Greyhound Cuts Stops in Small Southern Towns

Amtrak isn't the only transportation system whose service to small-town and rural areas is at risk. "The Greyhound has always been the savior of small-town America," notes the St. Petersburg Times. But not for long. The bus line is "streamlining" service in most of the Southeast (including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee), which means that buses will no longer stop in small towns all across the South.

"For many citizens of the Black Belt who do not own automobiles transportation just got a little tougher," warns the Demopolis (Ala.) Times. The St. Petersburg Times reports on how the elimination of stops in 33 Florida small towns will affect the people who depend on buses - "the carless, the jobless, and those who are too afraid or too poor to fly." Among the bus riders the reporter encounters - a woman who has just left her husband, a drug-dealing Vietnam vet, a mysterious, black-hatted man looking like a "Latino Johnny Cash" -- "the only common denominator that I saw was poverty."