This agreement was reached early Monday morning and will extend through Oct. 31.
RTA agreed to work with Greyhound on a time extension while they work to find a new location for their Dayton operations.
Updates will be provided once the agency is made aware of Greyhound’s plans for a new service location.
FIRST REPORT:
Greyhound is expected to stop service out of the Northwest Transit Center in Trotwood at the end of Monday, after the Greater Dayton RTA was unable to reach a new contract with Greyhound.
Greyhound has not announced any new location for its services in the Dayton region.
RTA CEO Mark Donaghy said about 18 Greyhound bus trips came through a day and he believed that Greyhound was planning to stay in the Dayton area, but working on a different location.
Donaghy said RTA’s contract to serve as a local agent for Greyhound will not be renewed after it expires because the two parties couldn’t reach a fair agreement.
He said the issue goes back to the beginning of the year when the RTA began discussions about their partnership and made a couple of proposals that he says Greyhound rejected.
“They offered to reduce our compensation and we said no,” he said.
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After failing to reach an agreement, he said the RTA gave Greyhound notice that their relationship would be terminated.
Some of the services the RTA provided was selling tickets for the services, sharing the Trotwood transit center and providing spaces for the drivers to come in and do electronic check-ins.
Founded in 1914, Greyhound made it through a 1990 bankruptcy filing but has faced competition as low gas prices lowers the cost of driving and as people flock to alternatives like cheap flights. Reuters reported in May that its parent company FirstGroup, based in the U.K., announced it was going to sell the bus service.
Donaghy said that he’s seen some of the news reports of Greyhound’s struggles.
“But I don’t think the answer is to ask their contractors to work for less money,” he said.
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