subsidize plenty of cagers and glad i can get something out of my tax dollars

ThePeopleSpeak 2 months, 3 weeks ago

From the wikipedia link: (to mod: I hope posting a link is appropriate, if not please remove with my apologies)

"Greyhound Lines, Inc., based in Dallas, Texas, is an intercity common carrier of passengers by bus serving over 3,700 destinations in the United States, Canada and Mexico, operating under the well-known logo of a leaping greyhound. It was founded in Hibbing, Minnesota, in 1914 and incorporated as "Greyhound Corporation" in 1929. Today, it is headquartered at 350 North St. Paul Street in Downtown Dallas, Texas,[1] and under the ownership of British transport firm FirstGroup, which operates Greyhound as an independent subsidiary, and a division of FirstGroup America."

So... ummm... it doesn't appear that this is publicly funded.

I guess that makes speaking out of turn kind of inappropriate. I think this is great news, especially as gas prices stay high despite an oil boom all over the world. Perhaps that's because the US sells gasoline abroad nowadays?

Anyway, Go Greyhound!

kentheco 2 months, 3 weeks ago

"This route is being provided using Federal Transit Administration (FTA) funds through MoDOT." So it is publicly funded. If it were profitable, there would be bus service in Jefferson City, it wasn't, so there isn't.

3blindmice 2 months, 3 weeks ago

This program is using a smaller, more efficient bus, than the old full size diesel pushers. Fuel was much cheaper ten years ago. Times change and when they do people consider options they would not of before. I actually think that there is enough need for a light rail between columbia and jeff. Now lets discuss funding. This is funded through FTA to modot through a formula. I actually think these funds are through map-21. In 2012 they changed the formulas so more money was coming from general revenue. Quite a bit more. This is money paid into the pot and the use of it belongs to everyone. You can thank the states that put more in than missouri did.

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