Megabus plans to pull its passenger bus service out of Chattanooga on May 1 until the low-cost, intercity carrier can find a new place to board and unload passengers.
Megabus - which unlike Greyhound doesn't have brick-and-mortar bus stations - has been shunted from one place to another around Chattanooga since it first came here in 2011, dogged by complaints that its passengers hang out and cause a nuisance during multi-hour layovers.
The bus line is no longer welcome at its current bus stop across from T-Bone's Sports Cafe at West Main and Chestnut streets near Finley Stadium.
"It is hurting my business," said Susan Danner, co-owner of T-Bone's, who complained of Megabus passengers camped out at 8 a.m. when Danner arrives at work and others who've helped themselves to T-Bone's' bathrooms and cursed T-Bone's' staff.
"They're all over my deck, they're all under my awning," Danner said. "They go in there and lock the bathroom doors. They steal the toilet paper. They start telling my cook what to fix them to eat - and they've got five minutes."
'No place to go'
Sean Hughes, director of corporate affairs for North America for Megabus, said Friday that the bus company has moved four times in Chattanooga.
First, Megabuses stopped at South Terrace Plaza along Interstate 24 in East Ridge. Then Megabus moved to the Eastgate Town Center in Brainerd. Then Megabus went to the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority's (CARTA) Shuttle Park South next to the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel.
Finally, Megabus moved in the fall near Finley Stadium at the city's request, Hughes said, and was willing to pay for a bus shelter there.
But at the end of last year, he said, the city asked Megabus to find another bus stop.
"We enjoy being in Chattanooga since we've been there in 2011," Hughes said. "But it seems like there is no place in the city where we can possibly go that works operationally for us."
City spokeswoman Marissa Bell said the Chattanooga Department of Transportation (CDOT) worked for close to six months to find a bus stop location to meet the needs of Megabus as well as nearby business owners.
"CDOT has offered Megabus to use any city right-of-way wide enough for the buses, as long as Megabus can show support from surrounding businesses by way of signatures," Bell said via email. "Unfortunately, Megabus does not provide shelter or bathrooms for their clients, which impacts surrounding businesses."
But the city has never said how many signatures it requires from surrounding businesses, said Hughes, or shown an ordinance requiring signatures. He added that Megabus in January changed its Chattanooga schedule to eliminate long layovers.
"There are no long layovers in Chattanooga, since the first week in January," he said.
'Too many issues'
Lisa Maragnano, executive director of CARTA, said the Shuttle Park South station didn't work out because Megabus passengers were causing "too many issues," including by loitering in the lobby of the Choo Choo Hotel.
"The lobby of the Choo Choo is not a place where you hang out, unless you're a guest there," Maragnano said, adding, "Eastgate asked them to leave there."
"We really tried to find another location for [Megabus]," she said. "But we just couldn't find anything suitable. The city really worked hard with them. The city is not the bad guy, at all."
A long-term solution, Maragnano said, would be construction of a new multimodal transportation center, which is under consideration now at three sites with rail access: at 1300 Market St. between King Street and Shuttle Park South, at 1305 Broad St. where Carter Distributing Co. is located, and at 2516 Chestnut St. on the site of the shuttered U.S. Pipe-Wheland property.
"Megabus would go there," she said, of whichever site is chosen.
From Chattanooga, Megabus offers service south to Atlanta or north to Nashville.
Since launching in April 2006, megabus.com has served more than 40 million customers throughout more than 120 cities in North America, including Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga in Tennessee.
Megabuses offer the first seat on every bus at a cost of $1.50, free wifi, at-seat power plug-ins for passengers and most of its buses are double-decker vehicles.
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu @timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or twitter.com/meetforbusiness or 423-757-6651.