Cleveland’s Amtrak station bustles with activity each night but is silent during the day. It’s that nighttime activity that requires improved access — and that’s what Amtrak plans to improve with a planned $6.3 million project (NEOtrans). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Bus station closes today after 78 years
Starting this spring, Amtrak will undertake two years worth of construction and improvements to its Cleveland station on downtown’s lakefront. Meanwhile, downtown’s Greyhound bus station closes today after 78 years, in favor of a modular depot in suburban Brook Park.
While some of the train station work is on property owned by Amtrak and two freight railroads, other improvements and construction staging will be on city property. That means that Amtrak will need to lease the land from the city for two years at $1 per year with an option to extend it should construction take longer.
So Cleveland City Council is reviewing an ordinance that will authorize Mayor Justin Bibb’s Office of Capital Projects to execute that lease so Amtrak’s construction work, budgeted at $6.3 million, can start on time. Amtrak’s station is located at 200 Memorial Shoreway.
Amtrak will replace a nearly 1,200-foot-long, trackside platform plus pedestrian and baggage trailer ramps between the station building and that platform. The ramp includes new crossings of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s (GCRTA) Waterfront Line tracks as well as a CSX freight track.
Detailed site plans for improving ADA-compliant access to the Cleveland Amtrak station’s walkways and trackside platform along the bottom or southerly side of the image (MOCAP).
Amtrak is making this and many other station improvements nationwide costing more than $500 million in response to a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department in 2020 regarding its stations failing to conform to the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.
Additionally, the 49-year-old Amtrak station which was refurbished four years ago will be expanded with a new, enclosed shelter for station agents to load and unload baggage trailers. Currently, this work is done under a narrow canopy whose side is exposed to the wind, rain and snow.
Amtrak ridership at Cleveland in 2025 grew to 61,685 passengers compared to 58,930 in 2024, making it Ohio’s busiest Amtrak station. Nationwide, Amtrak saw record ridership in 2025, carrying 34.5 million passengers, a 5.1 percent increase over 2024.
Other Ohio Amtrak stations are seeing big investments by Amtrak, including at Elyria where the passenger railroad plans to relocate by 2028 from a shelter and platform at East River Street. It will join Greyhound at the Lorain County Transportation and Community Center in the historic New York Central depot, 40 East Ave., downtown.
Amtrak-funded improvements will also include expanding the station’s canopies, namely the lower one in the background, so baggage trailers can be loaded and unloaded in a climate-protected shelter (NEOtrans).
Amtrak’s relocation at Elyria involves $5.6 million worth of station access improvements. Elyria’s Amtrak ridership was 13,135 in 2025 versus 11,396 in 2024 — more than Amtrak sees at Cincinnati where service is offered only three days per week.
By comparison, Cleveland and Elyria see four Amtrak trains per day, or more accurately, per night, on overnight schedules between Chicago and the East Coast. Despite the growing ridership, Amtrak has no plans to offer daytime service in the absence of new federal funds for the expansion of routes longer than 750 miles.
Under federal law, states sponsor routes under 750 miles but Ohio has declined to support passenger rail service unlike neighboring states Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania. Most Amtrak routes depend on using costly, privately owned railroad rights of way that are filled with freight trains.
“We at All Aboard Ohio are glad to see Amtrak investing in upgrades for the Downtown Cleveland station,” said Brian Schriver, northeast chapter director of All Aboard Ohio. “We hope that Amtrak will build on that success by expanding. It would be great to see daytime service to Cleveland in the next few years.”
The scene today at the historic Downtown Cleveland Greyhound station on Chester Avenue — its last day of regularly scheduled bus service (Mark Schwinn).
While Amtrak ridership is growing, Greyhound’s has been shrinking as has its services to Cleveland. Where Greyhound used to run a half-dozen or more buses each way per day on each of its routes to the city, today it has only one or two daytime buses per route operating in daytime hours, despite access to government-owned, often-free highways.
At its peak in the 1960s, Greyhound ridership at Cleveland was more than 3 million per year. A decade ago, All Aboard Ohio said it was 250,000 per year. Today, it’s much less because the service is less, although exact ridership figures are not released by Greyhound.
In 2024, Playhouse Square Foundation acquired the Art Deco-designed bus station, 1465 Chester Ave., which has been Greyhound’s home since 1948. The foundation plans to redevelop the building but no plans have been publicly released as yet.
So Greyhound and its partner Barons Bus are relocating their main Cleveland station starting tomorrow to an unused, 4-acre parking lot at 17510 Brookpark Rd., at the far east end of GCRTA’s Brookpark Rapid transit station property.
On July 9, 2025, substantial construction progress was made on the new Greyhound-Barons Bus station on Brookpark Road in the suburb of Brook Park. Despite the progress, the station’s first day of service wouldn’t come for another seven months — tomorrow, Feb. 4 (NEOtrans).
The site is convenient for Barons Bus because it has its Cleveland-area bus garage nearby at 13315 Brookpark. Aside from a hookah lounge across the street and a 24-hour Circle K gas station 2/3-mile west on Brookpark, there are no restaurants or stores nearby.
The Brookpark Rapid station is served by Red Line trains every 15 minutes that operate 22 hours a day. It also has GCRTA’s hourly No. 54 and 86 bus routes that do not run after 9 pm plus the No. 78 that is more frequent and runs until 1 am.
Greater Cleveland’s new bus station and waiting room measures roughly 2,000 square feet. It also has about 40 parking spaces for customers and a concrete pad for buses where passengers can board and alight. Barons will pay $1,000 per month in rent to GCRTA on a 10-year lease with two five-year extension options.
A downtown multimodal transportation center for Amtrak and GCRTA buses and trains is proposed to be built at the approximate location of the Amtrak station. Federal planning funds were pledged but have not yet been received. Greyhound and Barons have declined to be part of the multimodal station so far.
END
