Is it time for a downtown bus terminal (again)?

Bolt Bus on 9th St. NW

Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher wrote about new non-Chinese but still cheap inter-city bus services coming to the City, in "Bolting To New York For One Lousy Buck." The advantage of the new services is that customer service is better, you have guaranteed seats, and the boarding process isn't likely to be "crazy" (if you've taken the Chinese buses you know what I mean). Although the advantage of the Chinese bus "system" is that some of the companies run service leaving from DC at 2 am and at 3:30 am. (But mostly the last bus from NYC is 11 pm.)

The coming Megabus is supposed to provide service from Union Station.

Now, that is the best option yet, to have a truly multimodal transportation center at Union Station, so that arriving bus passengers could then have immediate access to transit (subway, bus, railroad) and taxi services.

The managers of Union Station have wanted too much money for this to become a reality. Maybe that's changing.

But with the plethora of "Chinese" bus services operating downtown, departing from an already congested H Street NW or from I Street NW, and now the added Bolt Bus, wouldn't it make sense to either (1) get them to all operate from Union Station or (2) provide one common staging location, not on H or I Streets, but on New York Avenue, maybe on the NW corner of New York Avenue and 11th Street, in fact, at the location of the old Greyhound Terminal?

Postcard, Greyhound Bus Terminal, Downtown, Washington, DC. Right now, this portion of the building is in use as a high end furniture rental store, and a very good Japanese restaurant, Muza--they have a great happy hour, 1/2 price beer and wine, and inexpensive teriyaki (grilled) appetizers.