ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — After more than two decades of service in St. Augustine, the city has cut ties with Greyhound Lines. There are rumors the city decided not to renew its contract with the bus service in order to combat homelessness.
City leaders say data shows not enough visitors used the Greyhound bus service at the Cordova Street bus stop and determined it was the best decision for the community.
2019 to 2022 data from Greyhound shows on average only six passengers per day left St. Augustine from the Cordova Street bus stop and seven passengers arrived per day.
"For the city of St. Augustine and the number of people we have here, I was a little surprised to see that so few were utilizing that service," Assistant City Manager Melissa Breidenstein said.
Assistant City Manager Melissa Breidenstein says other buses, trolleys and shuttles use the same area next to the visitor information center to pick up and drop off visitors, sometimes causing traffic.
"We want to utilize that space, the best way possible. And this was one of the buses that was using that space that can now be used for other reasons," Breidenstein said.
Breidenstein says the city looked into what's best for the city's residents, businesses, and visitors. She also addressed rumored comments made by city manager John Regan about the bus stop increasing the city's challenges with the growing homeless population.
"Anything we do here that has to do with homelessness, any decision we make, we're thinking about what impacts there may be there may be impacts from this, but we don't know exactly who was riding the Greyhound bus. We only know the actual numbers. And our decision was based on that data," Breidenstein said. "His conversation was with a group talking about homelessness. And so we wanted to make sure people knew all the things that we were doing that may have an effect on that."
In a statement to First Coast News, Greyhound says it hopes to resume operations with the city of St. Augustine in the future but for now says quote: "Passengers can still enjoy Greyhound service in nearby locations like Jacksonville, Palm Coast, Daytona Beach."
The city the Cordova Street bus stop will still be used for trolleys and buses carrying large groups.