The city has extended a parking-lot lease with Megabus.com for one more year.
The bus service that sells rides for as little as $1 will pay $2,000 per month through June 2014 to use a city-owned lot at the southwest corner of Wealthy Street and Market Avenue SW for passenger boarding and unloading. This is the same lease fee paid to the city when Megabus started providing service to Grand Rapids last summer.
The terms of the lease prohibit Megabus from parking buses in the Wealthy or Market right-of-ways to board and unload passengers.
Megabus provides services from Grand Rapids to Chicago, Detroit and East Lansing for fares as low as $1. A one-way Aug. 21 ticket to Detroit was selling this morning for $1 to $3, for example, while a 1-way July 21 ticket to East Lansing was selling for $3 and a 1-way June 21 ticket to Chicago was selling for $29 to $34.
“The best way to get the lowest fares is to book 30 to 45 days in advance of travel,” said Mike Alvich, Megabus.com vice president of marketing. “We’re seeing constant growth – slow, steady, but constant growth since we started. We’re happy with the service so much so that we increased the capacity on our buses.
Megabus does not plan to change any services in Grand Rapids, Alvich said.